Cost of Green Design

So, I just checked my email and realized I am the only one not to have posted my ideas yet. I am still putting things together and should have something more substantial to post on Saturday am. I have been gathering resources. There is a lot of cost analysis out there. I am trying to gear it toward residential design and am finding more limited resources but more than enough to write a paper on. My topic seems to be narrowed down to the extra cost of green design (and how it's not always extra). More on this topic shortly...

Physical Mobility

To not be considered mobile, one must firmly be rooted in nature. This idea of Harries is intriguing. The first thing that I started to think about was how the physical and psychological aspects of being rooted are very different. Harries seems to think that the physical roots are the thing that allow an object to be inmobile. Although physically able to be moved, the psychological roots attached to an object are what really determine its mobility. The experiences and memories of a place allow the feeling of mobility and that is what really matters to the users. Even a building that is clearly mobile, in the physical sense, can have an extremely strong set of roots from the community it is placed in. Later in this reading, Harries does bring up "that place and with it proximity and distance are less and less a determining factor of our lives." That seems to relate to my initial thoughts after reading the first idea. Place is so much more than where and how it located. I started to wonder if I would love my childhood home as much if it was moved to a new location. My answer surprised me. I would be more attached to the land and the location than the actual building. If that home was situated in an urban setting, it wouldn't be that same home. Although I started thinking of public spaces that would create a sense of place for the whole community, the idea of my home being moved was much harder to take. The community may still gather at the town square even if the objects around it had changed. If the location of my home changed, it wouldn't feel like home. It was the physical space in that exact location that created my place.

Alpha vs Beta

Having recently moved to New England, I have become familiar with the idea of a New England village. I live in a town that 30 years ago would probably have been described the exact same way as Bedford Village. There are the people that live in town, those that live on the water and those that live in mini (and sometimes not so mini) estates. There are three main churches, one of which is definitely more prestigious to belong to. The population is 97% caucasian. The country club in town has a ten year wait list. I personally don't feel that this community is segregated by landscape but I decided to ask some of the residents who have lived here for a longer period of time for their input. It proved to be similar to the responses of those that Duncan received thirty years ago a few hours away.

Alpha versus Beta. What I have noticed from these articles is that it isn't actually versus anyone. There are simply two different ideas that have shown up across Anytown, USA. They do not segregate based on ideas. Instead people choose to live in one environment of the other. The alpha neighborhood has evolved over decades or centuries. The beta environment has quickly adopted some of the rules of alpha landscape and created their own set of rules. The general ideas portrayed by Duncan seemed to be just as relevant today in my town as they were thirty years ago a few hours away. The segregation that exists is there by choice. Neither group blames the other. They just have different social networks. For some those networks include the country club and for others they include the church they belong to. The amount of diversity in my small town has not changed much in the last thirty years. Some of the people I spoke with eluded to the fact that this town is exclusive and they are proud just to live there. Ideas of both Alpha and Beta landscapes came up.

The alpha and the beta landscapes appear in many forms. In the Bickford article, they take the form of CIDs and PUDs. In the Duncan article, they take the form of newer homes in established neighborhoods. There are some similar characteristics that these landscapes share in both articles and there are some that are unique. There are those that love to live in a PUD and there are those who generally dislike the idea. From our conversations this past week, I know that there are people belonging to both categories in this discussion. I don't feel that one is bad and the other is good. I just have my preference and so do others. I feel it is this sentiment that segregates the alpha and beta landscapes in this article. There is no real friction between the groups, just a general preference for their choice.

The alpha landscape begins with the general dislike of imitation and disdain for what is easily available. This is easy to relate to CIDs and PUDs in the Bickford article. I do not want to live in a home that is replicated through out my neighborhood in a slightly different color and the garage on the left instead of the right. This is just one of the preferences of the alphas. The alpha landscape appears to dislike change. They like to preserve the past and not allow great changes for the future. Changes happen a little at a time, as a gentle evolution. Everything seems to be more random. It has happened over years. The age of the landscape is something to be proud of, the alphas are happily linked to the past. The alphas fill the old neighborhoods, the ones were eventually the houses are torn down and rebuilt or added onto to fill the families needs. Everything here takes time.

The beta landscape is more easily related to the ideas presented in the Bickford article. The Betas want a prosperous suburban idea. They build it quickly and dominantly. A major benefit of building so quickly is that everyone is new to the neighborhood and bonds are more quickly formed than someone that moves into a well established neighborhood. The beta landscape if full of symmetry and order. The guidelines for building in these neighborhoods is strictly enforced and carefully coordinated. Less importance is placed on what their landscape looks like and more on where their landscape is. Location is a major part of the beta landscape. Choosing to live in the beta landscape provides an individual the very best parts of the alpha landscape condensed down to a new community. Adopting the pros and leaving out the cons allows for the beta landscape to learn from the mistakes made over time and create a better landscape.

Some of the other ideas presented were not as relevant between the two articles. Duncan claims the Beta landscape wants to accentuate their affluence. I don't believe that only exists in one landscape any more. Everywhere I go I see the ornate mailboxes. A sense of community exists among both landscapes. In my experience, I also no longer see privacy as being something that one group does not value. Six foot tall privacy fences line all the backyards. A home is now a sanctuary where one requires privacy.

Some communities have evolved over centuries while others were built in a year. Housing is a symbol of status and achievement. The location of your house does affect your social status. It is as true today as it was thirty years ago. The ideas of segregation are not so much forced as they are chosen. People choose to surround themselves with people of similar interests. Bickford claims it is not democratic for such segregation but do we really have a choice in changing the way people choose to live? They have been choosing to live like this for centuries and they continue to do so today.

My Pastel Island of Insight

As I started reading Bickford, I tried to keep the highlighter out of sight! I found myself longing for the color splashed across my page. After reading through twice, I have now highlighted, commented and successfully created havoc in the margins.

One of the topics that related to me right away was the discussion of CIDs and PUDs in the housing market. I had never really thought of the source for these homes. I was surprised that the government created this housing demand. The need did not create the product. "CIDs originated in response to land scarcity after the first swell of postwar suburban construction; common ownership plans were not utopian social experiments but simply a way to put more people on less space." (Bickford) The government is responsible for creating this product and finding a way to sell it.

My personal experience with this idea happened a few years ago when looking for my first house. I found myself immersed in a sea of CIDs and PUDs. Among the benefits of these "products", these homes offered something brand new! No home repairs, no hideous carpet, no running to Home Depot on Saturday afternoon to fight the crowd. After looking at several different communities, all within five minutes of each other, I started to forget which was which. Beige, tan, sand. Two car garages and 2.5 kids. I could already picture a swing set in the backyard and I don't have kids! I become frustrated by the lack of diversity. I ended up continuing my housing search until I found a great neighborhood. It was full of diversity, still had block parties once a month. Although my house was a traditional multi-level trac-style home popping up on empty lots through out the city, I was at least surrounded by the diversity that only time can develop.

My brother-in-law did buy a home in one of those communities. He has a two car garage, three children and his house is some sort of tan color. Although he wasn't running to Home Depot every Saturday with me, he has had other things to deal with. His third car, which doesn't fit in the two car garage, is not allowed to be parked outside overnight. His neighbors have complained and now he must either park his car in his back yard or find some other place for it at night. For the sake of property values...

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