3 ms·

How do you think extended family housing complexes fit into this story? It's a norm in many cultures and for much or human history but an oddity in the US. Of

How do you think extended family housing complexes fit into this story? It's a norm in many cultures and for much or human history but an oddity in the US. Of course you can use as loose a definition of family as you like.

DoreenMichele 5y ago
I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about that though I would like to figure out where that fits. Our current housing crisis is rooted in building housing designed for our standard nuclear family with a breadwinner father, homemaker mother and 2.5 minor kids. This became our standard post-WW2 with the birth of the suburbs and was avidly embraced because it worked to solve our housing crisis at that time. That was never the majority of the US population but it was a larger percentage of the population than it is currently and there were other housing options available if you were single. We have torn down a million SROs and largely eliminated the practice of boarding houses. Now we see such things as aimed at homeless people who can't make their lives work. At one time, that was normal housing for normal people. We have a higher percentage of households with one to three people and we mostly don't build housing for such households. This has driven an interest in alternatives like Tiny Homes, RV living and trailer courts. We really need to focus on building Missing Middle Housing and SROs. That would include duplexes which are a potential sensible option for living with extended family in some cases. SRO: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy
- earleybird 5y ago
  That same time period (post WWII) saw a large shift from rural to city (suburb or otherwise). How does that factor into your view of normal housing?
  - nine_k 5y ago
    Cities had (and have) more and better jobs. Suburbs are, imho, the anti-city environment.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    I don't think that's all that important. There has been a general trend for a long time globally towards people leaving rural areas and moving to cities and suburbs. It is sometime in the past thirty years that I heard the announcement that global populations officially passed the fifty percent mark for human populations inhabiting cities more than rural areas for the first time in human history. Suburbs got thrown up at breathtaking speed in part because it was greenfield development, which lowered some barriers to development. There is some saying about "Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick two." At the time that they were carpeting the US at high speed, they were seen as good, cheap and fast. We are now seeing what the myriad hidden costs were, from cutting out lower income people to forcing people to be dependent on cars to cutting out people of color and also having environmental costs that were not factored in at the time. The birth of the suburb predates the environmental movement. The birth of the suburb is generally traced to Levittown in the late 1940s-early 1950s. The environmental movement is generally traced to the publication of a book called Silent Spring in 1962. https://frontlineielts.com/the-birth-of-suburbia/ https://frontlineielts.com/the-birth-of-suburbia/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring
    - earleybird 5y ago
      For continental US, I believe it was around the 1920's[0] while globally, yes it wasn't until 2007 or thereabouts. From an admittedly superficial review, it has been Africa, India and perhaps(?) China that have been undergoing the most urbanization over the last 100 years. Then again, perhaps it's not urbanization per se, maybe it's more total population size. Homeostasis will find a balance point (if one exists). [0]https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/gilded-age/a/america-moves-to-the-city https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded... [1]https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization#share-of-populations-living-in-urban-areas https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization#share-of-populations... granted this only goes back to 1960
- presentation 5y ago
  Agreed - a beautiful part of living in Tokyo is that if you're a single young person, you can rent a <$500/mo, 20m2 or smaller apartment in the heart of the city; and if you need more house you can rent/buy more house. People typically live in small living spaces, so public spaces become that much more vibrant, since people are mostly out of the home. The USA has next to no choice for those sorts of tradeoffs.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about that though I would like to figure out where that fits. Our current housing crisis is rooted in building housing designed for our standard nuclear family with a breadwinner father, homemaker mother and 2.5 minor kids. This became our standard post-WW2 with the birth of the suburbs and was avidly embraced because it worked to solve our housing crisis at that time. That was never the majority of the US population but it was a larger percentage of the population than it is currently and there were other housing options available if you were single. We have torn down a million SROs and largely eliminated the practice of boarding houses. Now we see such things as aimed at homeless people who can't make their lives work. At one time, that was normal housing for normal people. We have a higher percentage of households with one to three people and we mostly don't build housing for such households. This has driven an interest in alternatives like Tiny Homes, RV living and trailer courts. We really need to focus on building Missing Middle Housing and SROs. That would include duplexes which are a potential sensible option for living with extended family in some cases. SRO: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy

earleybird 5y ago
That same time period (post WWII) saw a large shift from rural to city (suburb or otherwise). How does that factor into your view of normal housing?
- nine_k 5y ago
  Cities had (and have) more and better jobs. Suburbs are, imho, the anti-city environment.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  I don't think that's all that important. There has been a general trend for a long time globally towards people leaving rural areas and moving to cities and suburbs. It is sometime in the past thirty years that I heard the announcement that global populations officially passed the fifty percent mark for human populations inhabiting cities more than rural areas for the first time in human history. Suburbs got thrown up at breathtaking speed in part because it was greenfield development, which lowered some barriers to development. There is some saying about "Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick two." At the time that they were carpeting the US at high speed, they were seen as good, cheap and fast. We are now seeing what the myriad hidden costs were, from cutting out lower income people to forcing people to be dependent on cars to cutting out people of color and also having environmental costs that were not factored in at the time. The birth of the suburb predates the environmental movement. The birth of the suburb is generally traced to Levittown in the late 1940s-early 1950s. The environmental movement is generally traced to the publication of a book called Silent Spring in 1962. https://frontlineielts.com/the-birth-of-suburbia/ https://frontlineielts.com/the-birth-of-suburbia/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring
  - earleybird 5y ago
    For continental US, I believe it was around the 1920's[0] while globally, yes it wasn't until 2007 or thereabouts. From an admittedly superficial review, it has been Africa, India and perhaps(?) China that have been undergoing the most urbanization over the last 100 years. Then again, perhaps it's not urbanization per se, maybe it's more total population size. Homeostasis will find a balance point (if one exists). [0]https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/gilded-age/a/america-moves-to-the-city https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded... [1]https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization#share-of-populations-living-in-urban-areas https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization#share-of-populations... granted this only goes back to 1960
presentation 5y ago
Agreed - a beautiful part of living in Tokyo is that if you're a single young person, you can rent a <$500/mo, 20m2 or smaller apartment in the heart of the city; and if you need more house you can rent/buy more house. People typically live in small living spaces, so public spaces become that much more vibrant, since people are mostly out of the home. The USA has next to no choice for those sorts of tradeoffs.