SB: RE: Cement, cars, buildings, and stuff

["David Wagner" <dwagner@sa.kevric.com>]

> From: Mark Piepkorn [mailto:duckchow@greenbuilder.com]
> Subject: SB: Cement, cars, buildings, and stuff
>
--Snipped many good comments about housing resource use and smaller
homes.--

With all those comments about smaller homes being the only way to
really cut housing resource use to sustainable levels, I am (sadly,
only a little) surprised these authors overlooked the next obvious
conclusion.

> A Pattern Language [a book by Christopher Alexander et al]
> speaks of
> --a few things snipped--
> And why on earth do we duplicate all the support systems? If we
> share a laundry facility, all of us can immediately delete
> one room and some expensive equipment from our
> houses. If we share a library, or a dance space, PRESTO! Our
> houses shrink with no loss (in fact a gain) of comforts.

Imagine if we could walk to this library, and to the dance space, a
theater, a nice park and community gardens, a few restaurants, cafes,
shops, art galleries, a bar or two, an inn, a school...  Just think if
we could share all these resources without hauling around a ton of
steel, we would be living in... a city!  And hey, if our smaller homes
shared other resources like walls and those bugaboos of resource
intensity, foundations and roofs, we would be living in... apartments!

And don't most people already live in cities?  Would the world be
better off if its whole human population dispersed into surburbalia?
Come to think of it, straw bale walls would make for nice, nearly
soundproof common walls...

-David
Who is still working on urban building designs, but will start
toeing-up the existing slab to sustainably retrofit his 50-yr old
uninsulated house in the city into a multiuse building really soon
now.  Really!



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