
Alejandro Aravena's open-source plans for low-cost yet upgradable housing - saeranv
http://archinect.com/news/article/149938728/inside-aravena-s-open-source-plans-for-low-cost-yet-upgradable-housing
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xiaopingguo
The article does not mention the cost of these houses which would seem to be
the major point of information.

I think these developments can market themselves a lot better if they drop the
terms "low income"/ "low cost"/"social housing" and adopted something like
"young people homes" or "starter homes".

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bubuga
> The article does not mention the cost of these houses which would seem to be
> the major point of information.

I don't know if it's possible to provide an accurate number. Although it's
possible to specify material costs, the cost of construction work is mainly
driven by labor cost and the organizational capabilities of each contractor.
Mexico's government could provide the info on their own contracts, but that
wouldn't be very representative of what they could cost in, say, the US, where
wages are far higher.

> I think these developments can market themselves a lot better if they drop
> the terms "low income"/ "low cost"/"social housing" and adopted something
> like "young people homes" or "starter homes".

These projects are mainly driven by the need to cut costs right down to the
bone, even if this means that the housing projects are, say, far from
luxurious.

The main reason is that this sort of project is targeted at local and central
governments who feel the need to spend a part of their budget in social
housing projects, whose main goal is a mix of improving people's housing,
eliminate shanty towns, serve as the first stage of an urban renewal project,
and even plain old populist propaganda to get them reelected.

Therefore, the target market is a set of organizations with deep pockets whose
decision is mainly political and is driven by cost-benefit analyses, but
ultimately aren't the ones who will actually use the end-result.

Therefore, as cost is king, these social housing projects tend to be located
in regions whose real estate value is very low, mainly due their sub-par
location. As the people who will end up living in these housing projects, due
to their low income, essentially don't have any better alternatives than
living in a substandard house in a sub-par location (because, given an
alternative, they would live elsewhere) then that's exactly the sort of people
who will end up living in these homes.

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tryitnow
Meh. The big component of cost is land, not structure. And where structures
are expensive it's usually due to regulations.

But any incremental cost reduction helps, so good for this guy.

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surfmike
this seems to create very homogenous neighborhoods. it would be nice if these
styles were mixed up a bit. otherwise this would create very depressing
environments.

this also seems like it wouldn't work inside the US. the main barrier to
housing affordability here is zoning laws that prevent density and enough
housing units from being built.

that said, i think with some modifications (ie create more variation) this is
a good way for countries to be proactive about preventing slums.

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yourapostasy
Look to the Levittown experience for how variation is a naturally emergent
property in the right setting; identical houses stamped out assembly-line
fashion, yet after a decade they were already adapted to the point it was
becoming difficult to discern houses on the same block started out identical
to each other. The key was a design that was very open to owner adaptation.

Housing affordability is complex issue. While there are local factors like
zoning as you mentioned, artificial distortions in the open market for land in
the US (and much of the rest of the world) contribute a plurality of the
effects causing the stratospheric cost of land wherever well-paying jobs can
be found.

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MrTonyD
For every Levittown there are also hundreds of neighborhoods that never got
any better after they were built. I would argue that Levittown can't be
disentangled from the economic period in the United States - and it reflected
the improving economic position of the working class. That ended in the 1970's
for the United States (the GDP kept rising but it has gone to the rich. And
home ownership is the same percent right now as it was in the mid-1970's.)

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CullingTheHerd
Going out on a limb, I think yourapostasy pointed to Levittown not to attempt
to explain the entire economics of housing for the U.S.A. during the 70's
(because hey, if we're taking the issue to that level we have to talk globally
about inflation, oil, etc), but rather they were simply suggesting that, given
the (in yourapostasy's ,i think correct and understated, words) "complex"
issues surrounding affordable housing, Levittown is a helpful example in as
far as providing a cookie cutter foundation which lends itself to
indiviualisation over the long term, which is actually a more complex concept
(much like building mountains or clouds out of simpler fractal shapes) than it
first seems.

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yourapostasy
On point. The complexity of the overall land affordability issue isn't
amenable to deconstructing in this forum's format, but yes, individualization
is cheaper to accrete over time than build in from the start (especially if
the labor input costs to generate the "individual differences" in the initial
designs and operational implementations is driven by land costs themselves).

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rdlecler1
This reminds me of the low income housing projects set up post-war in New York
but less dense. Generally they're a bit of a blight. Might these become
blights as well?

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CullingTheHerd
generally,,, idk. i lived in Stuyvesant Town for a time, in Manhattan. it, was
not blighted. it was effin amazing and i miss the living there, a lot. a lot,
alot. if you didn't earn 150k+ in the city, it was pretty much the best thing
going. new york city's post-war housing was not "low income", it was
affordable housing. it was meant for working class folks. blight doesn't
happen because something was initially meant for use by "low income" folks.
blight happens because of neglect or stagnation. the term blight itself: "a
plant disease, especially one caused by fungi such as mildews, rusts, and
smuts." so to stigmatize "low income" as being "blight" prone is to so badly
conflate the issues involved as to verge on ignorance.

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ChuckFrank
This should be Open Sourced. And adaptable for different site conditions.

Otherwise, it's just theoretical.

