13 ms·

Why Levittown didn't revolutionize homebuilding

95 points by sien 2y ago

worldvoyageur 2y ago
While the slow strangulation of Levitt's mass production formula for building large volumes of homes that were affordable for people who otherwise couldn't afford housing was the saddest part, in 1994 Levitt died in poverty close to the well over 20,000 affordable homes he had built in Long Island.
- rob74 2y ago
  OTOH, with even larger volumes of affordable [single-family] homes, the US would have even more suburban sprawl than it has now, which I think most people agree is not actually a good thing...
  - throwthrowuknow 2y ago
    If it meant everyone could afford a home it would be worth it.
- underlipton 2y ago
  I look at the restrictive covenant that forbid my family from living in the house we lived in when I was younger (after such covenants were deemed unenforceable, but not struck entirely from the house's deed), and play my tiniest violin.
mensetmanusman 2y ago
“ Supporters praised Levitt for giving thousands of Americans the chance to own a home, while others criticized the cookie-cutter Levittown homes as a further intrusion of a hollow consumerist culture and lifestyle.” NIMBYs have always existed it seems, but we don’t have the lax land use laws that result in screwing over young families less than we do now. Maybe housing policy is the great filter.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > NIMBYs have always existed it seems, but we don’t have the lax land use laws that result in screwing over young families less than we do now. I mean that's just America. Every group trying to fuck over the group below them for an extra step up the proverbial ladder, usually without even knowing it. It's fuck or be fucked around here. And the poorer you are, the more people you've got in line to fuck you.
- scottLobster 2y ago
  Seriously, we picked our house based on price, school district, and condition. We actually wanted less aesthetically appealing houses more but were outbid, so had to go with our third choice. Anyone bitching about home aesthetics is at or near the top of Maslow's hierarchy and really needs to shut up.
  - trgn 2y ago
    > Anyone bitching about home aesthetics How does it have to be one or the other though?
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > How does it have to be one or the other though? Economies of scale. It’s cheaper to build lots of identical things. On the secondary market, relative demand: an ugly house will be cheaper.
      - trgn 2y ago
        > It’s cheaper to build lots of identical things. Yeah, just have them build lots of nice-looking identical things.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > just have them by lots of nice-looking identical things If it doesn’t make them more expensive, sure. Even then, the fact that it’s repeated will make it ugly to many.
082349872349872 2y ago
compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irony_of_Fate#Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irony_of_Fate#Plot
osigurdson 2y ago
The article could use a lot more pictures.
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  Agreed. The Wikipedia has more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown But then I read this and it trashed everything I thought of him- “William J. Levitt refused to sell Levittown houses to non-Caucasians.” I feel much less bad about him dying penniless now.
  - shrubble 2y ago
    seems odd that you didn't include the next sentence: "The FHA, upon authorizing loans for the construction of Levittown, included racial covenants in each deed, making each Levittown a segregated community." That is, the FHA included the covenants, not Levitt.
    - mikeyouse 2y ago
      Levitt was absolutely a racist, the FHA eventually found the covenants to be illegal discrimination and Levitt sued the government and attempted to maintain them all the way to the US Supreme Court. Defending William Levitt in 2024 is a real choice.
      - shrubble 2y ago
        This might give some background; the FHA is mentioned quite often : https://www.history.com/news/housing-segregation-new-deal-program https://www.history.com/news/housing-segregation-new-deal-pr...
PopAlongKid 2y ago
> “arduous, long, and expensive process” of approvals, as well as being forced to meet higher (and more expensive) standards for things like sidewalks, I now live in a neighborhood with about 200 homes all built right after WWII, all 3 bed/1 bath 1,200 sq. ft. with minor variations[0]. No sidewalks! Pedestrian-friendly access is not cheap. [0]by now, many have been modified to add a bath/bedroom
- underlipton 2y ago
  You actually don't need sidewalks to be pedestrian-friendly. You need some combination of vehicle control measures (slow cars down), low density (fewer cars) or high density (shorter walk times), and something to walk to (a corner store, a transit stop/station, a park). Voila, people walk. Is it common to mention why certain codes and policies were implemented (documentation, essentially)? Because that would make it a lot easier to understand if planning dogma was reasonable ("When we didn't have this, people died a lot") or not ("We now have mitigation strategies for the reasons people died a lot that allow us to step back rigor in this area.").
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    This is true even without somewhere to walk to. Most hilly neighborhoods in california lack sidewalks, and tons of people are out walking. Dog still needs walked. Its a nice day practically every day in california. People get out of the house and walk plenty, and the drivers assume there's probably going to be something to slow them down around every blind turn and act accordingly. People won't be inclined to walk if its raining often, snowing, or too humid, moreso than the quality of the built environment outside their door I imagine.
  - jandrese 2y ago
    One side effect of not having sidewalks and not being connected to public transit is it segregates the neighborhood from the poor and especially the homeless. People were fleeing cities and were putting up walls around their neighborhoods via zoning and car centric design.
AlexandrB 2y ago
Doesn't seem like this production method was particularly advantageous: > But even at its early-50s heyday, while Levitt was an efficient builder, he wasn’t unrivaled. Levitt and Sons sold its early Levittown homes for around $10 per square foot, but many other builders (none of whom operated at Levitt’s scale) sold their homes at similar prices. As property prices have increased, I doubt that the cost of building the house is even the major cost factor - it's probably mostly property value for the lot. Edit: It also strikes me that we have something even better today - pre-fab or "mobile" homes that can be delivered by truck to a suitable plot of land. These haven't solved the housing crisis either.
- nimbius 2y ago
  home prices also dont scale linearly across their subcomponents. the most expensive part of a home is often the kitchen and bathroom. once youre on the hook for those costs, the tendency is to increase square footage overall in order to justify the price at all to the market. the nadier of homebuilding during the bush era was the McMansion at around 5000-6000 sqft, with a triple garage. not that you had three cars, just that the Hummer H2 took most of that real estate. most of these either got demolished after 2008 or sit in a capital management firms investment portfolio, about as attractive as a barrel of radioactive waste. the other issue is a lot of municipalities (United States in particular) mandate and encourage large single family homes with outmoded energy and environmental requirements. suburbs work by siphoning resources from larger cities, sort of like a parasite. in turn they produce and encourage among the worst trends in US homes. acres of irrigated lawns and uninsulated attics and windows arent a concern but a feature of their housing code malaise as the cities subsidize this largesse.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    > suburbs work by siphoning resources from larger cities, sort of like a parasite. in turn they produce and encourage among the worst trends in US homes. acres of irrigated lawns and uninsulated attics and windows arent a concern but a feature of their housing code malaise as the cities subsidize this largesse. That is the narrative, but it doesn't stand up. Suburbs have existed for over 100 years now, and those older ones have managed to tear out the streetcars (on hindsight a mistake), put in sewer, water, phone, electric, cable tv - most of the above list has been replaced several times. They seem like they must be siphoning from the larger city until you realize that they are not replacing all of that every 20 years and so depreciation is not a clue as to the real long term costs. There are exurbs where you get acres of land, those are generally surrounded by farms (at least for the first 30 years until the suburbs expand out that far - but then a developer will buy those acres and divide it for more houses) In the suburbs you are looking at more like 10 houses per acre - which is not very dense, but still much denser. The US has good building codes. There is no place where you can get by with an uninsulated attic - except in the bad parts of big cities where houses from 1880 are still around and not upgraded. edit: uninsulated attic
mannyv 2y ago
The fact is, they did revolutionize homebuilding because they made people realize that homes were something the mass market could afford - if it was done correctly. Many time the realization of the idea the important thing. Apple didn't win the personal computer market, but its ideas defined the personal computer. Levitt may not have become a billionaire, but his idea that houses were for everyone won.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Sears was selling houses from their catalog for many decades before this.
- Gormo 2y ago
  Nitpick, but it was ultimately Xerox's ideas that defined the personal computer, with Apple just being the earliest to have massive success at bringing those ideas to market. The figure in computing history I'd analogize Levitt to here would be Gary Kildall. Kildall pioneered the concept of an open architecture with products from many competing vendors all implementing compatible standards and running the same OS. Ultimately, Microsoft stole his thunder, his company failed, and he died in relative obscurity, without the recognition he deserves for pioneering the modern industry.
rob74 2y ago
There is an area where "mass production of housing" became widespread, which the article completely overlooks: multi-storey apartment buildings. These are arguably better for a city than suburban sprawl, but (due to being affordable) got a bad rep too, so the building of these larger buildings also shifted back to more artisanal processes.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  A lot of buyers want a single-family home though. It kind of sucks to have neighbors on the other side of the walls and ceiling, especially if the construction didn't include really good soundproofing.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    This is especially true in the US where fire code make it practically impossible to build a 4 bedroom unit which families will want. (it is legal, but if you try to design one you discover the code forces a lot of space that you can't do anything useful with and so it isn't possible)
    - underlipton 2y ago
      I've been wondering why we don't see many 4-bedroom, house-sized (~2000sqft+) apartment units. It seems to me that many who balk at attached units do so because of space concerns more than proximity. Can you give more details on this?
      - bluGill 2y ago
        There have to be two stairways in every apartment buileing. That in turn forces a hall down the middle. Every bedroom needs to have a window. Both of the above are written in the blood of those who died in fires. the result of the above is four bedroom apartments have too much space with no purpose. Try to draw any apartment and you will quickly see.
        2y ago
throw0101c 2y ago
Production home building does exist (in the US): * https://www.newhomesource.com/learn/custom-or-production-builder-right-for-you/ https://www.newhomesource.com/learn/custom-or-production-bui... * https://www.foxridgehomesbc.com/news-feed/the-differences-between-a-production-home-builder-independent-builder-and-custom-builder/ https://www.foxridgehomesbc.com/news-feed/the-differences-be... * https://www.nahb.org/other/consumer-resources/types-of-home-construction/production-homes https://www.nahb.org/other/consumer-resources/types-of-home-... This is in contrast to a "spec" (speculation) home where a smaller builder buys land themselves and builds a (single?) house and then sells it after (no buyer is lined up before hand). Someone could also go with a "custom" home, where the eventual resident themselves have some land and hire someone (general contract (GC)) to build it (or they act a GC themselves and hire all the subs (sub-contractors) themselves). A "production builder" is probably the closest thing to 'factory line' assembly/construction. Generally this is what is happening when a sub-division is built up; usually a certain percentage of the units have a signed purchased agreement and a deposit.
- bluGill 2y ago
  > Generally this is what is happening when a sub-division is built up; usually a certain percentage of the units have a signed purchased agreement and a deposit. 95% (every developer is different, but this is a good number for discussion) of the lots are sold by the developer to a builder. They will have a dozen builders and know what each wants and so 95% of the lots they know who will buy the lot before they can legally talk to the builder who will buy it (if the builder is on vacation that week they will wait for them to come back). The last 5% is for the few people who think they want a custom house with their own builder. The builders will sell the majority of houses on their lots as one of their designs (often all, but they will custom build on their lot if you ask - it costs only a little more), most houses are sold before they are completed, but often they are started before they have a purchase agreement.
pmlnr 2y ago
> For decades, people have tried to bring mass production methods to housing: to build houses the way we build cars. While no one has succeeded What is this bs? Whoever wrote this has no knowledge of the soviet bloc & the "house factories". Come on. https://www.zupagrafika.com/shop/eastern-blocks https://www.zupagrafika.com/shop/eastern-blocks
- orbital-decay 2y ago
  I was also surprised, but the author clearly had US in mind. It's not just former Soviet countries, prefabs for large apartment blocks are used all over the world.
  - snowpid 2y ago
    Yes banlieues in France are also similar or Plattenbau in Western and Eastern Germany. Typical American mindset and the fact that OP gets down voted, tell everything.
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
We have a small 4-story condo going into a lot behind us now (and for the past 4 months). It's remarkabke how stop and go visible progress is, even though the there's people on the site 5 or 6 days a week. Two weeks of earth moving. Then prep. Do the foundation in a week. Then prep. Framing in a week and a half. Now endless jobs of plumbing, electrical, windows, this and that, on and on for weeks. For factory built homes to really be a win, then need a very high level of integration. An easy to snap together frame doesn't actually save much time or effort. But if there's really finished walls with utilities built-in (and also accessible for future maintenance) then I can see the effort being potentially useful.
cloudjanitor 2y ago
> Crews would go to a house, perform their required task (using material that had been pre-delivered), then move on to the next house. Within the crew, work was further specialized: on the washing machine installation crew, William Levitt noted that “one man did nothing but fix bolts into the floor, another followed to attach the machine,” and so on. By breaking down the process into repetitive, well-defined steps, workers didn’t have to spend time figuring out what they should do Having worked over the years on multiple tract-home projects doing labor, framing, stacking (installing the prefab truss packages), and layout (snapping lines on slabs marking out where everything goes) I can affirm that this IS how its done with variance per-project and usually with several floorplans to scratch that "novelty" itch for buyers. The homes go up fast with each crew sweeping through a few units at a time doing their respective parts. It's efficient that way. > keeping construction on track meant a steady, uninterrupted stream of material that arrived at the jobsite exactly when needed. A lot of the materials (especially lumber) are queued up ahead of each project starting to ensure that daily flow happens. On jobs I worked on as labor my job was to hand deliver any lumber resupply requests that were below some efficiency threshold for using the heavy off road forklift -- if memory serves me correctly, 20 pieces. The windows and trusses were all pre-fabricated and delivered in bundled packages for each floorplan.
danans 2y ago
> Components like exterior walls and roofs were designed to have as simple shapes as possible (no complex hips or wall jogs), and This is a traditional and eminently sensible approach that has been lost in the "McMansion" era. Simpler roof shapes are not only cheaper to build, but also are far easier to deal and insulate, and therefore more energy efficient. Instead, simple energy efficient design is today mostly used in some high end custom homes while production homes are often overly complex and inefficient, relying on oversized mechanical equipment to make up for poor design choices. > rooms were arranged so that plumbing lines could be placed near each other to simplify pipe routing. There's a simple method to quantify this known as the "hot water rectangle". On the house's overhead view, draw the smallest rectangle that includes all the hot water faucets and the water heater. The size of the rectangle affects build cost, efficiency, and hot water delivery performance. In many large houses there is no consideration for this at the design stage, so they end up using (wasteful) hot water recirculation pumps. 1. https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/the-hot-water-rectangle https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/the-hot-water-r...
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  There is a lot of overhead when it comes to building out a factory supply chain for scalable parts, because factories are large sunk capex costs, particularly for large items. And manufactured housing often does not make sense because if you manufacture whole rooms, unless you get special vehicles and delivery permits you are limited to the dimensions of a container, and there's a nonzero chance you show up to the site and you have to do some fiddling anyways to get it to actually fit. Plus people are not actually looking for identical room sizes. Probably the closest we'll ever get is to standardization of parts like the 2x4 or some of the insulation panels that exist nowadays, since you can flatpack those into a truck and make adjustments on the fly.
  - throw0101c 2y ago
    > And manufactured housing often does not make sense because if you manufacture whole rooms, unless you get special vehicles and delivery permits you are limited to the dimensions of a container […] See perhaps this student housing project in Norway: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4N4mVITd5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4N4mVITd5U Entire bathroom shipped as one unit. The rest is panelized. > Probably the closest we'll ever get is to standardization of parts like the 2x4 or some of the insulation panels that exist nowadays, since you can flatpack those into a truck and make adjustments on the fly. NS Builders have a couple of videos on panelized buildings: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeHkVeJO6PE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeHkVeJO6PE * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3QZVG-18E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3QZVG-18E Matt Ferrell of Undecided made his home that way: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-RTlbv84T8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-RTlbv84T8 One can also do (US) traditional stick building with pre-cut lumber: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2FdAdxjSpw&list=PLDYh81z-RhxjSuCfjHdlIMWpqhyt5jNPX&index=5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2FdAdxjSpw&list=PLDYh81z-Rh...
adolph 2y ago
Another homebuilding revolution that didn't happen was Edison's concrete homes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38057265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38057265 https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/thomas-edisons-concrete-houses https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/thomas-edisons-concrete-...
- m463 2y ago
  I think there are many nerd-simplification-projects that seem elegant in theory, but are either hard to bring to fruition, or nobody wants to buy something simple. I'm reminded of the next computer, which had a very expensive factory that just failed. The IDEA of highly-automated assembly of a computer is just so compelling, but getting it from automated to highly-automated wrecks the economics of things. The other thing I think about is tesla - they have been working very hard to remove complexity from each generation of their cars. But they keep going and don't know where to stop, removing the dashboard, buttons, sensors (radar and sonar) and control stalks. In the end, the car might have marched right past "elegant minimalism" to "cheap dangerous nobody wants"
paradox460 2y ago
Same reason Lustron homes are little more than historical novelties
vips7L 2y ago
I grew up in Levittown. I don’t ever want to go back.
rfwhyte 2y ago
One interesting thing to note, is that in 1949 Levit sold houses in Levittown for $7990, which adjusted for "Inflation" to 2024 dollars is equivalent to $105K. Those exact same houses that sold for $105K in 2024 dollars in 1949 are now selling for north of $500K.
chromate 2y ago
I don't think this blog is right - a lot of suburban homes are modular and actually built in factories on an assembly line. For example, in Canada Mattamy homes uses an assembly line: https://www.mammoet.com/cases/mattamy/ https://www.mammoet.com/cases/mattamy/

95 points by sien 2y ago

While the slow strangulation of Levitt's mass production formula for building large volumes of homes that were affordable for people who otherwise couldn't afford housing was the saddest part, in 1994 Levitt died in poverty close to the well over 20,000 affordable homes he had built in Long Island.

rob74 2y ago
OTOH, with even larger volumes of affordable [single-family] homes, the US would have even more suburban sprawl than it has now, which I think most people agree is not actually a good thing...
- throwthrowuknow 2y ago
  If it meant everyone could afford a home it would be worth it.
underlipton 2y ago
I look at the restrictive covenant that forbid my family from living in the house we lived in when I was younger (after such covenants were deemed unenforceable, but not struck entirely from the house's deed), and play my tiniest violin.

mensetmanusman 2y ago

“ Supporters praised Levitt for giving thousands of Americans the chance to own a home, while others criticized the cookie-cutter Levittown homes as a further intrusion of a hollow consumerist culture and lifestyle.” NIMBYs have always existed it seems, but we don’t have the lax land use laws that result in screwing over young families less than we do now. Maybe housing policy is the great filter.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> NIMBYs have always existed it seems, but we don’t have the lax land use laws that result in screwing over young families less than we do now. I mean that's just America. Every group trying to fuck over the group below them for an extra step up the proverbial ladder, usually without even knowing it. It's fuck or be fucked around here. And the poorer you are, the more people you've got in line to fuck you.
scottLobster 2y ago
Seriously, we picked our house based on price, school district, and condition. We actually wanted less aesthetically appealing houses more but were outbid, so had to go with our third choice. Anyone bitching about home aesthetics is at or near the top of Maslow's hierarchy and really needs to shut up.
- trgn 2y ago
  > Anyone bitching about home aesthetics How does it have to be one or the other though?
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > How does it have to be one or the other though? Economies of scale. It’s cheaper to build lots of identical things. On the secondary market, relative demand: an ugly house will be cheaper.
    - trgn 2y ago
      > It’s cheaper to build lots of identical things. Yeah, just have them build lots of nice-looking identical things.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > just have them by lots of nice-looking identical things If it doesn’t make them more expensive, sure. Even then, the fact that it’s repeated will make it ugly to many.

082349872349872 2y ago

compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irony_of_Fate#Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irony_of_Fate#Plot

osigurdson 2y ago

The article could use a lot more pictures.

Mistletoe 2y ago
Agreed. The Wikipedia has more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown But then I read this and it trashed everything I thought of him- “William J. Levitt refused to sell Levittown houses to non-Caucasians.” I feel much less bad about him dying penniless now.
- shrubble 2y ago
  seems odd that you didn't include the next sentence: "The FHA, upon authorizing loans for the construction of Levittown, included racial covenants in each deed, making each Levittown a segregated community." That is, the FHA included the covenants, not Levitt.
  - mikeyouse 2y ago
    Levitt was absolutely a racist, the FHA eventually found the covenants to be illegal discrimination and Levitt sued the government and attempted to maintain them all the way to the US Supreme Court. Defending William Levitt in 2024 is a real choice.
    - shrubble 2y ago
      This might give some background; the FHA is mentioned quite often : https://www.history.com/news/housing-segregation-new-deal-program https://www.history.com/news/housing-segregation-new-deal-pr...

PopAlongKid 2y ago

> “arduous, long, and expensive process” of approvals, as well as being forced to meet higher (and more expensive) standards for things like sidewalks, I now live in a neighborhood with about 200 homes all built right after WWII, all 3 bed/1 bath 1,200 sq. ft. with minor variations[0]. No sidewalks! Pedestrian-friendly access is not cheap. [0]by now, many have been modified to add a bath/bedroom

underlipton 2y ago
You actually don't need sidewalks to be pedestrian-friendly. You need some combination of vehicle control measures (slow cars down), low density (fewer cars) or high density (shorter walk times), and something to walk to (a corner store, a transit stop/station, a park). Voila, people walk. Is it common to mention why certain codes and policies were implemented (documentation, essentially)? Because that would make it a lot easier to understand if planning dogma was reasonable ("When we didn't have this, people died a lot") or not ("We now have mitigation strategies for the reasons people died a lot that allow us to step back rigor in this area.").
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  This is true even without somewhere to walk to. Most hilly neighborhoods in california lack sidewalks, and tons of people are out walking. Dog still needs walked. Its a nice day practically every day in california. People get out of the house and walk plenty, and the drivers assume there's probably going to be something to slow them down around every blind turn and act accordingly. People won't be inclined to walk if its raining often, snowing, or too humid, moreso than the quality of the built environment outside their door I imagine.
- jandrese 2y ago
  One side effect of not having sidewalks and not being connected to public transit is it segregates the neighborhood from the poor and especially the homeless. People were fleeing cities and were putting up walls around their neighborhoods via zoning and car centric design.

AlexandrB 2y ago

Doesn't seem like this production method was particularly advantageous: > But even at its early-50s heyday, while Levitt was an efficient builder, he wasn’t unrivaled. Levitt and Sons sold its early Levittown homes for around $10 per square foot, but many other builders (none of whom operated at Levitt’s scale) sold their homes at similar prices. As property prices have increased, I doubt that the cost of building the house is even the major cost factor - it's probably mostly property value for the lot. Edit: It also strikes me that we have something even better today - pre-fab or "mobile" homes that can be delivered by truck to a suitable plot of land. These haven't solved the housing crisis either.

nimbius 2y ago
home prices also dont scale linearly across their subcomponents. the most expensive part of a home is often the kitchen and bathroom. once youre on the hook for those costs, the tendency is to increase square footage overall in order to justify the price at all to the market. the nadier of homebuilding during the bush era was the McMansion at around 5000-6000 sqft, with a triple garage. not that you had three cars, just that the Hummer H2 took most of that real estate. most of these either got demolished after 2008 or sit in a capital management firms investment portfolio, about as attractive as a barrel of radioactive waste. the other issue is a lot of municipalities (United States in particular) mandate and encourage large single family homes with outmoded energy and environmental requirements. suburbs work by siphoning resources from larger cities, sort of like a parasite. in turn they produce and encourage among the worst trends in US homes. acres of irrigated lawns and uninsulated attics and windows arent a concern but a feature of their housing code malaise as the cities subsidize this largesse.
- bluGill 2y ago
  > suburbs work by siphoning resources from larger cities, sort of like a parasite. in turn they produce and encourage among the worst trends in US homes. acres of irrigated lawns and uninsulated attics and windows arent a concern but a feature of their housing code malaise as the cities subsidize this largesse. That is the narrative, but it doesn't stand up. Suburbs have existed for over 100 years now, and those older ones have managed to tear out the streetcars (on hindsight a mistake), put in sewer, water, phone, electric, cable tv - most of the above list has been replaced several times. They seem like they must be siphoning from the larger city until you realize that they are not replacing all of that every 20 years and so depreciation is not a clue as to the real long term costs. There are exurbs where you get acres of land, those are generally surrounded by farms (at least for the first 30 years until the suburbs expand out that far - but then a developer will buy those acres and divide it for more houses) In the suburbs you are looking at more like 10 houses per acre - which is not very dense, but still much denser. The US has good building codes. There is no place where you can get by with an uninsulated attic - except in the bad parts of big cities where houses from 1880 are still around and not upgraded. edit: uninsulated attic

mannyv 2y ago

The fact is, they did revolutionize homebuilding because they made people realize that homes were something the mass market could afford - if it was done correctly. Many time the realization of the idea the important thing. Apple didn't win the personal computer market, but its ideas defined the personal computer. Levitt may not have become a billionaire, but his idea that houses were for everyone won.

bluGill 2y ago
Sears was selling houses from their catalog for many decades before this.
Gormo 2y ago
Nitpick, but it was ultimately Xerox's ideas that defined the personal computer, with Apple just being the earliest to have massive success at bringing those ideas to market. The figure in computing history I'd analogize Levitt to here would be Gary Kildall. Kildall pioneered the concept of an open architecture with products from many competing vendors all implementing compatible standards and running the same OS. Ultimately, Microsoft stole his thunder, his company failed, and he died in relative obscurity, without the recognition he deserves for pioneering the modern industry.

rob74 2y ago

There is an area where "mass production of housing" became widespread, which the article completely overlooks: multi-storey apartment buildings. These are arguably better for a city than suburban sprawl, but (due to being affordable) got a bad rep too, so the building of these larger buildings also shifted back to more artisanal processes.

SoftTalker 2y ago
A lot of buyers want a single-family home though. It kind of sucks to have neighbors on the other side of the walls and ceiling, especially if the construction didn't include really good soundproofing.
- bluGill 2y ago
  This is especially true in the US where fire code make it practically impossible to build a 4 bedroom unit which families will want. (it is legal, but if you try to design one you discover the code forces a lot of space that you can't do anything useful with and so it isn't possible)
  - underlipton 2y ago
    I've been wondering why we don't see many 4-bedroom, house-sized (~2000sqft+) apartment units. It seems to me that many who balk at attached units do so because of space concerns more than proximity. Can you give more details on this?
    - bluGill 2y ago
      There have to be two stairways in every apartment buileing. That in turn forces a hall down the middle. Every bedroom needs to have a window. Both of the above are written in the blood of those who died in fires. the result of the above is four bedroom apartments have too much space with no purpose. Try to draw any apartment and you will quickly see.
      - 2y ago

throw0101c 2y ago

Production home building does exist (in the US): * https://www.newhomesource.com/learn/custom-or-production-builder-right-for-you/ https://www.newhomesource.com/learn/custom-or-production-bui... * https://www.foxridgehomesbc.com/news-feed/the-differences-between-a-production-home-builder-independent-builder-and-custom-builder/ https://www.foxridgehomesbc.com/news-feed/the-differences-be... * https://www.nahb.org/other/consumer-resources/types-of-home-construction/production-homes https://www.nahb.org/other/consumer-resources/types-of-home-... This is in contrast to a "spec" (speculation) home where a smaller builder buys land themselves and builds a (single?) house and then sells it after (no buyer is lined up before hand). Someone could also go with a "custom" home, where the eventual resident themselves have some land and hire someone (general contract (GC)) to build it (or they act a GC themselves and hire all the subs (sub-contractors) themselves). A "production builder" is probably the closest thing to 'factory line' assembly/construction. Generally this is what is happening when a sub-division is built up; usually a certain percentage of the units have a signed purchased agreement and a deposit.

bluGill 2y ago
> Generally this is what is happening when a sub-division is built up; usually a certain percentage of the units have a signed purchased agreement and a deposit. 95% (every developer is different, but this is a good number for discussion) of the lots are sold by the developer to a builder. They will have a dozen builders and know what each wants and so 95% of the lots they know who will buy the lot before they can legally talk to the builder who will buy it (if the builder is on vacation that week they will wait for them to come back). The last 5% is for the few people who think they want a custom house with their own builder. The builders will sell the majority of houses on their lots as one of their designs (often all, but they will custom build on their lot if you ask - it costs only a little more), most houses are sold before they are completed, but often they are started before they have a purchase agreement.

pmlnr 2y ago

> For decades, people have tried to bring mass production methods to housing: to build houses the way we build cars. While no one has succeeded What is this bs? Whoever wrote this has no knowledge of the soviet bloc & the "house factories". Come on. https://www.zupagrafika.com/shop/eastern-blocks https://www.zupagrafika.com/shop/eastern-blocks

orbital-decay 2y ago
I was also surprised, but the author clearly had US in mind. It's not just former Soviet countries, prefabs for large apartment blocks are used all over the world.
- snowpid 2y ago
  Yes banlieues in France are also similar or Plattenbau in Western and Eastern Germany. Typical American mindset and the fact that OP gets down voted, tell everything.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

We have a small 4-story condo going into a lot behind us now (and for the past 4 months). It's remarkabke how stop and go visible progress is, even though the there's people on the site 5 or 6 days a week. Two weeks of earth moving. Then prep. Do the foundation in a week. Then prep. Framing in a week and a half. Now endless jobs of plumbing, electrical, windows, this and that, on and on for weeks. For factory built homes to really be a win, then need a very high level of integration. An easy to snap together frame doesn't actually save much time or effort. But if there's really finished walls with utilities built-in (and also accessible for future maintenance) then I can see the effort being potentially useful.

cloudjanitor 2y ago

> Crews would go to a house, perform their required task (using material that had been pre-delivered), then move on to the next house. Within the crew, work was further specialized: on the washing machine installation crew, William Levitt noted that “one man did nothing but fix bolts into the floor, another followed to attach the machine,” and so on. By breaking down the process into repetitive, well-defined steps, workers didn’t have to spend time figuring out what they should do Having worked over the years on multiple tract-home projects doing labor, framing, stacking (installing the prefab truss packages), and layout (snapping lines on slabs marking out where everything goes) I can affirm that this IS how its done with variance per-project and usually with several floorplans to scratch that "novelty" itch for buyers. The homes go up fast with each crew sweeping through a few units at a time doing their respective parts. It's efficient that way. > keeping construction on track meant a steady, uninterrupted stream of material that arrived at the jobsite exactly when needed. A lot of the materials (especially lumber) are queued up ahead of each project starting to ensure that daily flow happens. On jobs I worked on as labor my job was to hand deliver any lumber resupply requests that were below some efficiency threshold for using the heavy off road forklift -- if memory serves me correctly, 20 pieces. The windows and trusses were all pre-fabricated and delivered in bundled packages for each floorplan.

danans 2y ago

> Components like exterior walls and roofs were designed to have as simple shapes as possible (no complex hips or wall jogs), and This is a traditional and eminently sensible approach that has been lost in the "McMansion" era. Simpler roof shapes are not only cheaper to build, but also are far easier to deal and insulate, and therefore more energy efficient. Instead, simple energy efficient design is today mostly used in some high end custom homes while production homes are often overly complex and inefficient, relying on oversized mechanical equipment to make up for poor design choices. > rooms were arranged so that plumbing lines could be placed near each other to simplify pipe routing. There's a simple method to quantify this known as the "hot water rectangle". On the house's overhead view, draw the smallest rectangle that includes all the hot water faucets and the water heater. The size of the rectangle affects build cost, efficiency, and hot water delivery performance. In many large houses there is no consideration for this at the design stage, so they end up using (wasteful) hot water recirculation pumps. 1. https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/the-hot-water-rectangle https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/the-hot-water-r...

bobthepanda 2y ago
There is a lot of overhead when it comes to building out a factory supply chain for scalable parts, because factories are large sunk capex costs, particularly for large items. And manufactured housing often does not make sense because if you manufacture whole rooms, unless you get special vehicles and delivery permits you are limited to the dimensions of a container, and there's a nonzero chance you show up to the site and you have to do some fiddling anyways to get it to actually fit. Plus people are not actually looking for identical room sizes. Probably the closest we'll ever get is to standardization of parts like the 2x4 or some of the insulation panels that exist nowadays, since you can flatpack those into a truck and make adjustments on the fly.
- throw0101c 2y ago
  > And manufactured housing often does not make sense because if you manufacture whole rooms, unless you get special vehicles and delivery permits you are limited to the dimensions of a container […] See perhaps this student housing project in Norway: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4N4mVITd5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4N4mVITd5U Entire bathroom shipped as one unit. The rest is panelized. > Probably the closest we'll ever get is to standardization of parts like the 2x4 or some of the insulation panels that exist nowadays, since you can flatpack those into a truck and make adjustments on the fly. NS Builders have a couple of videos on panelized buildings: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeHkVeJO6PE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeHkVeJO6PE * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3QZVG-18E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3QZVG-18E Matt Ferrell of Undecided made his home that way: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-RTlbv84T8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-RTlbv84T8 One can also do (US) traditional stick building with pre-cut lumber: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2FdAdxjSpw&list=PLDYh81z-RhxjSuCfjHdlIMWpqhyt5jNPX&index=5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2FdAdxjSpw&list=PLDYh81z-Rh...

adolph 2y ago

Another homebuilding revolution that didn't happen was Edison's concrete homes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38057265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38057265 https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/thomas-edisons-concrete-houses https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/thomas-edisons-concrete-...

m463 2y ago
I think there are many nerd-simplification-projects that seem elegant in theory, but are either hard to bring to fruition, or nobody wants to buy something simple. I'm reminded of the next computer, which had a very expensive factory that just failed. The IDEA of highly-automated assembly of a computer is just so compelling, but getting it from automated to highly-automated wrecks the economics of things. The other thing I think about is tesla - they have been working very hard to remove complexity from each generation of their cars. But they keep going and don't know where to stop, removing the dashboard, buttons, sensors (radar and sonar) and control stalks. In the end, the car might have marched right past "elegant minimalism" to "cheap dangerous nobody wants"

paradox460 2y ago

Same reason Lustron homes are little more than historical novelties

vips7L 2y ago

I grew up in Levittown. I don’t ever want to go back.

rfwhyte 2y ago

One interesting thing to note, is that in 1949 Levit sold houses in Levittown for $7990, which adjusted for "Inflation" to 2024 dollars is equivalent to $105K. Those exact same houses that sold for $105K in 2024 dollars in 1949 are now selling for north of $500K.

chromate 2y ago

I don't think this blog is right - a lot of suburban homes are modular and actually built in factories on an assembly line. For example, in Canada Mattamy homes uses an assembly line: https://www.mammoet.com/cases/mattamy/ https://www.mammoet.com/cases/mattamy/