An intercultural analysis of cause-and-effect link in forming common features and individual peculiarities of typological diversity of housing units in a historical perspective becomes topical in modern architectural science. The starting point of this study was unordered knowledge in this filed, the lack of analysis of genesis in the sphere of cheap housing for workers. The purpose of this article is to disclose the combination of factors and patterns in establishment of workers’ housing as a new housing unit type at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. The theoretical research is based on studying academic works of both Russian and foreign specialists, in which various aspects of housing problem at the beginning of the 20th century is covered, also the archive data, legal acts and regulations are used. An analytical interdisciplinary analysis of the town-planning during the 19th-20th centuries became the methodological foundation of the research. As a result of the conducted research, the conclusion was made that the development of cheap workers’ housing was based upon a number of interconnected facts. The leading one was the industrialization process and modernization processes connected to it, which influenced the development of economic, political, cultural areas of society. The housing issue began to be understood as a complex problem to be solved at the legislative level taking into account health and hygiene requirements, reality of people’s new way of life and implementation of architectural and engineering tasks.
