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Brave New Home

Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
This smart, provocative look at how the American Dream of single-family homes, white picket fences, and two-car garages became a lonely, overpriced nightmare explores how new trends in housing can help us live better.
Over the past century, American demographics and social norms have shifted dramatically. More people are living alone, marrying later in life, and having smaller families. At the same time, their lifestyles are changing, whether by choice or by force, to become more virtual, more mobile, and less stable. But despite the ways that today's America is different and more diverse, housing still looks stuck in the 1950s.
In Brave New Home, Diana Lind shows why a country full of single-family houses is bad for us and our planet, and details the new efforts underway that better reflect the way we live now, to ensure that the way we live next is both less lonely and more affordable. Lind takes readers into the homes and communities that are seeking alternatives to the American norm, from multi-generational living, in-law suites, and co-living to microapartments, tiny houses, and new rural communities.
Drawing on Lind's expertise and the stories of Americans caught in or forging their own paths outside of our cookie-cutter housing trap, Brave New Home offers a diagnosis of the current American housing crisis and a radical re-imagining of future possibilities.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 24, 2020
      Urban policy researcher Lind sketches the history of housing in America and looks at emerging trends in her detailed and optimistic debut. Noting a lack of affordable housing in many cities and persistent racial disparities in homeownership rates, Lind tracks the shift from the boarding houses and apartment buildings of the 19th and early 20th centuries to the suburban sprawl of the mid-20th century. According to Lind, Americans are now moving away from the predominant model of large single-family homes. Visits to a “commune” in a Manhattan townhouse and a 324-sq.-ft. “tiny home” in a Burlington, Vt., backyard reveal the attraction of “co-living” arrangements for young professionals and a rise in “accessory dwelling units” in cities with affordable housing shortages, respectively. Lind also profiles a real estate development company in Philadelphia that seeks to keep gentrification at bay by renting to low-income residents and providing access to medical care. A congenial and well-informed tour guide, Lind balances her hopeful outlook with a sincere acknowledgement of how deeply racial and class inequalities affect these matters. Urban planners, policymakers, affordable housing advocates, and real estate developers will want to take a look.

    • Kirkus

      September 15, 2020
      An urban policy specialist investigates housing choices in the U.S. and their economic, social, and environmental implications. Much has changed in the housing picture since the rise in popularity of the single-family home, writes Lind, who tackles her subject with precision, on-the-ground reporting, and theoretical rigor. Just after World War I, the "Own Your Own Home" campaign arose in the wake of "a public health movement that was biased against the density of urban life, the family-centric approach to living, the creation of street-car transit, and the incentivizing of early suburbia." However, problems with this much-institutionalized ideal became evident early on: isolation, housing costs, household upkeep, environmental inefficiency, and racism in the form of redlining, exclusionary housing regulations, and restrictive covenants. The author, executive director of the Arts + Business Council for Greater Philadelphia, argues that a more flexible approach to housing would cure many of these ills. This would counter the stigmas and classism attached to densely occupied habitations and promote the affordability, community, and simplicity of co-living, micro-apartments, and tiny houses. Although Lind occasionally slides into the hazy territory of "paradigm shifts" and a "brave new world," she mostly works from steady ground. She proceeds from a history of housing modes in the U.S.--inns, boardinghouses, tenements, and apartments--to discussions of the streetcar suburbs and the more expansive sprawl that requires car travel. Not every reader will be enthusiastic about the concept of communal-style co-living arrangements (a tiny house may be more amenable), but the author delivers consistently solid arguments in favor of extended-family housing and other options outside the single-family paradigm. Humans, after all, are social beings and seek the comfort of a dependable community. "In co-living arrangements," writes Lind, "there's an open invitation to connect with people in common spaces." A vibrant case for a host of viable alternatives to the single-family home.

      COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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