Everything that we do is an expression of your self - of you who are - and I would think that where you live is especially representative of who you are.
I can offer proof that people think their homes represent who they are - if I must. People do everything they can to individualize their homes. I live on a block where almost every house is a split; however, in the little details each house is ever so slightly different than the one next to it.
Why should the homes be different even in the slightest detail. Some of it certainly comes from necessity. The colors of houses do not come from necessity. The colors are different for many of the homes in my neighborhood. The shutters are different (although, all the shutters are the same in the fact that they are totally and utterly non-functional - as my wife likes to point out). The kitchens are not all laid out the same. There are different surfaces on the floors. Why? Because we cannot stand being exactly the same as everyone else. And why can't we stand being exactly the same as everyone else - because, in essence we are the same as everyone else. At the foundation level. These homes are all almost identical in every significant way except for the trivial little things.
And this, I think is a horrible thing on a couple of different levels.
- The homes we live in are not very secure. Very few people out there will say their home is secure from determined thieves. Is it that over time people cannot design a secure home - and that we must be forced to live with thieves steeling in to our homes to steal our possessions and remove the feelings of security we have at home? Or is it that homes must be a certain way - and that is the way homes are - and ultimately homes are insecure now, because they were never designed to be secure and essentially homes are the same as they were in the 1950's and probably even earlier. (my house was built in 1955).
- The homes we live in are not very efficient. Efficiency should be part of the equation (although certainly not the only thing that determines what a house should look like). The houses that are built today are no more efficient than the houses built in the previous decades. You'll get a little efficiency for some newer materials and higher quality insulation. But in essence, a house should look like a house - and efficiency is of no concern. I say this with great irony, because I know many people that complain about their monthly bills. How many are really willing to do the things that are necessary to live in a house that would have extremely low utility bills? What if someone offered you an ugly house - and said, well its ugly, but you won't ever have to pay for electricity or gas - would you take it? The house might have 5 windmills for generating electricity - would the neighborhood understand the efficiency and allow it - or would they all complain that the windmills are eye sores and loud (I personally do not know how anyone can complain about the noise, most people in NJ live close enough to semi-major roads that horns blowing and just general traffic noises are probably as loud or louder than windmills would be).
- Our homes are not designed to be safe - for the people that we would most want them to be safe - children. Can you really tell me that after all these years we have had electricity - no one can come up with a truly safe wall receptacle! Are you really telling me that there isn't a way to make gates a part of the home around the kitchen and stairs - that is both aesthetically pleasing and able to secure children from causing harm to themselves? The neighborhoods themselves with the cars driving up and down the local roads, are simply not safe for children to walk around - especially in the case that the bugger escapes from the house with newly learned door-opening skills.
- Most homes have absolutely no sense of individual identity. The entire neighborhood looks like (fill in house type here). We might as well walk around telling each other 'we are drones working for the Queen Bee, how are you today?
- Poor usage of land. By making some changes in how we design entire neighborhoods, we could increase the amount of land used by individual homes, while decreasing the amount of land used for roads, sidewalks and driveways.
Here is an entire website - devoted to homes that are either partially or completely underground. I can see a few benefits to having such a home. Most of the places where humans normally live - the temperature of the soil a few feet under the ground is a fairly constant 60 degrees. So, in the depths of winter and the terribly heat of the summer, the house would always be 60 degrees. You would have additional shelter from unwelcome weather conditions, there would be a higher level of both privacy and security and depending on if the house were fully or nearly fully underground - you might have a larger yard to play in (a concern brought out in me primarily because I have a greyhound and a child).
http://www.earth-house.com/Real_Estate/Underground_Homes/underground_homes.html
I am sure there are detriments to living partially underground. Some people may think that it might be claustrophobic. Or that it might be damp or dark and unpleasant. I think that as long as the design is well thought out - it need be none of those things. I also think that some well placed mirrors - and perhaps giving up a little of the ground cover - you could redirect not only light - but the view of the area around the house to windows that are actually located underground.
A far more grave concern is the twin threat of water and termites. If the underground house is made of wood - and you are covering it with soil (i.e. mudd, termites best friend) you need to protect your structure from termites. Water, also means that you need to seal the house as much as possible from the elements - because replacing a roof on a regular home is a big pain in the butt, imagine if you had to dig your house out of the ground before you could actually begin to locate where the actual leak was located.
Nonetheless, I think that those problems are easily surmountable, with a little bit of thought. Perhaps using concrete as your primary building material is one solution, and in addition to that - think plastic tarps that you put over the house before covering it with the dirt.
And in part I am talking about my ideal home. I would like a geodesic dome, that is either partially or fully located underground - probably with some roof openings to allow light it - with super strong plastic windows so that people could actually walk over the top of my house with no fear of falling in to my house. Some well placed mirrors and tubes to direct additional light to windows that are located underground.
And I have always loved the idea of having a geodesic dome.
But there are few places in New Jersey, and certainly none close to where I currently live, that I could build such a house. Not to mention that the cities are very strong at controlling freedom of expression - at least where it is in regard to housing and its form - that more than likely I would simply be told "you will not build that here".
And to really make my partially underground home work out for the best, I would want some electricity generating windmills. I am sure that would go over great.
Here is a site about some folks underground home - and some of the items they put down in regards to why they have an underground home: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/phil_reddy/
In the end, I am not a firm believer in Thomas Malthus. I do not think the Earth can support an infinite number of humans, but I do think that perhaps it can still support a great deal more people than live on Earth today.
But Malthus was right. He was an economist - and economists study the scarcity of resources, sometimes called supply and demand. Many billions more people may be able to survive and populate the Earth, but they will not be living the way we live today.
So, back to the title of this article - Where you live as an expression of who you are.
Who are we - we are wasteful, we value conformity over efficiency, we are unsafe, we say we care about our children, but the homes we live in are not safe for them when they are young and we waste (in total) vast amounts of energy so that our children will have less available to them.
I do not want to be those things. But I find that the system - the way things are - is too great a tide to fight.
BTW, before you write me off as just another wackoo - you should read Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time - when the children go to a planet that could be the center of what Madeleine considers hell on Earth - and there all the houses are the same, all the people are the same.... It is not a pleasant place for people who like to be different to live. And at present in the United States - conformity is so strong, that perhaps it is a lot less of a pleasant place to live than people would like it to be. It is certainly not as free a place to live - as people love to sing about in their songs and claim with moral superiority over people who live in other places. These things, they are just doublthink.
Abwägen
More info:
Timerline Dome homes (geodesic - wood structure)
Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time - at Amazon.com
Buckminster Fuller - inventory of the geodesic home - and the person that bucky ball molecule is named after:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471198129/qid=1105340935/sr=8-7/ref=pd_ka_1/103-9289177-9582233?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 (I actually think I own this particular book)
Web Site - BuckMinster Fuller Institute
And finally, a link to an idea - that I have been making varients of myself - that I think would be useful in terms of the future of how humanity may live. I actually developed my 'variants' of this idea - before finding it on the net. I must say, none of my versions were nearly as large as the proposed structure called the Ultima tower - and I have a different emphasis on what needs to be part of the living area.
http://www.tdrinc.com/ultima.html
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