Fences
Apparently, one of the local Councils in New Zealand is working on changing their regulations to prohibit solid six-foot high fences along street frontages.
I’m not sure why they’re doing it, exactly, but I like the sound of a legal obligation to create a built environment that fosters connection.
10 person circular tables are the default at weddings because, the story goes, it’s the optimal size and shape to maximise the number of people in the room, while also having enough space to serve people food.
And so we sit at awkwardly too-large-to-talk-across table talking to (either) the person on our right or left.
No wonder people head to the bar for a real chat.
What other things in life have a negative impact on our ability or opportunity to connect that we take for granted as ‘just how it is done’?
Here’s a few you might find on your street:
Six foot fences.
Internal access garages
Cars
Retirement villages
How much do you see, let alone know your neighbours? Would you recognise them at the supermarket?
What’s getting in the way of connection?
If you had the opportunity to redevelop your entire block (or maybe just start with a group of say, 6 adjacent properties), what would you differently? Around here, I’ve got a few thoughts on what could be possible:
We could increase density by building smaller homes and multi-storey (low-rise) buildings.
We could layout the buildings so that there was minimal shading.
We could drop a ground-source heat pump that fed all the properties.
We could have vegetable gardens located at premium positions.
We could have warm, dry, healthier homes.
We could have a range of homes so that a range of people could live there, and so people wouldn’t have to move elsewhere as life circumstances changed.
We’d have waaaay less fences.
We’d probably have some shared facilities, like a workshop, children’s playground and possibly vehicles and or garage/storage space.
We could a central battery bank and solar panels on all the buildings to collect and share electricity, and group-buy power from the main grid.
Of course, all of this shared stuff is pretty challenging if you’re working on the assumption that we all “own our own home” in the traditional sense. But there is some form of common ownership (or non-ownership), creating some shared commons is not only easier, it becomes a natural extension of the advantage of (all) owning the block.
It’s a close call to say which is the heart of the home: The fridge, the stove, the kitchen table, or the pantry.*
Either way, it’s food first.
But the face we present to our neighbours, the front of our home is usually more like: A garage, a fence, a hedge, or some pillars**.
What about putting food first on the face of our houses?
There’s a few ways we could do this (for starters): A half-height fence with raised garden beds/planter boxes along the street front, a vegetable garden instead of the front lawn, an openable kitchen window directly onto a street with our coffee machine immediately next to it, or a bee-friendly flower garden***.
What would you rather see when you’re walking down your street?
*I might also accept a fireplace, but they’re still much better with a liquid in hand. Don’t you dare bring the television into this.
**One of my favourite things is two-storey pillars on the entrance to a 200 square metre home.
***I don’t think this is too long a bow: bees are essential to food production. And they make honey.
Today I did many things, here’s two of them:
I lay on the grass in the sunshine.
I walked through a relatively new subdivision (new enough there are still empty lots and houses under construction).
Consequently, I’ve found a answers to yesterday’s question:
What are the assumptions that go into house design?
While yesterday I was more interested in the actual technical assumptions, today’s observations led to some more tongue-in-cheek conclusions.
I can’t be sure, but it seems that when designing a house, we seem to assume that:
Everyone needs a double garage, even though they park their cars outside.
All doors except the front door (although sometimes including the front door) must be separated from the street by a fence. Preferably a solid, six-foot high fence.
The only people people with different aesthetic preferences are those with money.
When community is such a buzzword, why do we insist on building barriers?
I'm talking about our six-foot front fences again.
Driving down a quiet, pleasant, meandering residential street recently, I was struck again by the impression of impermeability that rows and rows of tall front fences give to a casual passer-by. It was all the more noticable because several houses had recently been rebuilt, renovated and/or sold and therefore had the obligatory six-foot timber-paling fence erected. And immediately adjacent were several older houses with no fence to speak of.
Connection requires openness. And yet we're closing off our properties to the world.
Some initial thoughts on the impact of our property ownership model, and a link to an interesting article about the supremacy of architects.
Read MoreWhat would happen if we tore down our 6-foot high fences? Or at least ran a skillsaw through them.
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