I live in a house constructed of spit and sawdust (well, actually plywood with vinyl siding) in 1998 by a speculative builder. It is one of 16 that all look just the same, in a wee development of freehold townhouses in downtown Ottawa. Across the street is a brick condominium development comprising some 25 townhouses that also look just like each other. At the end of the street is a co-operative of several rows of townhouses with board-and-batten facing that -- amazing! -- all look just the same, except for the variations in paint colour. South of our street is a large district of brick-faced public (i.e., council) townhouses constructed during the 1970s, also all looking just like all the others.

Our neighbourhood, Lower Town, was bulldozed during the 1950s when Ottawa went on a spree of urban renewal. Today's tidy rows of townhouses, each with handkerchief-sized front and back gardens, replaced Victorian rows of two-up, two-down workers' houses with pot-bellied stoves for heating and privies at the bottom of the garden for sanitation. Not all had electric light, so the residents used kerosene lamps. Fires were frequent, and nasty diseases were common. My mother and her sister grew up in that neighbourhood, and like many of their generation they cheered the arrival of the bulldozers. My mother is long dead, but my aunt thinks Lower Town has improved immensely.

Personally, I love my modern spit-and-sawdust house. The windows all open and shut as they are supposed to. The floors are flat, the walls are plumb, and the corners remarkably close to square. Doors don't stick, although I occasionally wish for better quality hardware. The plumbing works with delightful efficiency.

And the uniformity of the basic structure is misleading. Outside they're all the same, but inside the houses are as different as the families that live in them. The ticky-tacky exterior is mere camouflage.