I wasn't really sure how to title this as a good summary so I'll try to convey a rough idea. What if we established living spaces designed around the concept of a neighborhood, with the goal of affordable standardized housing?
I had seen an old mall getting torn down, and was thinking about the rise of online shopping and greater access to goods from the comfort of your home contributing to a likely decline in demand for such a large shopping center as traditional malls(or else maybe makes them more important as a collection?). I had a thought that maybe old mall structures could be turned into some type of standardized housing such as apartment complexes. Another thought joined this one as I was considering neighborhoods, and how most of my life is contained within a smaller area despite living in part of a much larger city.
While nothing is absolute, a lot of lives are lived mostly within some type of neighborhood or smaller community, even when the entirety of that community is contained within another larger community. What if we kept that in mind when approaching the idea of this concept I'm referring to as "standardized living". Hrm. I should probably try to give some idea about what I mean with that.
So when I say standardized living, I'm trying to reach for an idea of, well, something standard. Similar to the idea of rent-control and community housing I guess, but for me I was trying to think of something closer to basic accommodations that... would be granted to every citizen? Okay so this is where it gets more difficult to think about execution of idea, because building these structures to support populations and provide a means of affordable living spaces is something I think could be positive, there could easily be a lot of ramifications not even just in implementation that would be socially troubling.
This thought/idea has come about for me because the concept of poverty is a troublesome subject everywhere in the world, and while extreme separation of wealth is certainly an issue, I also think that being in poverty does not mean you are less valid as a human being. I live in poverty by the definition as I make little more than $20,000 a year, though I only really have to support myself. I am able to pay my bills and I am not unhappy with myself or my life, but I do get annoyed when I'm made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with not seeking wealth. "Well you should get a better job" is an idea that I find almost infuriating, most specifically due to the idea that money paid directly correlates to value of work being performed and/or the "value" of the person.
Most people are aware that money doesn't exactly buy happiness, but it offers certain amounts of accessibility that most can benefit from, so no, I'm not gonna try to make an argument that poverty is good or wanting to have more money is bad. I am frustrated at not only the way we see poverty as a society, but also the way we view those with little monetary wealth. I don't know how to change that, but maybe we could find ways to reduce the negative impacts by rethinking some of the basic ways we live our lives. One possible approach that is being "tested" is the idea of basic universal income - What if everyone got a certain amount of money each month? Similar in someways to the idea of welfare, I see this a generalizing/simplifying that idea further. It's easy to think of how this idea would be "abused" when thinking about the Welfare system, though I think the sentiment of abuse is greatly tied to the fact that there are requirements to receive welfare.
You could just spend the money on your bills, but what if you could opt to put that money towards state-sponsored healthcare, or state-sponsored housing? This is where the idea to turn large structures like malls into communities came from. There are a lot of difficulties and almost unforeseeable problems that lie in such an idea, but we also have no certainty or much reason to believe that we are going about things in the best way possible as it is. Our communities are often arranged the way they are due to history, not just the events but the fact that things are always building and growing. Some of the troubles with things like public transit and poor layouts are linked strongly to this, and designing a new space with current "life" in mind could yield positive results in those areas.
Here's the thing - this is an idea about making lives better, and that's something I would like to be important to us as a society, a civilization. I mean yeah it kind of already is, but I think we could try to take another look at how we are trying to make basic life better, and one of the greatest ways I think we could do this is to approach accessibility to basic needs as a serious goal. The idea of universal healthcare is part of this, and is an issue in large part due to the inflated costs of healthcare, most especially here in the US. Ultimately though, the argument for universal healthcare is not an argument about wealth, but an argument about accessibility to basic human needs and quality of life.
I went off a little on a tangent there because I didn't feel right mentioning healthcare without addressing current issues of poor access to healthcare, but ultimately it still ties to the root of this housing idea - can we offer greater accessibility to basic needs to provide a better life for humans? I honestly think we have the ability to do this, but as a society we need to make a stronger commitment to improve the future, we need to believe we can do better and honestly try to get there. I would like to believe that the US is a good country because I want to believe that its people are(especially as I am American), and I believe that we can do better as a country in offering a basic quality of life to those who live here.
Thank you for your time,
Alturiigo
ps Originally this was going to be me talking about and exploring the idea of neighborhood in a single structure, so even though no one reads my blog if you leave a comment maybe I'll come back to explore that idea more specifically
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