Faulty mortgages are one thing. But the instinct to walk away from ill-priced real estate may also be part of an evolution beyond the notion of “little boxes” and other aspects of metrosprawl. There has always been a better way.
10 Percent Of Homeowners Projected To Hit Major ‘Walk Away’ Point By June 2010
February 3, 2010 at 8:48 am (pattern language, politics)
Tags: christopher alexander, foreclosures, mortgages, pattern language
My State of The Union
January 27, 2010 at 12:28 pm (politics)
Tags: obama, state of the union
1. The Union is a union in spite of everything. It is stronger than its critics and would be destroyers on all sides and in all places.
2. We will not have any meaningful fiscal discipline until we lift the exemption on military spending as a protected enclave.
3. Paul Krugman and many other fellow travellers will have occasion to praise the President for how he deals with his unfortunate use of the term freeze.
4. Keith Olbermann would be better advised to go back to an occasional long comments than stick with a plethora of short ones. Hubris despises quantity. Take it from one who knows.
5. The nation would not respond negatively to adding the prison-industrial complex to the State of the Union laundry list.
6. A year from now more of you will not be here than has ever been the case following a midterm election. Goodbye and good luck.
7. We intend to pass health care reform with a series of acts that will be crystal clear in their intent and very hard for anyone with a brain to oppose without looking very foolish and becoming unelectable.
8. All who care about real economic recovery and future prosperity would be well-advised to learn all they can about the ideas behind Christopher Alexander’s pattern language.
Please add your state of the union statements as comments.
What Google Should Do With its Cash (A Good Place for Google’s Cash)
January 23, 2010 at 2:01 pm (pattern language, politics)
Tags: christopher alexander, Google, pattern language
1. Purchase about ten square miles of relatively vacant land near some railroad tracks currently in use or that could be in use with a little work.
2. Announce that it intends to build an experimental community to test certain theories that pertain to a 21st Century economy.
3. Hire me as a consultant just to assemble the range of skills needed and see that the process does not become muddled.
4. Use legal means to make sure that the land can be developed without regard to existing zoning laws. See the project as the creation of a single community occupying no more than a square mile.
3. Have as an objective the creation of an integral human settlement that will contain the elements needed for its own sustainability.
4. Sponsor a design competition to come up with concepts for a combined residential-business-social community of 5-10,000.
5. This community will have few if any motorized vehicles. Residents will get themselves from place to place by foot.
6. This community will have graded ramps instead of stairs to ease walking, exercise, and easy movement from place to place.
7. This community will concentrate in creating facilities and institutions “of scale”. That is to say, it might have health facilities and preventive medical facilities suited to a community of 5-10,000 where people walked.
7. This community will integrate residence with commercial, recreational, educational and other facilities designed to create economically viable enterprises. The premium would be on being able to walk and in doing so to meet most of one’s needs. Shopping would be handled by the creation of cyber-kiosks that were staffed properly, enabling the acquisition of needed things by ordering them. In general, many of the kiosks and café type areas would have a cyber component for commerce, education, governmental transactions and so forth. Experimentation in this area would be seen as creating the commerce of the future, beyond out automotive, dispersed-population sprawl — which is economically unsustainable.
8. In general, the community would rely on the next generation of “containers” — as the modules for “rooms” and the creation of residential spaces. These would be built by existing and new manufacturers and would largely supplement the automobile industry. The community would be made up of modular structures tied together by a matrix that would supply water and power and extract waste. Recycling would be as complete as possible and on site.
9. The community would try to be as self-sufficient as possible through the inventive use of natural power sources — such as wind turbines and water power and solar energy. It is conceivable that walkways widely used could also result in the generation of some of the power.
10. The design of this human settlement would take into consideration all possible weather disasters and make sure that the community would be substantially safe from worst case events. In an earthquake area, the entire community might float or be on springs. In general the community would not be vertical. The Christopher Alexander notion of a height of four levels would be recommended.
Google could spend its cash designing a community such as this to replace the destroyed areas of Haiti with cost-effective, safe places to live. Such communities would be models for the entire world beyond the limits of oil and heavy reliance on the automobile.
All this is derived from a concentration on the integration of pattern language with thoughts about how we move beyond oil. All this is the main theme of this site insifar as this site deals with externals.
For more please see http://stephencrose.wordpress.com/pattern-language/
Toward A New White House Militancy
January 21, 2010 at 10:34 pm (pattern language, politics)
Tags: Democrats, obama, plouffe. howard dean
How bi-partisan can you be if you are opposing every Republican in sight. It is easy. In fact the entire instilling of a new White House militancy can be achieved by:
1, Bringing John Dean back in some key role. Like the DNC. Tim Kaine has been invisible. He is a man of great ability who should have a job more suited to his laid-back style. Dean would signal that the President is willing to work with progressives. We know he has always been that way. But the media?
2. Put David Plouffe into a conspicuous partnership role. David Plouffe was half the Obama winning team. When someone is needed to speak for the President, David Axelrod does not cut it with his ums and ahs. Sorry David. I can tell you do not like the role either. Plouffe has RFK instincts. That’s a talent for saying things in language the public can understand. Meaning well does not cut it. A new militancy requires a willingness to grasp the underlying issue by the throat and squeeze hard.
3. The big underlying issue is that Obama remains a person whose interest in social justice and fairness is balanced by a radical individualism that is typically associated with conservatives. We cannot let his bridge building potential fade as the media accuse him of vacating it for a new militancy. The new militancy is precisely taking back the flag of a new politics. Plouffe articulates it best.
4. The final key is to be honest about the amount of change that is needed. I believe this may be the underlying problem facing the President. We are a nation awash in personal debt and drugs. These are individual problems as well as social issues. We are a nation that needs to stop relying on oil and to end our dependence on an unsustainable automobile-metrosprawl economy.
We will only have the new jobs we need when we are pointed not toward recovery but toward creation of a sustainable economy which is not drug saturated and in permanent debt and which is taking an ecologically sound route to a recreation of community.
COMMENT ON: Obama Foreclosure Plan Falling Far Short Of Targets
January 17, 2010 at 8:57 am (pattern language, politics)
Tags: density, economy, forclosures, pattern language
Sad but true, I believe. Dispersed homes will never recover their “value”.
Economic viability in the future will be five times greater for those living in close proximity in communities that integrate a good deal of what is now all over the map. Another way of saying this: Energy costs are five times greater in dispersion than in denser areas.
Both the dispersed (metrosprawl) model and the commute-by-car, do-everything-by-car models are unsustainable. Ultimately it may be less expensive to redesign and rebuild communities from scratch, than try to continue propping up today’s default sprawl.
This is the underlying reason for the crisis we are in. Remember we said we needed to move to a post-oil economy?
Current efforts to tie recovery to the resuscitation of the automobile and housing markets are unlikely to do more than sputter. Meanwhile the vision of a truly sustainable economy can be found in the thought of thinkers like Christopher Alexander.
http://stephencrose.wordpress.com/pattern-language/
Rebuilding Haiti — Two
January 15, 2010 at 9:23 am (pattern language)
Tags: pattern language, sustainable, new settlements, rebuilding, haiti
READ THE FIRST POST — REBUILDING HAITI
Nietzsche is salient on the downside of charity. It can humiliate. Everyone knows this. There is nothing hidden about the effects of being brought low and then suffering the consequences of feeling that one must beg for one’s very life.
So my proposal is that if we (by implication, all helpful forces aiming to help Haiti long-term) wish to avoid the “charity-syndrome”, we decide that what we do in Haiti will be the very model of what we need to be doing everywhere else.
In other words, we would do well to create living options in Haiti that follow the very procedures that ought to accompany any effort to create living options anywhere else.
The first principle of such an approach is to place design in the hands of the people.
My earlier post suggests that rebuilding Haiti should involve a 21st Century approach that assumes there will be similar quakes in the future since Haiti is on a fault similar to the one that runs through California. Ideally a settlement would float, literally. It would not be anchored to the ground.
Ideally, rebuilding would involve the introduction of modular elements — my suggestion for the transformation of our automobile industry into an industry focused on building modules that enable people to essentially have their “own” room/s wherever they go.
Security and flexibility.
To comprehend what I’m suggesting, please investigate my posts on new settlements and pattern language.
If truth be told, such a rebuilding of Haiti would serve the whole world by enabling a pattern that makes sense for the future.
The idea that a house should be anchored to the ground is obsolete. A house should be able to withstand the worst nature can throw at it.
Todays Tweets So Far — Twitter
January 14, 2010 at 12:06 pm (twitter)
Tags: tweets, twitter
See all Tweets: http://twitter.com/stephencrose
http://bit.ly/4GqS4z Goal Setting — Harnessing The Will
http://bit.ly/5mXdwu Comment at HuffPo — why I think HuffPo is biased
Obama’s run in 2010 so far dominated by muscular, public demonstrations of authority in the face of crisis… http://bit.ly/6uvdD9 //TIME
Just Posted Morning News on the Obama Blog http://bit.ly/6uvdD9 //nyt, wsj, etc.
Since when does what you wear indicate your values? http://bit.ly/4EYyId //Sarkozy on abolishing veils in France
Texting is the new philanthro-channel. http://bit.ly/4Am0kN
http://bit.ly/4TLb9i Rebuilding Haiti //posted yesterday (a Pattern Language approach)
Tao http://bit.ly/7CK8VR //an adaptation
Rebuilding Haiti
January 13, 2010 at 5:06 pm (pattern language, politics)
Tags: pattern language, rebuilding, haiti
I have no doubt the US will help rebuild Haiti.
My deepest prayer would be that we would follow the principles I have advocated for many years, with no apparent interest from virtually anyone.
The reason is that what I am advocating would be able to withstand earthquakes.
I have always assumed that the communities I have suggested would be built with specific attention to the weather potentialities of the areas where they are located.
The image I have of the sort of settlements we could build is of a stadium like structure that is not anchored to the earth so that when a quake hits it would shatter. No, it would essentially float.
There would be nothing more depressing following this disaster to see the recreation of structures that are vulnerable to future quakes. The fault that bedevils Haiti is no different from the San Andreas fault. It stretches in the direction of Jamaica.
I hope any who read this and who have interest in what ought to be the way the whole world builds in the future will investigate the considerable resources on this site for considering what can be done.
