On Friday afternoon I met with a class of architecture students who are researching the relationship between architecture and basic income. This strikes me as a super important issue to work on. One of my contentions in World After Capital is that with basic income the current trend towards everyone living in cities will be broken. As we are starting to need less land for agriculture (through improved yields and vertical farming), land outside of cities can be quite affordable. The trick will be to have housing that is also affordable.
One of the big goals of basic income is to increase individual freedom, so the idea here is not for the government to construct homes, but rather for people to either build and buy their own in the places they want to live. Part of this can be renovation of previously abandoned villages, but a significant part of this will likely be new construction. The challenge for architecture then would seem to be to create plans and sample buildings that can be shared widely and reproduced without royalties.
I have done some basic math and if the providers of capital are looking for low single digit percentage returns (eg in Europe there is capital that is looking for 2% annually), then you can afford to build quite a bit even if basic income is in the $800-1000 range per month. I am new to this particular aspect but excited to learn more. So I am looking for interesting projects around affordable housing, ideally with open source plans and support for off-grid or micro-grid implementation.
If you are aware of, or involved with, such a project, please let me know.
PS If you are waiting for more World After Capital edits, those will resume next week. I have spent the last two weekends reviewing analyst candidates for USV.
