[lbo-talk] Cramped apartments, was Dispiriting Suburbs?

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Thu Oct 19 01:35:00 PDT 2006


Joanna writes:

"What I was saying -- more in response to James -- is that owning a house is not worthy of dreams....and I was also trying to suggest the many ways in which home ownership works against 1) human survival and 2) revolutionary consciousness"

But I think the responses to your comment were pertinent. Suburban living is no more alienated than urban living. (As I recall, the theory of alienation was developed as an account of urbanisation.) It is - in my opinion, anyway - daft to think that one domestic arrangment is superior to another. People make the choices that suit their lives. Research here shows that young adults tend to move towards cities, and parents tend to move out (the 'counter-urban cascade'). A housing policy should not dictate, but make as many possibilities as conditions will allow.

The view that the suburbs are dependent on the cities is out of date, I think. The time when industry was in the cities and the suburbs were dormitories was a while ago. Industry moves out, too. You see more of a problem with resource efficiency than I do, but in any event, if you were to legislate for the insulation of homes, it could only come into effect as the housing stock was replaced - which happens a lot more slowly in cities. Certainly Britain's ageing urban housing stock is very resource inefficient.



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