Jo Noero
4 settembre 2014
SUSTAINABLE AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING
MODULO II: HOUSING AND URBAN DESIGN
Course syllabus
There are many issues that bear upon housing in the post modern world – these include levels of inequality rarely seen in the modern world. Access to decent housing is becoming increasingly difficult for ever increasing numbers of people and families. Two views predominate in the world with regard to the provision of housing – either through the mechanism of the free market or through systems of state patronage via the social welfare process. Neither works. The free market is neither free nor fair – winner takes all simply means that that the poor get poorer and the rich whose numbers decrease exponentially as their share of wealth increases simply gobble up more and more of the resources on offer leaving less and less for everyone else. Social welfare systems of housing provision have created sclerotic systems of delivery in which inefficiencies rule and in which the quality of the service seems to diminish as costs increase making provision of these services increasingly expensive to afford.
There are many reasons for this sad state of affairs which in my opinion stem from a number of misconceptions about how we frame the issues of housing and the problems associated with it.
There are three misconceptions that I would like to address which if dealt with can offer a way forward All these ideas stem from the work of John FC Turner, the noted housing theorist, who taught me all I know about housing.
Bibliography
John F.C. Turner, Housing by People, 1976.
