Urbanizing the American dream : symbiotic housing for Baltimore

In the 1950s, the American dream of owning a suburban single family home was directed at one demographic, the nuclear family. America's resources seemed limitless: industry marketing and government policies encouraged over consumption and enabled middle class families to buy their own mass produced tract house on a plot of private land accessible only by car. The result was a landscape of sprawl and the draining of urban cores. Today, nearly sixty years later, attitudes toward how the middle class should live have shifted dramatically along with the make up of middle America itself, and the dream is no longer valid. The 21st century definition of the middle class has expanded to include unending variations of living groups which do not fit into the suburban mold. Further, our awareness of sustainability concerns drives us toward resource sharing and space exchange which is impossible to achieve in decentralized developments. Despite these issues however, housing for the middle class has changed very little. This thesis proposes an alternative dream, an urban one. The hypothesis: the conflict between how Americans want to live and what the urban environment has to offer can be resolved through a symbiotic relationship between three programs: long term family oriented housing, short term rental housing, and flexible education space. Decades of "dream" propaganda has left us with cultural attitudes which demand certain qualitative characteristics from housing, specifically access to light and air, privacy, safety, security. and permanence.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Gealy, Rachel (Rachel Katherine)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kent Larson.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/57863

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/57863