Architecture Ransom Notes

Official movie poster The movie Little Pink House was released last Friday (in Berkeley at least) in what should be one of the most important films this year. It is an excellent, gut-wrenching film about someone just like you or me, with a strong performance by lead actress Catherine Keener. It covers Susette Kelo and the Institute for Justice 's fight against eminent domain abuse by New London, a town in Connecticut. Eminent domain is a legal process whereupon a government may take private property, with just compensation, for public use. However, jurisdictions have abused this government power to seize private property for the benefit of other private parties. These typically includes taking the homes of those less well off and giving them to wealthy interests such as major developers or corporations. Even Constitutionally compliant seizures have resulted in abuse such as lowballing appraisals to the landowners. In California's controversial high speed rail projec...

The San Francisco Chronicle published an article  about artists fleeing San Francisco due to its high cost of living, as part of its Grass is Greener series. It chronicles several artists moving to other cities such as Seattle and Los Angeles to escape the high rents in San Francisco. Art is extremely important. Sure, some art, maybe even most art, is just eye-candy, to simply stimulate the visual senses, not that there's anything wrong with that. But the most profound art unlocks hidden insights into our own character, expresses the perspectives of the artist, provides commentary on society, or locks in historical context for future generations. Unfortunately, having a roof over one's head is more important than art, and the art scene is being pushed out by this simple truth. When the housing supply is restricted to the whims of city planners and no growth neighbors, land costs go up and things less important than this basic necessity start to get pushed out. Murals i...

In my previous post , I wrote about how city agents acting beyond what they should be doing create pancake architecture and how it creates aesthetically displeasing architecture. Now I will go into how a city can pigeonhole architects and developers into pancake architecture and how that increases the costs of construction for arbitrary reasons. So back to the Fremont Small Lot Design Guidelines we go! In DGL 2.2.3, the city prescribes setbacks from one house to another in one story and two story situations, with a helpful diagram on the side. It states that between houses, one story elements must be 10 feet apart, one story to two story elements must be 12 feet apart, and two story to two story elements must be 15 feet apart. In a situation where you're trying to maximize densities like, say, during a housing shortage, exercises are run to try to maximize square footages per acre of land you have to build on. This allows you to get to house sizes demanded by the market as e...