THINKING outside the box
The Solution To Soaring Home Prices: Weirder Homes
From quirky designs to odd floor plans, these outside-the-box homebuilding ideas could bring down real-estate prices.
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The Lede
Local building codes and other regulations have imposed strict limits on the size and shape of new housing, leading to both a major supply crunch and a deadening aesthetic uniformity of the housing that does get built. It doesn't have to be this way. If we introduce more flexibility into the design rules for housing construction, we could end up with a wide variety of housing across our cities — something for everyone to meet every household's needs.
Key Details
- Following World War II, the sameness of American housing was part of what fueled the boom in new home construction that turned the country into a homeownership society.
- Many local governments go beyond the single-family-house mandate and set strict rules regarding the design of the house, the amount of parking space in each garage, and even the size of the lot on which the house sits.
- For a sense of what "weird" homes could look like, look at Tokyo. The city has a loose approach to land-use regulation.
