Further Reading

  • Click here to purchase Future Shock by Alvin Toffler
    Future Shock. Alvin Toffler.

  • Click here to purchase Biomimcry by Janine M. Benyus
    Biomimcry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Janine M. Benyus.

  • Click here to purchase Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough
    Cradle to Cradle: Rethinking the Way We Make Things. William McDonough.

  • Click here to purchase The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil
    The Singularity is Near. Ray Kurzweil.

  • Click here to purchase Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
    Free Culture. Lawrence Lessig.

  • Click here to purchase Fueling the Future by Andrew Heintzman and Evan Solomon
    Fueling the Future. Andrew Heintzman and Evan Solomon.

  • Click here to purchase Feeding the Future by Eric Schlosser, Andrew Heintzman and Evan Solomon
    Feeding the Future. Eric Schlosser, Andrew Heintzman and Evan Solomon.

  • Click here to purchase The End of Poverty by Jeffery Sachs
    The End of Poverty. Jeffrey Sachs.

Archive for the 'Urbanization' Category

Hernando de Soto Interview. October 21, 2003.

Tuesday, June 27th, 2006

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How do your ideas differ from conventional ideas on the source of capital?
I would say that they add to conventional ideas rather than differ from them. I believe that the only way we’re able to capture capital is through property. Property is the system that allows us to capture the value we have in things in a manner that’s tangible and that allows us to transfer value so as to initiate new causes and sources of growth.

T.S. Elliott asks, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge and where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” In terms of capital, this is an interesting metaphor.
Right. The information contained in the property system - or concretely in the recording system, a deed, a share, or something that represents equity - represents its value. The value is captured in the property document. In this sense, property is a system of representations of value. If you don’t have a property system, you don’t have the representational devices with which you can then capture value, store it, make it liquid, and invest it. The majority of developing and former communist countries do not have property systems that allow them to concretize the value of the many things that they produce and own. As a result, they are unable to grow. So they end up rejecting the system. Interestingly, even developed countries are not conscious of what makes the accumulation of capital possible, despite the advanced stages of their property system. (more…)

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Carol Burns Interview. February 24, 2004.

Tuesday, June 27th, 2006

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What is the true definition of a manufactured house?
In the bottom line, what defines a manufactured house is a permanent chassis. This is a fundamental physical feature by which we know this house type that has gone under various names at other times - the travel trailer, the house trailer, and, for a long period of time, the mobile home. Ever since the HUD Code was put into effect in 1974, it has been called a manufactured house. The funny thing is, it doesn’t mean anything out of a factory; it means precisely a house that moves down the highway on its own permanent chassis. It’s a hybrid entity, having as much to do with travel trailers and transportation vehicles as it does with housing.

When did the notion of mobility enter the realm of housing?
Issues of mobility have influenced dwellings even perhaps before settlement - the nomads were mobile dwellers, of course. But in terms of industrialization, which is the more relevant epistemological era of considering this, the U.S. railroad system allowed prefabricated buildings to be shipped around the country. In the popular summer destination of Martha’s Vineyard, for example, there are Queen Anne gingerbread-style houses that were built just after the Civil War, originally ordered from the Sears catalogue. They weren’t aimed at the mobility of the people, but they were made available to this island by way of a transportation infrastructure.

When did the design of trailers change to reflect their new role as a dwelling space?
When the federal government had to move soldiers and their families around the country during WWII, the house trailer fit the bill. They required fast construction of large-scale settlements, and although the house trailer could be moved, it had more interest for its occupants in a set location. In the subsequent peacetime economy, there was such a pent-up demand for housing that trailers as permanent homes became more widely available and more acceptable.

Were there any significant housing initiatives that took advantage of the manufacturing technology immediately after WWII?
The story of Levittown is the best example of retooling factories for civilian purposes in postwar America - the “swords into ploughshares” idea. Levitt began to develop housing at a scale and in a way that had not been seen before. It’s the way that we understand the development of suburbs now, but at the time it was a radical idea. Levitt referred to it as a “factory under the sky.” (more…)

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