Thought I’d pop this here to catch some overspill from the Grenfell thread.
What’s the answer?
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Love the idea and the fact it’s being done on vacant inner city plots.
The downside is the UK isn’t the size of the USA and inner cities spaces are much smaller over here.
Tbf the houses in the video also look larger than a lot of privately owned new build flats in the UK
I’m sure UK developers will say that the idea won’t work in the UK (not enough profit for the fat cats)
As I said, great idea though!
Lots of empty flats in the borough apparently. Huge calls to open them up for the short term to help the homeless.
I think we’ve been looking at housing in the wrong way. Like most other things, it’s now on the “free market”, which despite being free and all that, manages to create a lot of constraints, primely cost, that stop people from being able to live somewhere.
The cities we’ve built are wonderfully organic, the result of thousands of years of civilisation. We probably wouldn’t build them the same way today, especially if we were starting from scratch.
We need to consider overall sustainability and autonomy as key factors when building new cities. The Venus Project is a very interesting take on this, but personally, I think we need to work out how to keep 1,000 people alive in an autonomous, self sustaining settlement which provides most of its own food and all of its own energy. Once we’ve sussed that, we should work out how to scale it up.
As a Brit I’d be disappointed if some of these cities did not float. Who doesn’t get a kick out of the notion of a future Sotonian pulling South Southampton into Portsmouth Harbour, its railguns pointing at Fratton?
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There is a short term problem with the residents from Grenfell but an ongoing proble all round the country with people sleeping rough. I visit Brighton fairly frequently and the numbers sleeping on the streets is crazy in this day and age. I dont have an answer but low cost housing - which just doesnt happen in the south anywhere - has to be a start.
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Yeah, was just using this as an example of the alternative approaches to Social Housing we could be looking at.
It’s either that or we need an efficient disease/war/natural catastrophe to cull a few.
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There’s just no fucking vision, @goatboy 
If I had my way, I’d build gigantic permanent seawalls and do them up like the wall in Game of Thrones. Battlements, secret gates, dire staffordshire bull terriers. The Americans would love it, plus you could fit a shitload of people in there _and _give them jobs, even @barry-sanchez .
Out of spite, I’d make him nightwatchman on the newly reconstituted Southampton Walls. He’d wander around, late at night, muttering “It’s not as good as Lark Lane, la” and occasionally screaming “I want a transfer to Derby!”
“You know nothing Barry Sanchez.”
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