Tag: Urban Planning

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Can the American Dream be Rented?

For many years, the American Dream has centered around home ownership. The logic follows that you buy a home, lay roots and live in your biggest investment, which, more often than not, appreciates in value.

In the last few years, this dream has become a nightmare. The mortgage crisis created a class of defaulters, and the ensuing recession made down payments and financing near-impossibilities for most. Moreover, our mobile job market made the tether of a home more of a liability than asset.

According to a Wall Street Journal article by Daniel Gross called “Renting Prosperity,” these factors have triggered a shift away from the ownership ideal. He says:

In the American mind, renting has long symbolized striving—striving, that is, well short of achieving. But as we climb our way out of the Great Recession, it seems something has changed. Americans are getting over the idea of owning the American dream; increasingly, they’re OK with renting it.

The facts bolster his argument: home ownership is down, while rentership rises; and multi-unit buildings–most of which are used for rentals–have increased in production over the last few years while single units are declining.

He also explains that for many, the idea of ownership is mostly that: an idea. The reality is that people simply rent from the banks, whose “rent” comes in the form of interest and fees. This begs the question, if there is little, no or negative cost benefit to owning, why do it?

We’re big fans of rental/sharing services such as Zipcar and Rent-the-Runway. They allow you to use products by the hour, rather than paying a hefty and often unnecessary retainer fee. The author Gross points to these services as indicators of a changing attitude to rentership–that people increasingly care more about using than owning. The question is whether this a good system for housing, which for most is something they want to have all the time.

Like cloud computing, where all data is stored online and accessed when needed, could our world be moving away from the model of all-the-time ownership to on-demand access? On the one hand, this could lead to fewer people laying roots and improving their communities. On the other hand, it could lead to smarter rental homes and renters–the Strand East planned community is a good example of that.

What do you think? Do you think we should be living in the cloud or on the ground?

via Wall Street Journal

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Live, Eat, Breathe IKEA at Strand East, an IKEA-Designed City

After yesterday’s post on IKEA homes, we learned that single, prefab homes and small developments were not quite enough for the furniture giant: IKEA has entered the business of city-making.

LandProp, IKEA’s property development arm, is developing a city called Strand East outside of London. According to Fast Company Co.Exist, the development:

Will feature 1,200 homes, 480,000 square feet of commercial office space, a ‘hub area’ with shared space for the community, a creative zone intended for creative-minded businesses to take root, a restaurant, a hotel, pedestrian walkways, cycle routes.

Other features include winding, car-free streets, similar to old European cities (and IKEA stores), and underground parking that will provide ample pedestrian space and safety. There will be a strong focus placed on culture, community, food and other quality-of-life boosters. Click on infographic below for other community features.

Like its furniture, IKEAville, um, Strand East, is focused on middle class affordability and lifestyle. 40% of homes will be family-friendly.

Project Manager Andrew Cobden told The Globe and Mail this:

We would have a fairly firm line on undesirable activity, whatever that may be. But we also feel we can say, okay, because we’ve kept control of the management of the commercial facilities, we have a fairly strong hand in what is said in terms of the activities that are held on site.

Similar to yesterday’s conversation about IKEA homes, where owners might trade personal touches for affordability, function and simplicity, residents of Strand East might trade ownership for a great living experience largely governed by LandProp.

The idea of housing-as-service runs counter to the American Dream, which is inseparable with home ownership, even when home ownership, on balance, is more headache than opportunity.

Strand East also presents the idea of privatized urban planning. IKEA is creating an ideal urban structure where government might not have the audacity or resources to do so.  But given that it’s a business, might their instinct to make money trump their civic responsibility?

We’ll have to wait and see. While the land has been purchased, the company is still getting their permits in order. LandProp is hoping to begin construction in 2013.

Via The Globe and Mail and Fast Company Co.Exist

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Density Atlas Asks How Many People Can You Pack in a City Block?

It’s no secret that we advocate an urban future here at LifeEdited. With a world population topping out over 7B people, cities offer the clearest route to a bright, sustainable future.

But cities are not created equally. A city’s urban density often reveals more about its resiliency than its population suggests. Dense cities can manage transportation, energy, distribution of goods and human capital better than their spread out, low-density counterparts.

The problem is that density is not a monolithic metric. It is generally measured in 3 ways:

  1. FAR (foot area ratio) divides usable square footage of a building, block or development by its lot size; e.g. if a 1000 sq ft building sat on a 1000 sq ft lot, its FAR is 1 (1000/1000).
  2. Dwelling units (DU)/acre measures how the space is divided; e.g. that building with an FAR of 1, could either be 1 luxury or 4 x 250 sq ft efficiency dwelling units.
  3. Population/acre. This metric is useful because the number of people living in a dwelling can greatly vary; e.g. a block in San Francisco with the same FAR and DU/acre as another in Hong Kong might contain 50% less population because more people live in the Hong Kong units. Pop/acre captures the gross population regardless of how the area is divvied up.

Started by a group from MIT, Density Atlas helps you understand various city developments and neighborhoods from all of these perspectives. For example, it shows how the author’s Brooklyn home compares to the Mumbai slum, Dharavi. Brooklyn averages a respectable FAR of 5.8, has 195 DU/acre and 369 people/acre. While Dharavi has a lower FAR of 2.0, it has 255 DU/acre and a whopping 1274 people/acre. In other words, even though Dharavi’s FAR is 1/3 of Brooklyn’s, it has 24% more DU and 350% more people/acre!

Whether you’re a professional or armchair urban planner, Density Atlas reveals the variability and complexity of global urban development. It shows how city-living means different things in different contexts. More developed countries often have great FAR’s, but low DU and pops./acre, while developing countries often have lower FAR’s, but astronomical DU and pops./per acre.

We suspect the future lies somewhere between these two camps–where the efficiency and amenities of modern cities is alloyed with the developing world’s willingness to get close to your neighbor.

We’d love to hear what you think.

via Density Atlas

Image via flickr

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