{"id":1168,"date":"2009-04-14T01:18:41","date_gmt":"2009-04-14T05:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=1168"},"modified":"2009-04-13T22:20:17","modified_gmt":"2009-04-14T05:20:17","slug":"february-article-housing-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2009\/04\/14\/february-article-housing-20\/","title":{"rendered":"February article: Housing 2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"

It took a while for me to catch up with my own goal to blog about the articles I’ve posted to Scribd<\/a>, but here (finally) is a quick pointer to Housing 2.0<\/a>, the piece I published in the February 2009 issue of FOCUS Magazine<\/em>. <\/p>\n

It’s a funny title in some ways, but this brief introductory description, followed by the first paragraph, might clarify the intent:<\/p>\n

Using the Wikipedia model, along with modular housing, to solve homelessness:<\/em> As web 2.0 development has shown, people are able to unleash creativity and energy when they see how to move forward and get things done from the bottom up. <\/p>\n

Vancouver architect Gregory<\/a> Henriquez<\/a> wants to tackle Vancouver’s crisis of homelessness with temporary modular housing. Homelessness, he points out, is growing at a much faster rate than housing can be built, which basically means that housing production should speed up. The problem is that traditional housing construction can’t. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, the gist is that it’s another attempt on my part to shift our thinking away<\/em> from “let government do it” to “let the people do it.” If we have a group of people who’ve become systematically beaten down (sometimes through their own bad choices, sometimes through the bad choices others made for them), does it make sense to keep them passive and in a state of learned helplessness, or is it better to help people move – step by step – toward autonomy? (That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. I know what my answer is.) Henriquez tried to make a case for what he called “Stop-Gap Housing,” and it makes a lot of sense in our housing market (which is both imploding in some ways, while still incredibly unaffordable at the same time).<\/p>\n

I also, in this article, try to get a “2.0” kind of thinking focused on bricks and mortar (literally), which is something that’s badly, badly needed in land use and development. There have actually been some great historical precedents for that kind of fluid thinking, in particular Archigram’s DIY City concepts (I blogged about this and my ideas and responses around “housing 2.0” here<\/a>). <\/p>\n

I’m not sure the Victoria readership appreciated all the weirdo references I threw out in this piece, but everyone should get out of their comfort zone occasionally, right? \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Note: The March article, Victoria’s Urban Forest<\/a>, is also up on Scribd, and I’ll blog a short post on that one tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took a while for me to catch up with my own goal to blog about the articles I’ve posted to Scribd, but here (finally) is a quick pointer to Housing 2.0, the piece I published in the February 2009 issue of FOCUS Magazine. It’s a funny title in some ways, but this brief introductory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2357,1061,1419,2058,2071,1903],"tags":[5510,5511],"class_list":["post-1168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-affordable_housing","category-architecture","category-cities","category-focus_magazine","category-housing","category-writing","tag-gregory-henriquez","tag-housing-20"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}