3052: Housing
The construction of dwellings in the United States
and the rest of the world have changed very little in the last hundred years or
so. The methods and materials of choice
have changed a little but the main technique remains what the industry calls
“stick built.” Geographically, one style
and technique may displace another such as replacing palm fronds and thatch
with corrugated metal or fiberglass.
This variation is not a significant change in building techniques.
The basic construction consists of clearing a plot of land,
laying a foundation and a level floor, raising walls to form a box and topping
it with a ceiling and roof. Everything
else is aesthetics. Most variations are
prescribed by the climate and the weather.
Some variations are dictated by local customs.
In the USA
we construct most of our houses from pine 2x4s, vinyl siding, and gypsum
Sheetrock panels. We pitch the roof to
shed the rain and shingle it with asphalt sheets to make it water proof. Our desire is to live in a structure that is
separated from our nearest neighbors by at least 20 feet where ever
possible. Every dwelling unit must have a
water supply, a sewage outlet, and access to a public thoroughfare. It must have one type or other of a heating
system in all occupy-able rooms. Beyond
that, the criterion for occupancy is not statutory.
The location of the housing is more an indicator of quality
than is the materials and craftsmanship of the construction. Whether basic services are available makes or
breaks the location. The relatively
inexpensive cost of energy has allowed us to put as many dwellings as we want
anywhere we want to put them. We leave
it up to the resident to supply his own form of transportation and choose how
far he/she is willing to travel to buy food, see a doctor, pray, earn a salary
or wage.
In this 3rd millennium future, the complexity of
energy production and distribution will require that we travel less in order to
be more comfortable in our homes. Even
in this early 21st century world, we must choose between fueling a
car and eating corn. We must choose
between higher living costs and commuting longer distances. We must balance the virtues of a suburban
life with a patch of grass out front and the proximity of groceries, schools,
work sites and cultural venues. The cost
of energy will drive the choices for how we build our houses and where we build
them. It will drive how we heat and cool
them and how we use water and dispose of wastes.
Before the Age of Affluence in America , people could not afford to
heat their entire dwelling. They heated
only the places where they were going to be.
Curtains and doors isolated heated rooms from unheated ones and
hallways. Four post beds with canopy
tops and curtained sides were not merely a pretentious room decoration but a
means to keep the sleepers warm on a frigid night in an unheated room.
Cheap natural gas and electricity made it possible to heat
ones entire abode all day and all night without even the need to attend to a
coal or log burning furnace in a basement dungeon. Cooling the dwelling became as simple as
turning the thermostat wheel to the desired whole-house temperature. One could wander from room to room and back
without experiencing the discomfort of a different temperature.
Before the Age of Affluence, houses were built without
driveways and garages, or even off street parking pads in the front or
sides. As this Age comes to a close, the
luxuries of the past are becoming unattainable and unsustainable. The needs of the many, more so every year,
are outweighing the wants of a few. When
the resources that we have available are at a premium that word supposes that
having more money to pay entitles the buyer to buy more. In the short term, that might continue to
work, but as a long term strategy, it cannot.
Revolutions take from those people who think they can buy more just
because they have more to spend. But
when ten people are hungry, one man cannot feed his corn to his cow to produce
meat for steaks.
Housing cannot be considered in isolation to all the
infrastructure that is required in order to support it. When any resource becomes scarce, decisions
for who will get them must be made. If a
community has only one fire truck and station, the house that is twenty miles
away will burn to the ground before the firefighters get there. If there is a choice between the 20 mile call
and a 5 mile call, the 5 mile call will get the service. At some point in time, the rural road may not
ever see new asphalt again, merely because the needs of the higher density area
roads get all the available funding and asphalt that there is to have.
In the 3rd Millennium, houses will be factory
built to high construction and energy use standards and placed in dense
communities surrounding transit stations and be co-located with trip
destinations to which people can walk.
No longer will we build houses where heated air leaks through windows
and doors, electrical fixtures and gaps in the siding. Workers will not be slogging through the rain
and the mud to stick build the houses, but will be well trained factory workers
in some country who build to exacting tolerances.
Lighting systems will be based on low voltage LED lighting
and chemical reactions that are recharged by sunlight being directed on them during
the day. Dwelling based electric generation will produce the precise voltages
that each connected device needs for optimum operation without transformation
losses like what happens with the billions of "wall warts" that
electronic devices today require.
As always there will be a wide selection of housing types
and locations, but the denser more resource efficient types will dominate the
cityscapes of the world. Population growth has already made it essential in China that they
build 4 NYC Equivalent cities EVERY YEAR to keep up with their population
growth. An "NYC Equivalent" is
a city the size of Manhattan .
That size and construction schedule leaves little in the way of luxuries in the
form of grassy back yards and wide open suburban landscapes.
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