3 ms·

There are many issues around housing, some derive from capitalism, like building apartments because doing so milk more money from a handkerchief on land, but so

by kkfx 4y ago

There are many issues around housing, some derive from capitalism, like building apartments because doing so milk more money from a handkerchief on land, but some simply due to different evolution speed from human needs vs buildings lifecycle. I see at least two kind of schools on housing, one who talk about cheapness, typically from USA, Japan and few others. Another who talk about forever and ever duration, typically from south EU. Both have reasons and both to the extreme prove to be a disaster: - in the JP/USA model a simple strong wind or a flood (from EU perspective) suffice to demolish houses, making big damages etc - in the southern EU model houses are VERY old, they do not respond then to current needs and evolve them being not design to do so is a nightmare Some countries choose the "division" model, like almost in the entire north-America with their residential-only suburbs, some mix at unbearable high density. Both models prove to be disastrous: the suburb model impose too much travel and being tied to some "district" nearby became a graveyard when the district change; too dense southern EU and Asian cities suffer the opposite issue: little travel is needed but things are so concentrated that there is no room to evolve. Old Romans have a proverb: in medio stat virtus, "in the mean live the virtue", and I think that's well valid for housing... Too much dense => fail. Too little dense? Fail as well. Too diversified => fails, too much scaling issues. Too subdivided? => fails can't survive for long. Unfortunately evolving from a model to another, no matter if the change is good or bad, take MUCH, MUCH, MUCH time. Around homes we need infrastructures, like roads, aqueducts, power lines, TLCs, ... building a single home might be quick and easy BUT change the infra around normally is not. We still do not have the '30s dream of flying homes or semi-autonomous starships that can be moved easily everywhere... So far we do not even have flying cars (while they might be there technically)... That's not much tied to richness: poorest countries have their housing issues as well, just in different terms. It's tied to the lack of Star Trek alike replicators and tech. Something that's not on the horizon nor for the rich nor for the poor. Is something we can and should tend to, but knowing it's far away.

BoxOfRain 4y ago
>We still do not have the '30s dream of flying homes or semi-autonomous starships that can be moved easily everywhere... So far we do not even have flying cars (while they might be there technically)... There is a kind of home that can float anywhere though, I'm quite far long in my plans to move onto a sailing yacht. While my main motivation is a lifelong love of sailing and a desire for a nomadic lifestyle, I'd be lying if I said a small part of my motivation wasn't that shovelling money hand-over-fist into keeping a boat I own seaworthy is much more satisfying than shovelling money hand-over-fist into some random baby boomer's BTL portfolio every month!
- kkfx 4y ago
  That's was done by some, experimented on scale by very few and... well... it prove to be not really feasible: boats are expensive, far more than homes. All the efforts to made cheap and large-enough house-boat led to crappy stuff who do not last much. You need anyway much more raw materials and maintenance, most water is salty and salt corrode anything, lakes are too few and might make unpleasant drought issues and unpleasant waves... Insulation is an important issue, so energy consumption is. You can't even have good p.v. just because of limited AND constantly moving surface (your inverters suffer much a constantly crazy p.v. input). You need fresh water and the cheap way to get is is from land, so you need land infra anyway, you also need food and you can't produce it locally, yes you can fish, but you do not live well ONLY on fish and some algae... Beside that logistics is a nightmare. Long story short: FEW can live, perhaps even very well for some of them, on boats, but only if most others do not. That's an important issue too many forget even when they speak about Green New Deal: yes, we live in homes. We might WFH. BUT we also need factories, hospitals, schools, they are mandatory to live well and they need to be counted in the game: we need to sustain them as well. We need workers and they need a life as well. That's not much "housing problem" but is tied because we need a home to live BUT we also need to be physically nearby something else to do so as well. The dream of an autonomous home is not much different than the dream of an autonomous house-boat or starship or house-truck, house-airplane etc we can made "relatively autonomous" homes, tucks, ships, airplanes, ... where relatively means "you are free to live in in comfort FOR A LIMITED PERIOD OF TIME until something breaks, for instance, and such "things" can exists for you just because there is a complex industrial and social system behind. We still miss the 3D printer able to print itself... That's the real issue... We are able to reproduce ourselves only with our body (well, if we can keep alive in nature) but we can't do the same for anything we build...
  - BoxOfRain 4y ago
    I'm not claiming that my life choices would scale to be a viable option for the majority of the population but it doesn't have to scale to be an option for some people who are already interested in that kind of lifestyle. It's not a society-scale solution to the housing crisis but it's definitely an option for people in the position I'm in personally. Also it's not necessarily correct to say you require land-based infrastructure; you can be somewhat independent from the shore for long periods on a sailing boat since people do ocean crossings all the time, you obviously don't need fuel for propulsion, you can generate electricity with various renewables like solar, wind, and the boat's motion through the water under sail, and your water supply comes from the sea via a reverse osmosis machine. Provided nothing breaks beyond your ability to repair it you're effectively limited only by what food you can carry.

by kkfx 4y ago

BoxOfRain 4y ago

>We still do not have the '30s dream of flying homes or semi-autonomous starships that can be moved easily everywhere... So far we do not even have flying cars (while they might be there technically)... There is a kind of home that can float anywhere though, I'm quite far long in my plans to move onto a sailing yacht. While my main motivation is a lifelong love of sailing and a desire for a nomadic lifestyle, I'd be lying if I said a small part of my motivation wasn't that shovelling money hand-over-fist into keeping a boat I own seaworthy is much more satisfying than shovelling money hand-over-fist into some random baby boomer's BTL portfolio every month!

kkfx 4y ago
That's was done by some, experimented on scale by very few and... well... it prove to be not really feasible: boats are expensive, far more than homes. All the efforts to made cheap and large-enough house-boat led to crappy stuff who do not last much. You need anyway much more raw materials and maintenance, most water is salty and salt corrode anything, lakes are too few and might make unpleasant drought issues and unpleasant waves... Insulation is an important issue, so energy consumption is. You can't even have good p.v. just because of limited AND constantly moving surface (your inverters suffer much a constantly crazy p.v. input). You need fresh water and the cheap way to get is is from land, so you need land infra anyway, you also need food and you can't produce it locally, yes you can fish, but you do not live well ONLY on fish and some algae... Beside that logistics is a nightmare. Long story short: FEW can live, perhaps even very well for some of them, on boats, but only if most others do not. That's an important issue too many forget even when they speak about Green New Deal: yes, we live in homes. We might WFH. BUT we also need factories, hospitals, schools, they are mandatory to live well and they need to be counted in the game: we need to sustain them as well. We need workers and they need a life as well. That's not much "housing problem" but is tied because we need a home to live BUT we also need to be physically nearby something else to do so as well. The dream of an autonomous home is not much different than the dream of an autonomous house-boat or starship or house-truck, house-airplane etc we can made "relatively autonomous" homes, tucks, ships, airplanes, ... where relatively means "you are free to live in in comfort FOR A LIMITED PERIOD OF TIME until something breaks, for instance, and such "things" can exists for you just because there is a complex industrial and social system behind. We still miss the 3D printer able to print itself... That's the real issue... We are able to reproduce ourselves only with our body (well, if we can keep alive in nature) but we can't do the same for anything we build...
- BoxOfRain 4y ago
  I'm not claiming that my life choices would scale to be a viable option for the majority of the population but it doesn't have to scale to be an option for some people who are already interested in that kind of lifestyle. It's not a society-scale solution to the housing crisis but it's definitely an option for people in the position I'm in personally. Also it's not necessarily correct to say you require land-based infrastructure; you can be somewhat independent from the shore for long periods on a sailing boat since people do ocean crossings all the time, you obviously don't need fuel for propulsion, you can generate electricity with various renewables like solar, wind, and the boat's motion through the water under sail, and your water supply comes from the sea via a reverse osmosis machine. Provided nothing breaks beyond your ability to repair it you're effectively limited only by what food you can carry.