Is living in a house anti-ERE?

[zbigi]

I can't help but think that living in a detached house, as opposed to a flat, can't be very ERE, from an ecological and resource consumption point of view.

The construction of a house consumes so much more resources vs a flat (even assuming the same square footage) - e.g. in flats, you have plenty of shared walls. Heating and cooling houses is also more expensive (again, shared walls in flats help). Moreover, the houses are by necessity more spread out, which creates the need for much more infrastructure (construction of roads, water lines, sewer pipes, power lines, internet lines - plus constant ongoing maintenance of all of them). Also, since the houses are more spread out, you need to travel more, the city needs more emergency services and more public transit per thousand of residents (or, public transit is just not a thing, since it's too inefficient given low density).

This all seems anti-ERE. From an ERE perspective, a place like Hong Kong or a buildings like the Falowiec in Gdansk, Poland (half-a-mile long residential building housing around 6000 people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falowiec) sound ideal. And yet, it seems to me that most of the American members of this forum live in houses. How do you reconcile that?

[7Wannabe5]

The simple answer, as discussed in Homgren's "Retrosuburbia", is that stand alone housing is what already exists without need for new construction. No universal rule can be applied, but often retrofitting existing housing stock towards greater efficiency will prove more efficient than building brand new housing stock with energy efficiency in mind.

If one is already retired or semi-retired/flexible, there are even many locales in the U.S. where older housing stock is often vacant and decomposing. Some of these locales were even rated as top picks for the future by David Pogue in "How to Prepare for Climate Change: A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos." It is also quite possible, in theory, to renovate older housing stock to be relatively free of more expensive or less sustainable long-distance grid systems. However, this is often not allowed due to current code.

It is also possible to break and/or expand existing housing stock into multi-unit or communal living/working environments, and yard space surrounding the units can be converted to garden or neighborhood based permaculture project.

[zbigi]

often retrofitting existing housing stock towards greater efficiency will prove more efficient than building brand new housing stock with energy efficiency in mind.

How about buying an already existing flat vs already existing house? Or are you saying that there's vastly higher supply of already existing houses in the US (than already existing flats), so occupying an a.e. house is utilizing a resource that would go to waste otherwise? And, if so, what about EREmites who buy houses in not-undesirable areas (i.e. ones which don't have trouble finding new owners)?

[Bankai]

I can't help but think that living in a detached house, as opposed to a flat, can't be very ERE, from an ecological and resource consumption point of view.

You're of course right, with the only exceptions being houses that no one wants (and hence you're not reducing supply by occupying them), like extremely remote locations, crime-ridden areas of fallen cities, or deserted villages/islands, etc. But I'm sure many would disagree - after all, there are plenty of gurus who live in big houses, drive cars, eat meat and then fly to South America for week-long seminars to teach plebs how to reduce their footprint.

[Seppia]

there are plenty of gurus who live in big houses, drive cars, eat meat and then fly to South America for week-long seminars to teach plebs how to reduce their footprint.

SHOTS FIRED!

(I loved this )

[Married2aSwabian]

It is also possible to break and/or expand existing housing stock into multi-unit or communal living/working environments, and yard space surrounding the units can be converted to garden or neighborhood based permaculture project.

https://youtu.be/6ztQJiJ9qPw

Sorry, 7WB5, I couldn’t not think about that Dr. Zhivago scene.

In the US, it really is appalling how a large majority of new homes over the past thirty years or so have been built by large home builders whose primary focus is, of course, on the almighty $. A huge box (built cookie cutter style) with poor insulation, HVAC systems and windows that puts the owner on the hamster wheel to which they aspire. The granite counter tops and schools are everything, while TCO and energy efficiently are never discussed.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince DW to live in an RV for a couple of years as a retirement transition … too “radical” for her!

This book has awesome 70s alternative shelter ideas:

https://www.amazon.com/Shelter-Library- ... ABLE_MOVIE

It’s a blast to skim through and daydream about alternatives. I think some of the people interviewed in there were early 70s ERE forefathers.

[Dream of Freedom]

Keep in mind that not everyone wants to live in a large city and buying a flat isn't always an option in a small town. I for instance can't even rent one let alone buy one because I'm too rich for the low-income apartments and too young for the senior apartments.

There are also other aspects of ere that are relevant. For one thing, if someone doesn't want a boss they might not want a landlord and their rules either. Buying a house can make financial sense especially if you are willing to put in the work to get a good deal and improve the property. Some people here are also preppers. So the ability to grow one's own food and the ability to make alterations to the property to produce one's own heat and energy are considerations.

[zbigi]

Keep in mind that not everyone wants to live in a large city and buying a flat isn't always an option in a small town. I for instance can't even rent one let alone buy one because I'm too rich for the low-income apartments and too young for the senior apartments.

There are also other aspects of ere that are relevant. For one thing, if someone doesn't want a boss they might not want a landlord and their rules either. Buying a house can make financial sense especially if you are willing to put in the work to get a good deal and improve the property. Some people here are also preppers. So the ability to grow one's own food and the ability to make alterations to the property to produce one's own heat and energy are considerations.

The not wanting to live in a city or not wanted to put up with landlords are consumer-mindset problems. At least to me, ERE is about not giving in to wants (which, as we all know, are ultimately limitless and infinite), but instead about adapting, seeking alternatives and, if needed, enduring.

Producing one's food and energy may make sense, but it would have to be computed if the benefits to the planet coming from it are not obliterated by the extra footprint of the house (vs a flat + commercial agriculture and energy production).

[zbigi]

Ultimately, I think it all comes down to ERE having an ulterior motive/agenda. As Jacob stated himself, he wants to promote very cheap living to save the planet, as the amount of money spent is a proxy for damage done to the environment. However, due to externalizes, of course it's possible to live cheaply and still pollute a lot (e.g. in Russia, where fossil fuels are plenty and therefore cheap, building in cities in the freaking Arctic Circle don't have insulation - it's easier/cheaper/moreERE to just burn a crapton of fuel every winter than to insulate them).

OTOH, I understand that, even when taking into account the above, speaking to people's self-interest may in fact be the most effective bottom-up strategy to save the planet. In other words, we will never convince people to truly care about something other than themselves, so appealing to their moral duty as planet guardians is completely hopeless (Christianity tried doing something similar for the past 2000 years without any results), while self-centered approach like ERE may produce results.

[Seppia]

I think it would be best to consider the whole picture.

One can have a house but if he/she eats very little meat, almost never uses a car, doesn't fly often, doesn't change wardrobe/TV/appliances every other year etc, the environmental impact will be significantly lower than their peers

[zbigi]

I think it would be best to consider the whole picture.

One can have a house but if he/she eats very little meat, almost never uses a car, doesn't fly often, doesn't change wardrobe/TV/appliances every other year etc, the environmental impact will be significantly lower than their peers

As far as I understand, it's easy to have significantly lower impact than a typical American. Heck, most people in Poland live at a fraction of American consumption levels, and frankly don't feel like they're sacrificing much. That's why I'm trying to set a higher bar than that here.

[Dream of Freedom]

The not wanting to live in a city or not wanted to put up with landlords are consumer-mindset problems. At least to me, ERE is about not giving in to wants (which, as we all know, are ultimately limitless and infinite), but instead about adapting, seeking alternatives and, if needed, enduring.

Just make sure those sacrifices pay off pal. I haven't spent more than 12k/year for almost a decade and I'm really comfortable. You don't score extra points for suffering.

[Scott 2]

I live in a townhouse - so shared walls, private entrances. While there are efficiencies, the standard for consumption is set by your neighbors. I can guarantee this results in higher resource usage than someone consciously living in a house.


Some of the more wasteful examples:

1. Blanket replacement of every roof in the 100 unit complex, with no consideration to remaining lifespan.

2. Blanket replacement of every asphalt driveway. Ours had settled an inch or so, but I would have waited least 10 more years.

3. Gas powered everything to perfectly manicure the lawns and landscaping on a weekly basis

4. The lawn service indiscriminately wiped out my neighbors garden with a weed wacker. Good luck growing your own food.

5. The board ripped out around a hundred mature bushes, because they were a visibility hazard. Only to replace them with new bushes that will eventually grow to fill the space...

6. Gas powered removal of snow from every single paved surface, triggered by even the lightest weather event.

7. Replacing a perfectly functional set of playground equipment, with almost identical equipment, simply because it looked old


Since most people want this level of consumption, shared housing that does not demonstrate it, contains people who cannot afford it. While a large majority of those people are perfectly fine, in aggregate, they don't make great neighbors.

My time in apartments included:

1. People who party at all hours
2. A women with dementia who cooked plastic dishes stored in her oven
3. A divorcee who would fight with her ex through the apartment door (after buzzing him in to the building!)
4. A mentally disabled resident who would camp in the lobby, lecturing every person on the merits of a bike helmet. Fair, but he could not remember people because of the accident he had while not wearing a bike helmet. So repeat the conversation every time you walk by.

There's always going to be some percentage of people who can't get their shit together. Living with them in close quarters sucks.

[jacob]

The anti-ERE test for pretty much anything from a WL7 perspective:

1) Does this solution generate undesirable (and perhaps unseen) side-effects that works against desired side-effects? Specifically, is it homeotelic or heterotelic? (Example of undesirable side-effect: A house in the suburbs may require an undesirable car or train expense or undesirably eliminate a daily bike ride.)
2) Does this solution unlock new connexions in the strategic web[-of-goals] space? (The meta-concern of (1)).

As for American forumites living in houses with ERE being so far out of the mainstream, close-proximity living (apartments,...) will often legally force you into hyper-consumption patterns. What Scott2 said. People [like us] do dream of [maybe] 200sqft/person housing with shared gardens and facilities, etc. but in the US such almost nowhere to be found(*) anymore. I'll paraphrase Don Rumsfeld: You don't go to war with the army you wish you had but with the one you have.

(*) Of course they exist but only if they're your top priority. On average, the closest one will be hundreds or thousands of kms away.

[Tyler9000]

This all seems anti-ERE. From an ERE perspective, a place like Hong Kong or a buildings like the Falowiec in Gdansk, Poland (half-a-mile long residential building housing around 6000 people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falowiec) sound ideal. And yet, it seems to me that most of the American members of this forum live in houses. How do you reconcile that?

As someone who has spent some time in Hong Kong, I find it interesting that anyone would cite it as an example of the ERE ideal. It's one of the last places on earth I'd personally consider for a long-term ERE lifestyle. There's so much more to it than population density.

In contrast, my wife's grandparents lived out their days on a small family farm in rural Oklahoma where they did just fine tending to their garden (I like to imagine they grew their own lentils), raising a few chickens, bartering with neighbors, and generally living a happy life with very little money or waste. If they were still alive today, they probably wouldn't even think ERE is all that novel. It was just normal life to them.

[guitarplayer]

I'd totally opt for a flat in a tower block in the UK if not the fact that they clad them with stuff that catches fire easily. Genuinely, this seems like a very good housing situation lest one wants to have a garden to grow (ideally fruit and veg). I am very saddened that the UK builders made such a blunder with the tower blocks (for non UK folk look up Greenfell tower fire).

[unemployable]

This all seems anti-ERE.

Says who? I interpret ERE not as depriving yourself of Nice Things, but prioritizing which Nice Things you want and accepting those sacrifices that let you achieve those Nice Things with greatest efficiency. What if I'm sacrificing other things in order to afford a house and enjoy the benefits thereof?

If I ever buy a condo, you better believe it'll be on a top floor. Hell is other people.

[oldbeyond]

It seems to me that there’s a gradient between very rural living and very urban living where natural yields decrease and social yields (understood broadly as resulting from human activity, including infrastructure and manufactured goods but also human interaction) increase as you move from the rural to the urban. Or at least the potential for them. If you live in the sticks but drive everywhere and buy various toys on Amazon, you won’t take advantage from many natural yields (except for perhaps space and natural recreation). Similarly, if you live in a very urban setting but isolate yourself, you won’t exploit your location for more than a fast internet connection and the impressive selection of take out. Every point on the spectrum offers value for the right personality (mindset/strategy).

Not all landscapes of a certain type are created equal, though. Living in a diverse ecosystem with woods, fields, streams and mountains isn’t the same as living in a monoculture plantation. In the same way, living in high modernistic concrete tower blocks surrounded by freeways (insert post card from basically any mainland Chinese city, for example), you won’t see the yields that true urbanism offers. The more complexity, the more yields to be harvested. In some places, the quality of some types of landscapes will be lower than in other places (a lack of urban qualities or very little natural land left untouched perhaps, or a lack of quaint villages or dynamic small towns).

ERE is of course possible in any landscape but it will result in different problems to solve. This is very apparent from reading the journals, just compare theanimal and Ego for example. The counterpoint to the efficiency of “urban housing minimalism” is the possibility for self-sufficiency (or even regeneration of whole ecosystems) in a rural setting (and also that you have to factor in the extensive infrastructure and inputs that enable this efficiency, where in a rural setting you might get by on simple solutions crafted from local materials for a lot of your needs).

[Married2aSwabian]

ERE is of course possible in any landscape but it will result in different problems to solve. This is very apparent from reading the journals, just compare theanimal and Ego for example. The counterpoint to the efficiency of “urban housing minimalism” is the possibility for self-sufficiency (or even regeneration of whole ecosystems) in a rural setting (and also that you have to factor in the extensive infrastructure and inputs that enable this efficiency, where in a rural setting you might get by on simple solutions crafted from local materials for a lot of your needs).

Totally agree. When we lived on our 5 acre farm for 14 years in rural Michigan, it had its trade offs for sure.

On the one hand, we:

Bought and gradually renovated an existing 100 YO farmhouse
Grew our own vegetables and I became the “Compost Meister”
Learned about animal husbandry, including raising our own chickens for eggs and meat
Learned DIY skills ranging from carpentry, roofing and wiring to wielding a chainsaw, using a 32HP tractor and organic gardening
These have proven invaluable over the years


OTOH:

We were, of course, very dependent on our (2) vehicles
Lived at least 10 miles from nearest shopping
Had more SF than Higher WLs would: 1800SF for the 3 of us.
Struggled at times to maintain the little farm in a truly sustainable way as I was working a day job plus farm chores

It’s now been 10 years since we sold it, and still sometimes when I see the direction the world is headed, I dream of going back to that that small farm. When I read Wendell Barry for the first time about 5/years ago, I was even more homesick for it. Words cannot describe the connectedness you feel with the land when you live that way. You can’t learn that shit living in a “flat”.

Maybe in the future we’ll have more living options like Jacob describes: small sustainable homesteads close to town, where everyone can bike to everything. As it stands, unfortunately, they’re few and far between.

[Seppia]

As someone who has spent some time in Hong Kong, I find it interesting that anyone would cite it as an example of the ERE ideal.

I can confirm.
A/C running at full power all the time, garbage thrown in the ocean in massive quantities, highly materialistic society, etc.
The only ERE thing is that apartments are indeed small.