HOUSES AND HOMES

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Linguistically, 'house' can be understood in multifarious ways: 

• As a building for human habitation, especially one that consists of a ground floor and one or more upper storeys.... a residence, dwelling, abode; and
• As a building in which people meet for a particular activity ... say a house of prayer"
• As relating to a firm, institution, or society. ... say "a house journal"
• As a place that provides shelter or accommodation.... give accommodation to, provides  a place to sleep etc.

Whereas, a 'home' is understood in a much more specific way ... In general as the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household, or as the Dalai Lama puts it ..."Home is where you feel at home and are treated well". It is the shelter we can rely upon and where wev are secure and welcomed within.

The two sets of understandings are somewhat at odds with each other when the 'investment factor' is added in. Given that 'investment' is to do with the action and/or process of investing money for profit. In the 20th C in the Western First World investment in 'housing' has turned out to be profit oriented rather than shelter driven.

This can be evidenced in urban CULTURALlandscape are built where there are row upon row of houses that on the premise that they are 'investments' built to appreciate in value more than to provide 'safe and amenable shelter' ... investment first, shelter second.

 People of a certain age will surely remember Pete Seeger singing his anthem 'Little Boxes', a kind of protest against the housing being built in America, indeed the Western First World at the time ... 1963. Here there is a poignant take-away when a CIVICplanner insists that CULTURALlandscaping is always a noun, a thing and never a verb, a doing word. While they may have since retreated from their folly that it was ever mouthed in such a context will remain forever poignant given that they were not alone in their imagining.

 

The effectiveness of the satire in the song was attested to by a university professor quoted in 1964 in Time magazine as saying, "I've been lecturing my classes about middle-class conformity for a whole semester. Here's a song that says it all in 1+1⁄2 minutes;" however, according to Christopher Hitchens, satirist Tom Lehrer described "Little Boxes" as "the most sanctimonious song ever written".

Historian Nell Irvin Painter points out that the conformity described in "Little Boxes" was not entirely a bad thing, indicative as it was of "a process of going to university to be doctors and lawyers and business executives" who "came out all the same" and then lived in "nice, new neighborhoods with good new schools. ... Suburbia may be monotone, but it was a sameness to be striven toward." SOURCE

 The term "ticky-tacky" became a catchphrase during the 1960s, attesting to the song's popularity. In song's lyrics Malvina Reynolds and her friend, Pete Seeger, in a kind of way mark a point in time when the ihousing nvestment paradigm began to be criticised in popular culture. This seems to have waxed and wained in the public concousness ever since and with the onset of the current housing crisis the 'investment imperative comes, as it should, is increasingly being put under ever closer scrutiny.

Firstly, the baron treeless streetscapes to be found in McBURBIA should be sending shivers up local government planner's spines but it seems not. Then the typical corner cutting development proposals that pay almost no attention to energy use and generation or onsite water management should also worrying them but again it seems not. Apparently this can be attributed to the 'developer friendliness' of planning regulations and in turn to the protection of the imperatives of the 'investment paradigm'.

The fact that this  McBURBIAN class of housing construction has become 'traditional' and often with 'heritage values' invested in them as infrastructure, efforts to shift the planning emphasis has been likened to maneuvering the mega steam ships of the 20th C – namely the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth. As unsustainable as this housing might in part be it is what it is albeit that in the 21st C the required MINDshift needs to be given serious consideration in a world that uncritically embraces McBURBIA.

"In Port-Vila and Luganville—Vanuatu’s two largest cities—most people live in buildings that are made in much the same way as those found in New York, Paris, or Sydney. But across most of Vanuatu, the great majority of people still live in small villages, and it is in these areas that we see the wisdom of traditional approaches to building houses. The advantages of these techniques—and the potential lessons for other areas that suffer increasingly from severe tropical weather—may be especially timely in light of Hurricane Florence, which has buffeted North and South Carolina with high winds and heavy rains.

Two basic differences distinguish house construction in most of the world’s modern towns and cities from the methods used in the traditional villages of Vanuatu and throughout the South Pacific. First, modern homes are generally designed as a single building, with separate rooms for sleeping, cooking, eating, bathing, and relaxing. 

By contrast, in Vanuatu’s villages, most people construct separate structures for the

various activities of their lives. One is used for sleeping, but another is built at some distance to serve as the kitchen, which helps to keep the sleeping quarters cool and free from vermin. Bathing and toilet facilities are located in more secluded parts of the village, to ensure privacy. Each of these structures tend to be small, even cramped by modern standards, largely because people spend the greater part of their days outdoors, whether working in their gardens, performing kastom (customary) activities in public areas, or relaxing in the shade of a coconut tree. ... SOURCE"

Moreover, this 'South Pacific' CULTURALlandscape can be quite quickly replaced/restored after a catastrophic event using materials to hand from the landscape, the employment of proven traditional age old techniques and collaborative community effort. In fact the infrastructure built in accord with First World 'standards' has been proven to be inappropriate and quite dangerous in many cases, not to mention expensive. Most importantly communal living that still prevails comes with social advantages not any longer experienced by design in First World suburbia.

Interestingly, the impoverishment that all often arises as an outcome of housing being imagined as as a 'wealth indicator' does not appear to be anything that impacts upon South Pacific communities. Yes, money is an important component of South Pacific economies but not to the extent that it is always the purpose for being. There are other sensibilities at work. The land that Pacific Island housing in village setting is by-and-large communal and thus acessable. Traditionally housing has been designed to be ephemeral rather than permanent and built in setting where collaborative community planning takes place based very local CULTURALlandscaping imperatives.

All this lends a kind of credibility to the notion that life in the Pacific is ideal and paradise like but it is not quite that simple. However, abject poverty is rare despite other consequences and inherent Pacific 'placedness'.

By way of perspective the American writer James A. Michener who wrote extensively about the Pacific said that "the South Pacific is not a paradise, in the sense that Eden wasn't either. There are always apples and snakes. But it is a wonderful place to live. The green vales of Tahiti, the hills of Guadalcanal, the towering peaks about Wau, and the noonday brilliance of Rabaul have enchanted many white travelers who have stayed on for many years and built happy lives. Often on a cool night when the beer was plentiful and the stories alluring, we have envied the men and women of the South Pacific."