Construction Time Again: The quality crisis in American building
&gt; From building codes to systems of labor and construction, everything is designed with the detached single-family home in mind: zoning that bans apartments (and density and affordability) over large swaths of urban America; a mortgage, financing, and appraisal system with a long history of inequity and racism; and systems of neighborhood government and community feedback that favor homeowners. Changing this system, from both a cultural and construction perspective, is like “turning around a tanker ship,” Hogan says.<p>This nails it.  American “cities” are mostly low-density sprawls where everyone has a useless yard surrounding their home which serves as mostly an aesthetic flourish.  But rebuilding American cities with functional parks and high-density housing and everything in walking distance is deeply unpopular because, like most of this, Americans just don’t know what they’re missing because they’ve been sold a dead-end dream.