Demapping Automotive Landscapes: Affordability as a Land Game

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges to affordable housing provision is the level of parking space that zoning laws demand for new developments. It makes land costs prohibitive, and pushes new dwellings out to peripheral locations. Marc Norman – founder of the community development consultancy Ideas and Action, and associate professor of practice at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning – recently curated an exhibition at New York's Center for Architecture titled ‘Designing Affordability: Quicker, Smarter, More Efficient Housing Now’. Here he presents initiatives around the world, from legislative change to clever modular architectural design, that offer ways of redressing the balance between car and community.