Since I'm one of those people who has considered how easy it might be to find or build an eco-house (thinking principally of retirement, since I'm in tied housing for the foreseeable future), this came as an enormously cheering bit of news as well as giving a useful sense of what kind of costs may be involved. Worldchanging: Bright Green: The Future’s Made Of Straw: "swapping bricks for straw will increase insulation by up to three times more than building regulations require, so these houses won’t need heating systems. They’re anticipated to cost less too: the council has budgeted �110,000 per house – �20,000 less than the equivalent brick-build. And in the future, thanks to the experience gained through this project, future costs could be lower still.
The houses are designed by Amazonails, who are also behind the country’s first two-storey straw bale home, recently built in Somerset [see Landmark for straw]. Manager Emma Appleton believes straw bale homes could be part of the answer to housing shortages. They are simple to construct, easy to modify and can last upwards of 200 years."
What's not clear is some of the practicalities: what kind of differences it makes to the building process to have an estate rather than just custom-built. I'll have to keep an eye open for that.
Showing posts with label housing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label housing. Show all posts
03 June 2009
18 May 2007
Globalisation facing a revolt of the middle classes?
Hmm, makes you think, eh?
New Statesman - Revolt of the middle classes:
"think of the programmers and accountants who got themselves educated and trained as they were told to do, and now find their skills don't make them any more employable than assembly-line operatives.
Blinder reckons 30 to 40 million American jobs - between a quarter and a fifth of the total - are potentially offshorable. Not all will go, but the threat will send a shiver down the spine of Middle America and, Blinder predicts, transform its attitudes to social safety nets.
Combine that with the rise of the super-rich. This is another effect of globalisation: capital can ignore international barriers and drive down taxation by setting one country against another. Under new Labour, Britain has become a tax haven for the very wealthy and, as we are slowly realising, the distorting effect on the London-area housing market is profound. A generation of middle-class youth is moving into its thirties without the smallest prospect of owning a home"
New Statesman - Revolt of the middle classes:
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