The Death and Life of the Single-Family House: Lessons from Vancouver on Building a Livable City

Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy

by Nathanael Lauster

Vancouver today is recognized as one of the most livable cities in the world as well as an international model for sustainability and urbanism. Single-family homes in this city are “a dying breed.” Most people live in the various low-rise and high-rise urban alternatives throughout the metropolitan area. The Death and Life of the Single-Family House explains how residents in Vancouver attempt to make themselves at home without a house. Local sociologist Nathanael Lauster has painstakingly studied the city’s dramatic transformation to curb sprawl. He tracks the history of housing and interviews residents about the cultural importance of the house as well as the urban problems it once appeared to solve. Although Vancouver’s built environment is unique, Lauster argues that it was never predestined by geography or demography. Instead, regulatory transformations enabled the city to renovate, build over, and build around the house. Moreover, he insists, there are lessons here for the rest of North America. We can start building our cities differently, and without sacrificing their livability.

Genres: Urban Planning, Nonfiction

262 pages, Hardcover

Published November 2, 2016

Reviews

[CL Chu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Death and Life of the Single-Family House is a nice-written (academic) analysis of the housing conditions and the human experience of living in Vancouver. Nathanael Lauster has convincingly demonstrated that, through historical and interview data, single-family, suburban, detached houses may (or should) no longer be assumed as the ideal housing option.

Three features in Lauster's methodology deserve special attention. The first is the utilization of ANT (actor network theory) when deciphering the multifacetedness of the entity people call by the name "house": a concrete entity, a cultural symbol, a commodity, and above all, a crystallization of zoning and building regulation. The second is his ecological metaphor of viewing house, along with other kinds of housing, as "habitat". And the last is an emphasis on human's "habits", and his argument that what determine a place as "inhabitable" should be the possibility it provides for human to form new habitat or continue established ones and facilitate not only "adaptation" but active "exploration".

Based on solid archive and interview evidence, the book has delineated the potential problems and actual benefits house can provide, while showing that other types of housing (condo, townhouse, apartment, etc.) may also be capable of providing such benefits without the problems the habitat of house has induced.

However, the book may be more comprehensive had it contained more suggestions on how people can appreciate his alternative and acknowledge the necessity of change. In my opinion, a critical articulation of the experience of those who do consider house as an ideal habitat but unable to afford it due to the social, economic, and political contingencies of Vancouver, which the book has documented quite well, may make the author's argument even stronger and his proposal more solid.