Jim Bacon’s 9 January post “Fewer Homes, Smaller Homes” makes a number of useful points. It is a shame that the discussion wandered off into the wasteland of Abstract Belief Tank Topics unrelated to the original post. These topics will be moot in the future if there is Fundamental Transformation. There will be no future without Fundamental Transformation. Why waste the bytes?

Housing is back on the front page of WaPo today: “The Crash: What Went Wrong; The Growing Foreclosure Crisis.”

The opening teaser reads: “One oft-repeated assertion no longer holds true. Those in trouble are not, primarily, lower-income borrowers. The foreclosure crisis has become a wave, afflicting neighborhoods [sic – note small “n”] of every stripe – but particularly communities [sic – note small “c”] created by the boom itself.”*

Wrong Size House in the Wrong Location.

If you do not understand that the evolving “news” supports what EMR has (and to a large extent, Jim Bacon has) been saying about the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis for half a dozen years then increase your Geographic Illiteracy medications.

If you do not understand, you do have an excuse. As pointed out in PART EIGHT Chapter 27 of TRILO-G:

“Conventional ‘regional’ mapping is based on municipal and state boundary geography and 18th century horseback perceptions of spacial relationships.” The data derived from the municipal, state, federal, and Enterprise geographic categories such as municipal borders, election districts, state borders, large Census agglomerations, zip codes, Area Codes and service areas are nearly useless in understanding fundamental economic, social and physical relationships.”

* Which is it? “neighborhood” or “community” Without a robust Vocabulary even discussion of human settlement pattern issue is a wasteland. Fundamental Transformation of human settlement patterns requires a comprehensive Conceptual Framework and a Vocabulary with which to discuss that Framework.

EMR