The Small House Book Read Online Free PDF Page A

universal
    principles of good planning, used successfully from 5000 B.C. Mesopotamia
    to 2005 A.D. Seaside, Florida, were ignored. Perhaps the most startling de-
    parture from tradition was the omission of contained outdoor space. Human
    beings have a predilection towards enclosure. We like places with discernible
    boundaries. To achieve this desired sense of enclosure, a street cannot be
    too wide. More specifically, its breadth should not far exceed the height of the
    buildings that flank it. A street that is more than twice as wide as its buildings
    are tall is unlikely to satisfy our inherent desire for orientation and shelter.
    Rows of trees can sometimes help to delineate a space and therebyincrease
    the recommended street-to-building ratio, but generally, anything wider than
    a proportion of 2:1 will compromise the quality of an urban environment.
    America’s suburbs incessantly ignore the 2:1 rule. The distance from a house
    to the one directly across the street is rarely less than five times the height
    of either structure, and there are seldom enough well-placed trees around
    Sprawl, U.S.A. (pages 48 & 49). Quebec City (opposite)
    51
    to compensate. The empty landscape that results is one most of us have
    become far too familiar with.
    To evoke a sense of place, a street, much like a dwelling, must be free of use-
    less space. When given a choice, pedestrians will almost always choose to
    follow a narrow street instead of a wide one. That we frequently drive hours
    from our suburban homes to enjoy a tiny, lakeside cabin or the narrow streets
    of some old town is nearly as senseless as it is telling. That we then return
    to toil in our cavernous dwellings on deficient landscapes is more sense-
    less, yet. The environments we see pictured in travel guides are typically the
    walkable, little streets of our older cities. The marketing agents who produce
    these guides are undoubtedly no less aware of our desire for contained, out-
    door space than were the architects of the streets depicted.
    People like places that were designed with people in mind, so it should come
    as no surprise that property values and street widths appear to share an in-
    verse relationship. Apparently, we are willing to pay more for less pavement.
    The funny thing is that the skinny streets we like are actually much cheaper
    to build and maintain than the wide ones we so often choose to live with.
    52

    Quebec City
    53
    Services Too Dispersed
    Zoning as we know it basically began in nineteenth-century Europe. Indus-
    trialized cities were shrouded in coal smoke, so urban planners rightly sug-
    gested that factories be separated from residential areas. Life expectancies
    soared, the planners gloated, and segregation quickly became the new solu-
    tion to every problem. So, while in the beginning only the incompatible func-
    tions of a town were kept apart, now everything is. Housing is separated from
    industry, low-density housing is kept separate from existing, higher-density
    housing, and all of this is kept far from restaurants, office buildings and shop-
    ping centers, which are all kept separate from each other.
    With the dispersal have come mandatory car ownership and the end of pe-
    destrian life as we once knew it. Where no worthwhile destinations can be
    easily reached on foot, there are no pedestrians, and where there are no
    pedestrians, there is no vitality.
    This separation has simultaneously brought about an increase in the per-
    ceived need for ultra-autonomous houses. The idea that a house should con-
    tain everything its occupants could ever possibly need and then some is cer-
    tainly not a new one, but it has achieved unprecedented popularity as houses
    have become increasingly remote from the services they traditionally relied
    upon. It now seems that every new residence must contain not only its own
    washer, dryer, dishwasher, high-speed internet access and big-screen home
    entertainment center, but enough kitchen, bathroom,