Get outta town

At least once a year.

Head to the hills.

Go alone.

Find space to breathe.

Or at least, take an hour today in the sunshine with a cup of tea and your phone off.

Precisely messy design and construction

We are in age of technical precision. Automation, prefabrication, computer aided design and modern tooling mean our production and construction accuracy is at a level unimaginable even decades alone, let alone when the Romans were constructing community infrastructure we're still talking about in engineering colleges.

There's also a growing acknowledgement of the importance of messiness to the creative process. We need new solutions to unsolved problems, and creativity is an essential component.

How to bridge the gap between two apparently opposed ideals? 

The starting point is to ditch the "either/or" dichotomy and adopt an "yes and" approach.

We want our design process to be messy. To be creative. To uncover the new.

Yes!

And.

We want our construction to be precise. To be accurate. To minimise waste. To perform well.

Yes!

And.

We want precise design that delivers. And messy construction that is creative.

Precisely messy design. And messily precise construction.

Well-designed for what?

Here's some simple questions for the designers and occupiers of our homes:

Who designed your house?

Who did they design it for?

What lifestyle did that person have?

Is it your lifestyle?

Is it you?

Is it your house?

How much of our housing stock has been designed for people who lived (and live) in a social context which may not be current, let along desirable, or particularly healthy?

The change-making paradox

You can't shift anything alone.

But there's always a ground zero, a person zero.

If we wanted to change the property system, it's going to take each of us to change, and all of us to move together. We'll all have our own paths, paces, and priorities, but if we all travel in the same general direction, it becomes a movement.

A tiny house movement.
A co-housing movement.
A minimalism movement.
An energy-efficiency movement.
An affordability movement.
A lifestyle movement.
A philosophical movement.

A property movement.

Takeaway or 'have here'?

How did you have your last coffee? Takeaway or 'have here'?

Without even venturing into a discussion about the sustainability of takeaway coffee cups, ponder this:

If you can't stop for ten minutes to drink a coffee in your favourite cafe, you need to stop for ten minutes to drink your coffee in your favourite cafe.

Start from zero

Around here, we're nearly eight years into reimagining, redirecting, and rebuilding a city after a series of damaging earthquakes.

If you were starting from scratch, what would you do?

If you could rebuild your home, your career, your life from the ground up, what would you build? What direction would you go? What would you spend the rest of today doing?

The good things we currently have can keep us from the things we dream of.

Don't change your dream just yet, listen to this podcast.

Jeans shopping is like house buying

It's unusual to enjoy shopping for jeans. Unless you have a go-to staple style and never change size, or you have a model-esque body and excessive amounts of money, jeans shopping is an exercise in patience and persistence.

Ultimately though, when you've tried on the eleventh pair in the fourth shop for the third time, the questions of size, cut, colour, zip vs button fly, pockets or not, boil down to one questions:

"Do they fit me?" 

This could be phrased as: Are we a good match? Do I feel comfortable? Will I enjoy wearing these jeans?"

Buying a house might be exciting, but for most people it's a long series of difficult decisions. Especially if you're doing it for the first time.

And at the end of the day, the real question is the same as for jeans shopping: "Do this house fit me?"

Is it a good match? Do I feel comfortable here? Will I enjoy spending time in this house?"

See you next time

We never really leave a place.

When we leave behind friends, farewells are filled with celebrations, goodbyes, gifts, and phrases like "so long for now" and "see you next time".

When we leave a house, we similarly take some parts of our life with us to our new home.

A particular way of hanging up the washing.
A specific morning routine.
That couch that is just way too comfy to get rid of.

And we fit these elements of our old home into our new one. Or we select a new home based on how we want to live, based on what we want to bring with us.

How much of what we bring along is simply habit, and how many things are elements of true discover of how we want to live?

What is it that, if we let go of it, would allow us to discover new parts of what it means to live well together?

How to make progress.

Taking a break isn't lazy if you're pausing between sprints.

Running doesn't get you there faster if you're heading in the wrong direction.

Keeping busy isn't productive if you're working on the wrong thing.

 

Live with intention.

Find your direction.

Ensure alignment.

 

Get good tools for your good people

After you've got the right people, make sure you give them the right tools.

It's worth paying for them.

While we might bootstrap/number-8-wire the project together, high quality projects require high-quality people working with high-quality tools.

And high-quality costs money.

Doing good requires us to get better. Getting better requires us to practice. And practicing requires tools.

So get good people, develop a good design, and with the right tools, build the right project.

Who reads instruction manuals?

When the instructions say: "Gently pour over the lightly whipped double cream", but you've already stirred in the standard cream, it's too late.

It'll still taste great, but it's not quite what was intended. So as long as you were looking for something generally delicious, not something specifically fantastic, you're happy.

There's no instruction manual for a home. There's no compiled guide on how to find, rent, buy, decorate, renovate, design, or live in a house.

But if you have a home, it's still great.

The trick for long-lasting satisfaction isn't in making sure you've memorised the instructions. The trick is to have some generally reasonable expectations and hope for more. Instead of expecting a particular perfection.

The value of good chats

Good chats are a mark of a good relationship. Conversations that keep rolling on. Discussions punctuated by pauses for thought.

Our lives need spaces for good chats. And our cities do to.

Here's to the part-timers, the coffee shops, the long weekends and the gastropubs.

Here's to fresh bread from the local bakery on a Sunday, and hanging out in the fish and chips shop on a Friday night. 

Here's to stay-at-home parents, and coffee carts at primary schools.

Here's to working less and living more.

Here's to living well together.

Looks good, tastes great, but there's more

We recently cleared out some large palm-type big-leaf fern bush things from underneath our lemon tree.

It looks really tidy.

But there's way more green waste to get rid of than our council wheelie bin can handle.

And the newly uncovered ground will no doubt be soon filled with weeds enjoying their new exposure to sunlight.

So was it really worth the two hours of sweat?

Undoubtably, because we can now get to the lemon tree, and have a washing basket full of lemons to eat, share, and turn into lemon curd.

What is the metaphorical ground cover in the property system that's stopping us from getting to fully harvest the good fruit? It's definitely there, because no system is perfect.

It probably looks really good. It's probably really useful in many ways, It probably doesn't require too much effort to keep doing, or to create.

It's probably all these things. And it's is probably overgrown.

Do we need to think about our rush to convert rural/urban fringe land into sprawling subdivisions? Do these commuter villages get in the way of true community grounded in connection between people?

Should we take a step back and get some perspective on continuing to build new homes to (arguably deficient) minimum standards? The building consent numbers look good, the houses look nice, they're simple and profitable to build, but have we limited the industry and scope of what truly good housing means?

The weeds in the system look good. They're even doing a good job! But if they aren't truly good because there's something better, and if they keep us from moving towards a greater future, they need to get cut back and binned.

Money doesn't grow on trees, so someone's got to give

Moving to a more equal system of property ownership is likely to require some financial involvement on a goodwill basis. Setting aside the mystery of why people give their money away to anything, we have to ask...

... is it fair or reasonable to attempt to build an alternative system that requires some form of philanthropy to create?

It's not only fair and reasonable, it's necessary.

We're dealing with fundamentals.

  1. There's an issue with the distribution of wealth, especially capital tied up in property.
  2. Rebalancing requires shifting the existing wealth.
  3. We can't simply create wealth out of nowhere and bring everyone up level. 

If you're not convinced, just take a step back to think about how we got here. In particular, consider the role of property speculation and mortgage interest in shifting the wealth of future and distant people to those with capital.

For an interesting twenty minutes on broken economic systems, watch this video.

Level up the quarter-acre dream

The only thing better than the quarter acre dream, is a lifestyle block.

Right?

Maybe, if you want to spend your life mowing lawns.

Or, you could live close to a park.

Spend Saturday afternoon walking to the market.

Spend long weekends at the beach.

Lifestyle block dreams sound great. We could have our own private park (a quarter-acre lawn), private pool (of course), private cafe (via desk-top coffee machines), private hotel (add a guest wing), and private spa (everyone loves an electricity-bill-blowout and chemicals).

But what if we don't want to spend our life secluded?

If we value connection, let's dream less of a private live, and dream more of living with less, and sharing (and creating) great public spaces.

Rich days in a rich neighbourhood

A rich and full life is worth striving for. Don't settle for the busy and time poor version that's being sold.

Find the freedom in creative restriction. The joy found in limitations. The fullness found in simplicity.

The richness of a life lived in proximity to others.

Let's not treat our neighbourhoods as transit corridors, or think of ourselves as commuter who leave our streets for a place we'd rather be. Instead, let's be present in our neighbourhoods and make them the place we'd rather be.

Rich days are found in any neighbourhood where relationships are woven together, and people populate the public spaces.

Bring the outside in

I'm not much of an interior designer. And I'm not much of a botanist or garden either.

But I do really like the Arabica coffee pot plant sitting on my desk.

It makes a difference.

Firstly, it looks nice. It has nice glossy leaves, they're a nice deep green, and it sits in a white pot with a kind of broad ripple texture.

Secondly, it grows. Week to week, I can see the steady growth of new leaves. I can see the new green shoots, and the older brown branches (they're really twigs). The earlier leaves are small, but some of the new ones are much bigger, at least three times as long.

Thirdly, it responds. As I said, I'm not much of a gardener. So I forget to water it. And it tells me I've been negligent by becoming extremely limp and generally looking sad. And when I pour a cup of of water into it, it's back in shape by the end of the day.

Fourthly (if that's a word), it reminds me of the economics and people involved in bringing me my morning cup of coffee.

My coffee plant is a reminder of outside world. It's a world that is beautiful, both natural and created. It's a world that is constantly changing, constantly in flux, ever shifting. It's a world that is relational, that requires input from me, and who I can affect with both my action and inaction. And it's a world filled with other people, people who have dreams, families, work, favourite drinks and places they live.

We all live somewhere different. But all our different somewhere's are on the one same planet. So lets appreciate the beauty, flow with change, choose our actions wisely, and empower each other.

Do a little work today

Gardening sucks, because the work is never done.

Gardening is inspirational, because when the work is done, there's often immediate results.

Once a garden has been weeded, you can tell. Sure, they'll grow back and you'll have to do it again, but that one hour on your knees in the dirt was worthwhile. And it takes you one step further towards your ultimate goal: The vegetables, flowers, trees, or whatever it is that you've intentionally planted, whatever it is that you're really out there for.

Making a difference doesn't have to be glamourous.

Having a legacy doesn't need to be a lifetime's work.

Creating change doesn't need to make the headlines. Or the history book.

It can start, and end, with doing something small today, that makes the world just that little bit better.