Homonyms, history, language and the evolution of systems

It’s hard to write about homonyms, because the whole point is that they’re words that sound the same but have different meanings, but if I write them down it can be obvious that they’re different*

Like pen and pen.

Or neigh and nay.

And buy and by.

English is confusing, and given that language is essentially a way to get an idea from one person’s head into another person’s head, this is something of a cause for concern for me. I didn't spend four years studying engineering to not value precision and clarity.

And yet, the vagaries of the English language also lend itself to humour and also the continual evolution of the language as we develop alternative ways to be both more precise (e.g. “google”) and more confusion (e.g. “yeet”).

In the hands of a skilful comedian, or youth culture, the English language continues to evolve. The system’s built that way.

On the other hand, the property system seems to be pretty baked-in, and unlikely to shift anytime soon by virtue of spontaneous innovation, the way that language appears to do. This may simply by my lack of understanding of history and the system, but at the very least my observation is that most people seem to go along with the status quo and conventional wisdom.

It’s going to take a skilful group of people for the property system to evolve.

And it seems to be starting.

*English nerds will know that, strictly speaking, I’m only talking about homophones, and a strict definition of a homonym would be a word that is spelt and sounds the same, but has multiple meanings.

Suburban Redevelopment

Pick up a property. Demolish the building. Rebuild what was there, but better, and make more spaces for more people.

A crucial piece of the puzzle of trying to transform a neighbourhood, is how to get hold of the land in the first place. The Nightingale 3 project in Melbourne took the above approach, you can read about it here.

But how about suburbia? We don't have the option of taking a single-storey building and adding space by building up, but could we take a similar approach? Could we find four connected titles, demolish, and rebuild with eight households?

It could be possible if we used the following principles:

More shared spaces: Shared laundries, storage, workshops, maybe even ditch the cars and use a fleet of electric vehicles.

Smaller spaces: Design for what we really need, learn to live with less, and just generally do bette design.

Common ownership: Whether it is a body corporate, a company structure or some other legal delight, sharing more requires a shift from a 'my house, my castle' property mentality.

Energy efficiency: Environmental considerations aside, this is a smart financial move. Keeping running costs low not only makes a higher build cost/mortgage affordable, it provides longer-term financial security by making living costs less tied to market variations in energy costs.

Around here, a typical section could be around 600 sqm. Four sections would give us 2400 sqm to play with.

I'm sure an architect could come up with an 8-household development using the principles above on 2400 sqm, even if we're limited to two storeys.