More shackitecture and call for “Urban Homesteading Act”

Last week, Mister Jalopy started out to write another one of is fine entries on D+R about “shackitecture” and ended up penning a proposal for an “Urban Homesteading Act,” a new generation of homesteading laws.

As discussed on D+R previously, the local zoning and building departments represent an impregnable, byzantine bureaucracy so difficult to navigate that it often becomes an insurmountable obstacle to amateurs. Of course, those departments do a terrific public service that is necessary for civilization to continue, but I think there is a possibility to refine and streamline these departments to serve individuals.

There are communities dying from lack of investment, dwindling population, dying industry and a diminished tax base. Imagine a progressive rural community that opened a shackitecture/homesteading office – a building department that didn’t tell you what you can’t build, but what you can build. How would it work?

Tar Paper, Mining Camps, Norwegian Photographers, Adaptive Reuse of Milk Trucks and the Call for an Urban Homesteading Act

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