[lifesaviors] Re: Fwd: Greetings! <from David Neeley>
- From: <lionkuntz@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Palaces4People@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, lifesaviors@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 01:36:53 -0700 (PDT)
As usual, David has interesting comments, and
especially alerts me to where I an utterly failing to
be clear about what I am proposing. I often receive
comments, even arguments from people, which causes me
to make a new page to answer exactly that point in the
future. Sometimes I revise previous pages based on
feedback both positive and negative.
I welcome feedback on the concepts, but eschew
nitpicking about ME.
Anyway, this is what D.N. wrote:
--- David Neeley <dbneeley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Lion,
>
> This is but a short note to say "thanks!" for the
> opportunity to learn more about your project.
>
> My time just now is jammed full of
> commitments--chief among
> them is finding another regular job!--but it means I
> must
> work through some fairly crazy hours. Thus, I may
> not
> contribute as much as I might wish.
Such as you choose and such as you do, even little
bits help. Considering that there are about 25 other
members on this list, and practically no writers
writing, I do the best I know how by myself.
> One issue presently that I am concerned with is your
> insistance that *all* materials be of 100-year
> lifespan.
Not exactly: structural materials need to be good for
generations, but some systems break, or they need
upgrading (because who knows what the future will
bring, eh?). Functional systems need speedy
restoration, so essentials will have serviceway
passages ("secret passages" like all good Palaces in
literature) where plumbing, cabling, etc., can be
worked on without ripping up too many walls and
floors. Depending on the reports back from engineering
tests, which haven't even been started yet (I am
allowing a year of engineering studies and testing on
essential modules), it may be possible to have a
greater or lesser flexibility of loadbearing walls and
columns.
A good book to read is Stewart Brand's "How Buildings
Learn", about how buildings are changed by
remodelling, adding on, renovating, over their
lifetimes. Just because I haven't mentioned these
things does not mean I am not aware of them, and it
would be helpful if people stopped assuming that I am
ignorant of everything which I haven't mentioned -- it
causes frictions to make those assumptions. Instead,
assume I know what you know, and I might have already
considered the suggestion you are about to make --
after all, I've been involved in this process for 30
years of learning time, and 8 months of beginning
implimentation time. Then, assuming I HAVE CONSIDERED
IT, ask me why I didn't think it was the preferred
solution. AFTER that, then point out where you think I
am wrong.
> To
> me, individual interior units are impossible to make
> that
> will not be reshaped as the lives of people go
> through
> transformations. In addition, there are no materials
> that
> are immune from grime, accident, or other natural
> phenomena
> when in close proximity to everyday life.
I'm counting on it. That's why I insist on superstrong
materials, to maximize the possibilities of stretching
and shrinking and remodelling, and joining of units.
For the "Feasibility Study Phase", which we are in
now, where I elicite as much varied feedback from as
many varied viewpoints as I can (and it is like
pulling teeth to get people to discuss, even when they
voluntarily joined a discussion group), I need to keep
the options tightly focussed, not too freeform, or
there is nothing to discuss but everybodies own
private fantasy.
One cannot figure the cost of bricks without figuring
the length and height of brick walls. IF one does not
adopt some "givens", say 118 units per building,
divided into 2.2 hectares floorspaces, produces "x"
number of walls, which, if square units, require "y"
number of bricks, THEN one can never get any
approximate cost figures, AND THEN one can never know
if it costs too much, or does it cost less than you
were afraid it might and therefore adding a tennis
court is within the budget. Again we have a friction
caused by assumptions, rather than a question. Both
elicite the same information, but one appears to be
unfair criticism, and the other appears to be
understanding that, while I have thought about these
things for 30 years off and on, I am now into a
process which nobody has ever been through before in
all of earth's history: preparing for 4 billion more
people who are coming soon like it or not!
I am feeling my way through this process and extra
friction is not the best contribution people can make.
> Thus, it seems to me that the most effective
> approach may
> be to design some fairly standard utility cores but
> to be
> much more flexible with regard to the materials in
> living
> units and other areas of regular habitation. So long
> as the
> spine, circulatory and nervous system is intact
> throughout
> the building life with minimum human intervention,
> what
> does it matter if the skin changes with the passing
> years?
>
> Or have I missed something?
No you are echoing me. I have a published body of work
on this but it is distributed on Jacky Foo's
proceedings of the 5th International Ecocity
Conference e-conference website, posted on the
LifeSaviors Freelists.org archives, published in a
series of ongoing webpages at Ecosyn.us, and some
published here on Palaces4People@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx As
you said in an earlier message: I could use a good
index page, but I am swamped doing the parts I alone
know how to do, whereas the 50,000 people who know how
to put order into these documents don't feel like this
project is worth any of their volunteer time. So that
will wait until I get to it, or not. I don't NEED YOU
to understand where I'm coming from, although I spend
time explaining it to you and others: I NEED THE
MOVERS AND DOERS to understand, and I still have time
before I am at that exact time when a polished
presentation needs to happen. WHEN it needs to happen,
it will happen in lightning quick time, because I am
very very good at the things that I know I have to
finish at time-certain deadlines.
> During the years I practiced law (which has been
> some years
> ago, now), I occasionally visited incarcerated
> people. They
> lived very much in durable environments--but not
> conditions
> in which most humans would willingly inhabit!
And your point is these strike you as jail cells? I
certainly have failed to illustrate and explain, or
maybe you are busting balls? What I am proposing is a
lot like the middle-class Santa Rosa, California,
dwelling I am living in right now, except more
ecologically-friendly and way cheaper on the
utilities.
> In fact, I could make a fairly good case that in
> more
> tropical areas it might be an advantage to create
> many of
> the wall partitions with light weight and renewable
> materials found locally--bamboo, perhaps, or other
> such
> materials. Individual dwelling units would be
> principally
> the floorspace and the volume it represents and the
> various
> utility supplies. Families could thus have a great
> freedom
> as to the nature and form of their individual
> structures.
Big world. Lots of room for individual anarchist
palace builders. Go to it.
In the last two terrifying hours of their lives, the
20,000 people who died in a cyclone in 1999 in Orissa,
India, were praying to their god to send somebody like
me to show them how to have palaces for their children
to grow up in, instead of the flimsey structures that
gave them no protection from the elements when they
needed it most. In the post-holocaust rebuilding,
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Habitat for
Humanity (HfH) joined together to rebuild 2,000 homes
for a portion of the homeless. At an average cost of
US$632, families got 12m^2, one-room houses with one
window made of flyash-sawdust compressed earth blocks
which does not melt in the rain. Unlike your thesis,
these people do NOT WANT light weight and decomposible
housing if they can get anything else. Average annual
income = $38/year. Unlike SOME would-be Palace
entrepreneurs, I have some exclusive technologies that
I can sell to the selfish-pigs of the world, and take
my profits to Orissa, because their god heard their
prayers.
http://www.swaminarayan.org/news/1999/11/orissacyclone/
http://www.habitatindia.org/disaster.htm
http://www.habitatindia.org/cost.htm
http://www.devalt.org/newsletter/may01/of_12.htm
> Next, another thought has struck me over and over in
> evaluating what I am learning. In China or India,
> the
> Palaces would represent a lifestyle far above that
> of the
> average citizens. It would be natural that the
> government
> bureaucrats and managerial staff of various
> enterprises--all sorts of mid-level
> functionaries--would
> most likely usurp the early buildings for themselves
> with
> the attendant larger per-resident areas and the
> like.
I see a lightbulb over your head. "Maybe", you are
thinking, "this guy is not as dumb as I've been
thinking he is..."
Well, you are right. I am not that dumb. I already
explained in my previously published body of work, why
for 30 years I wouldn't give any of these technologies
to the selfish-pigs, who grab everything and leave $38
for the poor to live on for a whole year.
That lightbulb may help you see why I do things MY
WAY, and why I am planting Palaces on 3 continents
simultaniously, with groundbreaking on the first one
probably in 2005. Which nation will be first, I have
no idea -- got an invitation from a UN group working
in remote mountains of Iran today to put my head
together with theirs for thinking up solutions to
their biodiversity crisis. Shrinking the human
footprint is the ONLY solution to the world's
biodiversity crisis. We all know it's true.
> It seems to me that this must be anticipated--and,
> to an
> extent, even welcomed! By starting at that level,
> the
> social attraction to others within the population
> may be
> enhanced--and the somewhat more wealthy original
> inhabitants could absorb more of the development
> cost of
> their units while the breeder technology helps
> supply the
> structures for the less fortunate--and therefore
> taking
> less public money for the entire thing.
There is NO PUBLIC MONEY. The HfH homes in Orissa were
sold to the people, not given to them. Like everybody
else, they've got mortgage payments to make. One set
of home payments finances the next round of new home
building, exactly like Bank of America does it, except
that HfH does,'t charge interest, and only charges for
cash-outlays. HfH clients put in 500 hours sweat
equity (usually on their own home, but sometimes on
others) and build their own 12 meter^2 one window
palace.
The big difference in Palaces over the HfH model is I
provide industry and employment as part of the whole
Palaces package. Every Palace for the People has a
whole hectare (2.54 acres) of indoor workshops,
offices, stores, as places where people pay rent to
the Palace for space and hire employees for their
businesses. Former rickshaw drivers will be learning
how to assemble solar PV panels; ditchdiggers will be
collecting rents from the business spaces they helped
build. The projected Palaces mortgage payoff is one
year, debt free. The PV breeders payback in one year.
> You have probably anticipated both of these topics,
> but I
> have not yet found the treatment of it.
Yeah, I have a webpage explanation of my position on
roughly that, branching of the "Water & Sewer" page,
which totally caused my harrasser Scott to blow a
gasket when he discovered that I didn't claim to be as
dumb as everybody else who never invented a damn thing
in their lives, and I wasn't going to give it away to
people I don't like.
> If any or all of this note seems relevant to the
> list
> itself, feel free to post it. Meanwhile, I must rush
> back
> to my other pressing commitments this evening!
>
> All the best,
>
> David
It's all good. Feedback is feedback, whether positive
or negative. I can take some rough stuff, for a while
at least, and praise always sets my bullshit detector
off. I don't NEED either of those, but there is a lot
of dross for every flake of gold in this world. Some
days it's all dross, and some days "EUREKA!"
=====
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Sincerely, Lion Kuntz
Santa Rosa, California, USA
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Palaces4People/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Palaces4Japan/
http://www.ecosyn.us/ecocity/Proposal/Palaces_For_The_People.html
http://www.ecosyn.us/ecocity/Challenges/Asia_Floods/Wet/All_Wet.html
http://www.ecosyn.us/Interesting/
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