Is Community Self-Defense the "Actionable Solution" to Critical Regionalism?

Week 9

Is Community Self-Defence and Empowerment the actionable Solution to Critical Regionalism?

Part 1:

Humans maximize to our limitations

Vernacular was not a development of architectural taste, it was a functional result of material limitations, labor limitations, and location-specific threats and limitations. 

The charleston single house, the core unit of the urban webbing we admire and study today, is at its core humans maximizing to current limitations. 

Building Height - 2/3 stories max height of affordable/safe lightwood framing at the time

Parcel Size - maximizing built space in thin lot parcels.

Comfort Strategy - Full-length porch, aka "Piazza", needs passive cooling and circulation in squeezed lot parcel.

Materiality - Wood, because sawmills on the peninsula, trees were locally abundant (bang for the buck)

What I want to impress is that these houses are a result of maxing out the limitations of the time (building technology, parcel size, transport technology, local materials, local labor) and not finessed or thoughtful design (the kind we learn in architecture school. The finessed and thoughtful individual design does produce great results, but not on the scale that allows a beautiful urban fabric like Charlestons' peninsula.

Part 2:

Limitations no longer do their job

Limitations of locality, knowledge, and technology are so far removed that it's causing us trouble as a society. A small number of nomadic tribes cant change the earth's atmospheric carbon levels by 30% in 20 years, but we've proven 7 billion humans are able to instantly share knowledge, communicate logistics, and build/utilize massive infrastructure have proven capable. 

What changed? Human psychology didn't. Our limitations did.

Let's look at the new charleston single house

Let compare that 

 at the timebig box asphalt expanses and highways. It was humans doing the most with the resources available. Charlestonians had small lot size, limited building technology, and wood. The limit of no AC, building material, and the innate height restriction of that building material is what created the city, not someone figuring out and dictating what creates great urban fabric.

Modern society has overcome limitations and we have lost the human scale, the limits of location that defined the place.

Critical regionalism addresses the issue, I believe the solution lies in reimposing limits artificially, 

through community government, we now have to strictly codify the limitations that modern society has triumphed. This thought was brought when Diego acknowledged it's up to the community to defend itself against the washing out of consumerism. Now laws, insurance and code define the way built environment is shaped. Communities need to get togterh, define there strengths and weakness, and put into code the rules allow there community to be unique, and successful.