|
We've been working on a series of ways that our Traditional City
ideas can be implemented immediately, within the context of Suburban
Hell as it exists today in the United States. We have also been
working on various arrangements that are a lot less expensive than
the typical hyperexpensive Suburban Hell SFDR house on a
quarter-acre, while providing environments that are dignified and
beautiful -- maybe, even more dignified and beautiful than the
typical upscale McMansion-on-a-cul-de-sac format which can easily
cost $500,000+ per house.
Our solutions are intended to be both highly profitable for
developers, and also very pleasant places for the people who end up
living there, such that it serves as a foundation for an overall
lifestyle that is also dignified and beautiful in a great many ways.
One such modality that already exists is "manufactured housing."
These are housing units that are typically constructed at some
central "factory," and then transported by flatbed truck to an
installation site. They can conceivably be moved again, thus gaining
their designation "mobile homes," but I expect that this hardly ever
happens. They are actually mobile only once, from factory to site.
Due to the fact that they need to be transported by truck, they
naturally cannot be very wide, which means very long and skinny
structures typically. There's a tradition of "shotgun houses"
already in the United States, which continues now in the form of
"mobile homes." Sometimes, two prefab halves are transported by
truck and then joined at the site, the so-called "doublewide."
Today, these prefab structures tend to be very cheaply built, and
are aimed at a lower-income customer. The idea seems to be to
maximize the cost per square foot of floorspace. Obviously, if you
do this, you end up with the most dismal construction quality
possible, and these structures, typically not very attractive to
begin with, deteriorate rapidly into something that is plain ugly.
The combination of piteous construction quality, little attention to
aesthetics, the low incomes of most inhabitants, plus the generally
slovenly habits of many inhabitants which leads them to want to
maximize floorspace with minimum quality, leads to an overall poor
reputation for this mode of residence -- which is mostly deserved.
Thus, we have the typical dilemma of an American family today:
cheap, shoddy, slovenly, with badly-behaved neighbors (mobile home
park), or hyperexpensive Suburban Hell with thirty years of debt
slavery, which even then is rather depressing and ugly way to live.
However, it doesn't have to be this way. Obviously, you can have a
much better build quality, if you are willing to pay for it. Also,
you could have less floorspace, and much higher build quality, for
the same price. And, if you are not slovenly by nature, you could
probably make it pretty nice with things like facades, patios and
porches, painting, trees, gardening etc., with minimal extra
expense.
In other words, I want you to imagine a better sort of "mobile home
community," much as we recently imagined a better sort of "trailer
park" or "RV campground."
May
18, 2014: HTMAPODWTTC 12: Trailer Parks and Mobile Home Parks
In that piece, we asked: instead of a community like this:
which has structures that look like this:
... what if we instead had a functionally similar but much more
dignified structure like this?
In fact, the "tiny house that happens to have wheels" is much
smaller -- about half the size -- of a typical travel trailer like
the Springdale model. That is, genuinely, very small. But, people
live in structures like this and quite like it.
Tiny:
a Story About Living Small (documentary on Netflix)
Similarly, instead of a neighborhood like this:
(Mobile home community in Bradenton, Florida)
... with a structure that looks like this:
800sf mobile home offered by Clayton Homes.
... what if you made something much nicer, for
example, like this:
This is a bit rustic, of course, but that is a matter of aesthetics.
Obviously, the build quality here is much higher than the dirt-cheap
vinyl-sided boxes typical of "manufactured housing." I would say
that the typical "mobile home" is little more than a shipping
container with a few amenities, but actually, shipping containers,
which need to withstand the rigors of shipping, are rather more
sturdily built.
Now, the funny joke is that this "Adirondack Cabin" is, in fact,
manufactured housing. It is built in a factory in Pennsylvania and
delivered by truck flatbed, by a company called Zook Cabins. Just
the same as any other "mobile home." It has 390 square feet, plus
some loft space for more sleeping area or storage.
http://www.zookcabins.com
Now, although I'm sure many will say "I can't
possibly live in a place like that!!!!," the fact of the matter
is, many people who actually live in large suburban homes rent
cabins like this for their vacations, or own them as vacation
homes, and live there for a week or two, with their families,
and enjoy it so much that they go back the next year.
So, we see that, following the pattern of our "tiny houses"
built on trailers, this cabin is actually about one-half the
size of typical "manufactured housing." And yet, despite that,
due to better build quality and attention to aesthetics, it
seems quite dignified and pleasant, while the larger offerings
by Keystone Trailers or Clayton Homes seem dismal and shoddy --
which, in fact, they are.
This modality offers quite a few advantages to our "tiny houses"
built on towable trailers. The most important, of course, is
that it can be much bigger, up to "doublewide" size (1600sf+) if
you like. But, we can also build quite small, like this
Adirondack Cabin as well, and get something that is very
beautiful and charming without spending a lot of money. We have
a lot of freedom in these things.
Actually, those houses in Bradenton, despite their cheapie
construction, look like double-wides. This double-wide 26x54
"Mountaineer Deluxe," also by Zook Cabins, is 1811 sf.
Why use "manufactured housing" at all? Why not just make a similar
site-built structure? Of course, this is the way all houses were
built, before someone got the idea of moving them around on flatbed
trailers.
The short answer is that there is no particular advantage at all.
You could build a site-built home of the same sort of character, and
you would have a lot more flexibility regarding design and so forth.
Making standardized units in a factory might offer some advantages
of scale and repetition, but you could even make a house kit, with a
building plan and building materials precut in a factory, and just
build the house on the site. Indeed, this tradition has been around
for a long time.
The "kit house," with precut lumber, has been around at least since
1916.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_houses_in_North_America
Catalog of Gordon-Van Tine kit homes, 1916
The real advantage of the "manufactured house," as with the "tiny
house" on wheels, is that it allows you to sidestep existing
regulations regarding land use. This allows us to have a much higher
density, and also include Traditional City elements like the
all-important Really Narrow Streets of typically 12-20 feet wide. We
already saw that such Really Narrow Streets, one surface from side
to side with no sidewalk/roadway segregation, and about 12-20 feet
from one "property line" to the other, was already a common feature
in existing "RV campgrounds" of the sort where we might put our
"Tiny Houses" built on trailers. Oddly, this human-centric 15-20
foot width actually works fine even for getting these very large
trailers in and out!
Note how people just naturally adopt the 12-20 foot Really Narrow
Street format, in this RV campground for example.
Charlie Gardner, of oldurbanist.blogspot.com,
has already written the definitive treatment of how the "mobile home
park" format has allowed people to bypass existing regulations, and
build much more densely with people-friendly Really Narrow Streets,
in places such as Bradenton, Florida as shown above. It is required
reading.
http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/05/mobil...iments-and.html
We see that, in the Bradenton example, we have already adopted a
Really Narrow Street format of about 12 feet wide here, along with
buildings that are quite close together. There's a bit of front
setback, but not a lot. Not much is needed, because, as we can see,
the houses face a nice Place for People, a pedestrian street, rather
than an automobile roadway. The inclusion of vegetation is a nice
point.
target="_blank" October
10,
2009:
...
Place and Non-Place
Indeed, this format comes quite close to the patterns of Japanese
SFDR housing that we looked at earlier.
target="_blank" July
31,
2011:
How
To
...
Make a Pile of Dough With the Traditional City 5: The New New
Suburbanism
July
17,
2011:
How
To
Make
A
Pile
of...
the Traditional City 4: More SFDR/SFAR Solutions target="_blank"
June
12,
2011:
How
to
Make
a
Pile...
City 3: Single Family Detached in the Traditional City Style
Now, we can see that, just as is the case for a great many
Traditional City places worldwide, we have created a very pleasant
Place for People, even though density here is quite high. Somehow,
there doesn't even seem to be any offstreet parking for cars here,
although this is in a Florida suburb with no trains. I personally am
perfectly happy to accommodate the realities of living in Suburban
Hell today, and provide offstreet parking for at least one
automobile, probably in the form of outdoor side parking. However,
amazingly, the people living here in Bradenton seem to be quite
willing to give up their cars!
Here's what this Bradenton community looks like from the air:
Here we can see that the density really is quite high, for the SFDR
format. We are already doing this in the U.S. today! You could even
double (!) the density by using single-wides rather than
double-wides, but that is a project for another day.
Obviously, if you are building with something like 2000sf plots
(1/20th acre), or even 1000sf plots (not so hard with a house with a
400sf footprint), and not consuming a lot of land with oversized
Suburban Hell streets of 60-80 feet wide, plus another 20 feet of
setback on both sides, then your land costs per unit go way down. In
other words, it's a lot cheaper. Also, if there is an amenity close
by, like a beach or train station, then obviously a lot more people
can live close to that amenity when density is higher. Ideally,
within walking distance, even when pushing a stroller. And, you can
walk to that amenity on the human-friendly Really Narrow Streets of
the sort in Bradenton, rather than some Suburban Hell catastrophe of
six lanes of roaring traffic.
Not surprisingly, something like this already exists. They are
"cabin campgrounds," where you can often find quite a few of these
"manufactured home" cabins side-by-side, in rather dense spacing.
Just as was the case with our "RV campgrounds," we find many
Traditional City elements, notably the Really Narrow street of about
12-20 feet wide without segregated sidewalks, and a general
character of being a Place for People rather than a series of giant
19th Century Hypertrophic roadways and parking lots.
Of course, the houses don't all have to be the same. That's common
for cabin campgrounds, but too homogenous for a permanent
residential neighborhood if you ask me.
The first picture is the most pleasing, of course, as it has some
lovely mature trees. Oddly, it is also the one with the closest
spacing, and highest density!
Now, you could certainly make houses -- even flatbed-delivered
"manufactured houses" -- that are a lot better than Zook Cabins'
best offerings. We already looked at a series of compact house
plans, the widest of which is 15 feet wide. This is just about the
width of a 13-foot singlewide, so designs like these can easily be
done in that format.
So, we can see that there is not really anything at all holding us
back from making as nice a "manufactured house" as we might like, in
a variety of pleasing styles, as long as it fits within the
flatbed-able 13 foot width, or doublewide 26 foot width. The only
reason we have to bother with this flatbed delivery stuff at all is
to be able to sidestep existing regulations regarding site-built
homes; but, especially for smaller developers, that might be a very
nice way to get these things up and going without having a big to-do
with local regulators. I've focused here on smaller, sub-500 square
foot designs, because I think that is a niche (beautiful and
dignified but not too expensive) that needs to be filled; however,
as we've seen, you can also go to 1500sf+ in this "mobile home"
modality.
Let me remind you that even 400sf is still four times larger than
those trailer-built "tiny homes" we looked at earlier, which have
become very popular among minimalist experimenters. It is also about
two times larger than the sheet-metal travel trailers that millions
of Americans already live in, full-time, today (at least for part of
the year).
Another option is to go to multi-story construction. Yes, you can do
this also with "manufactured" homes, known as "modular" homes.
Prefab, modular home from CleverHome
The nice thing here, of course, is that you can go to 1000sf+
without chewing up a lot of land area. If you happen to designate
1000sf plots, then you can have a 500sf footprint, three stories or
1500sf of interior space, and also 500sf of room to use for
backyards, parking, etc.
If you had 70% home plots/15% roads/15% shared amenities like parks
and squares, 1000sf plots, and 2.5 people per household, that works
out to population density of 46,000 people per square mile -- with
one or two story construction! At this level of density, compared to
about 9,000/mile for the denser Los Angeles suburb, you could easily
have a lot of neat commercial stuff (bars, restaurants, shops,
schools, etc.) within walking distance. Goodbye car dependency --
even with one-story SFDR construction. On a broader basis, the
population density would probably be more like 30,000/square mile,
comparable to many Japanese SFDR neighborhoods, when considering
space for commercial areas and things like schools. A 1000sf plot
might seem small, but at 25x40, that would be big enough for one of
our 400sf "mobile homes" (800sf for two stories), side parking for
two automobiles, a front porch and a little backyard too.
Of course, at some point, you're probably better off going to
townhouse, apartment, and even high-rise construction. There's no
particular award given to fitting as many one-story detached houses
as you can in an acre. But, we have a longstanding affinity for the
single-family detached house in the U.S., as do people in Japan and
elsewhere in Asia as well, and this is a way to continue that
tradition while also getting all of our TradCity advantages.
Although "mobile home" neighborhoods are normally associated with
low-income people who live in dismal, disintegrating boxes of
cheapest-possible construction, there are a few (rather notorious)
"mobile home parks" where the wealthy and even famous have lived --
for example, in Malibu, California, and Montauk, Long Island. So,
there's nothing inherent about this basic format that needs to be
shabby, slovenly and dilapidated, or that might not be attractive to
even the pickiest people, especially if it is near the beach.
Paradise Cove, Malibu, California.
"The most expensive mobile home community in the U.S."
Note the dense spacing, and of course the use of Really Narrow
Streets of about 20 feet wide, with little-to-no setback, no
sidewalks, no onstreet parking.
Paradise Cove mobile home. Apparently, this one sold for $2
million at some point. Which is stupid. But, it goes to show that
you can be as luxe as you wanna go, within the context of a
"mobile home community."
Apparently Matthew McConaughy, Minnie Driver and Pamela Anderson
have lived at Paradise Cove.
Another "mobile home" at Paradise Cove.
Vanity Fair did an article about Paradise Cove.
target="_blank"
http://www.vanityfair.com/h...3?currentPage=1
Paradise Cove mobile home interior.
In 1993, Sean Penn lost his house to a wildfire. He bought an
Airstream Sovereign trailer, parked i target="_blank"t on his land, and lived
in it for several years until his house was rebuilt.
Airstream Sovereign
This is a trailer, not a mobile home. But, it was good enough for
an A-List Hollywood actor to live in for several years.
This is about 175sf (6.5x25 interior) I'd guess.
Another well-known, upscale "mobile home"
community is Montauk Shores, on Long Island.
Once again, we see the dense spacing, and also the Really Narrow
Streets of about 15-20 feet wide, little-to-no setbacks, no
sidewalks, no street parking.
(This is rather barren. Some ambitious gardening
and big trees, like in Bradenton, Florida, would be nice.)
The New York Times did an article on Montauk Shores in
August, 2014 target="_blank".
http://www.nytimes.com/2...-rich.html
The small, densely-spaced single-family detached residential pattern
is not so common in European Traditional City designs. From Roman
and Greek times, if not earlier, the pattern has been for attached
townhouses or apartment buildings. I suspect this has something to
do with stone and masonry construction instead of wood construction.
Our favorite example pic of attached townhouses and Really Narrow
Streets, in the European tradition. Eguisheim, France.
Before long, this morphs easily into what amounts to apartment
buildings.
Paris, France.
Europe also has a tradition of detached residences, of course, but
mostly in an agrarian format, surrounded by fields. This was adopted
by Americans, and eventually became the typical Suburban Hell house
surrounded by mowed grass on four sides.
Villa in Tuscany, Italy. Surrounded by the manor estate
(farmland).
U.S. farmhouse, New England. Surrounded by dozens or even hundreds
of acres of farmland.
McMansions on quarter-acre (or smaller) plots, United States.
As we know, this is an extremely stupid way to make houses in an
urban context, for people who are not farm target="_blank"ers.
March
...
7, 2010: Let's Take a Trip to S target="_blank"uburban Hell
July
...
26, 2009: Let's Take a Trip to an American Village 3: How the
Sub target="_blank"urbs Came to Be
July
19,
2009:
...
Let's Take a Trip to an American V target="_blank"illage 2: Downtown
July
12,
200...
Let's Take a Trip to an American Village
However, Asia has a much longer and broader tradition of small,
single-family detached houses in an urban context, with dense
spacing and also Really Narrow Streets, just like these mobile home
communities such as Paradise Cove and Montauk Shores.
We've looked at some contemporary versions of this, in the "suburbs"
(SFDR neighborhoods) of Tokyo. These neighborhoods, despite having
single-family detached houses with yards and so forth, can easily
reach densities of 30,000/mi2 or more, compared to about 9,000/mi2
for the denser examples of Suburban Hell in t target="_blank"he U.S. context.
July
31,
...
Make a Pile of Dough With the Traditional City 5: The Ne target="_blank"w New
Suburbanism
July
1...
the Traditional City 4 target="_blank": More SFDR/SFAR Solutions
Jun...
City 3: Single Family Detached in the Traditional City Style
However, I thought I'd add to that some scenes of traditional,
pre-1950 Japanese SFDR neighborhoods. This basic pattern is also
common in places like China and Korea. You don't see this much in
Europe.
Ginza district, Tokyo, 1880s. A pattern of SFDR houses (mostly 2-3
stories) on Really Narrow Streets, and dense spacing.
Arimo, Japan, 1890s. SFDR houses in a mountain village.
Nagasaki, Japan. 1890s. SFDR houses on Really Narrow Streets.
Kyoto, 1920s. While Europeans would have used apartment buildings,
Japanese (and other Asians) tended to have SFDR houses on very
small plots. But, there was still room for some lovely little
gardens and patios.
So, we see that the format that people naturally gravitate towards
in the denser (i.e., higher land value) examples of a "mobile home
community" are, in fact, very much like patterns used in Traditional
City environments by a variety of cultures. The main difference I
see is that people (in Japan for example) tended to use multistory
construction, and smaller building footprints, rather than the
one-story footprints common to manufactured housing. That might have
to do with the "mobile" element -- it is hard to flatbed a two-story
house, although modular construction mitigates that. Instead of a
"doublewide" that is attached together at the site, why not a
"doublehigh"? For higher densities, you could go to 600sf plots,
400sf building footprints, and allow "doublehighs" and "triplehighs"
of 800-1200sf for those who want that. It would still leave some
room for a nice Japanese-style garden.
| |
