Scarcity By Design

A surprising and intriguing examination of how scarcity—and our flawed responses to it—shapes our lives, our society, and our culture

No American metropolis has intervened in its housing market quite as aggressively as New York since World War II - and yet none is as burdened by the scarcity, poor quality, uneven distribution, and high cost of its rental housing stock. Why, after half a century of rent control, public housing programs, tax abatements, and land use regulation, is it so difficult for thousands of New Yorkers to find, rent, or maintain decent apartments? Addressing issues that are hotly debated in the Big Apple and other cities across the nation, Peter Salins and Gerard Mildner analyze New York's policies and assess their largely detrimental effects on housing quality and availability. They show how programs that were instituted for the benefit of both investors and the poor - by directly and indirectly subsidizing housing construction and by capping rents - have instead caused misallocation of housing, exacerbated tensions between tenants and landlords, progressively stifled private investment, and resulted in building deterioration and abandonment. Scarcity by Design is an object lesson in what governments should not do if they wish to improve housing and maintain communities. The authors make a strong case for deregulation: arguing from a free-market perspective, Salins and Mildner clearly demonstrate how transition to a fully deregulated, unsubsidized housing market would alleviate the social and economic woes of New York's tenants. They present deregulation as the essential stimulus of housing production, fair pricing, and good maintenance. The authors' crisply written analysis of New York's housing problems and their proposed solutions will enlighten citizens, city managers, investors, builders, and urban planners, and should spark discussions in academic as well as professional circles

Facing Up to Scarcity offers a powerful critique of the nonconsequentialist approaches that have been dominant in Anglophone moral and political thought over the last fifty years. In these essays Barbara H. Fried examines the leading schools of contemporary nonconsequentialist thought, including Rawlsianism, Kantianism, libertarianism, and social contractarianism. In the realm of moral philosophy, she argues that nonconsequentialist theories grounded in the sanctity of "individual reasons" cannot solve the most important problems taken to be within their domain. Those problems, which arise from irreducible conflicts among legitimate (and often identical) individual interests, can be resolved only through large-scale interpersonal trade-offs of the sort that nonconsequentialism foundationally rejects. In addition to scrutinizing the internal logic of nonconsequentialist thought, Fried considers the disastrous social consequences when nonconsequentialist intuitions are allowed to drive public policy. In the realm of political philosophy, she looks at the treatment of distributive justice in leading nonconsequentialist theories. Here one can design distributive schemes roughly along the lines of the outcomes favoured—but those outcomes are not logically entailed by the normative premises from which they are ostensibly derived, and some are extraordinarily strained interpretations of those premises. Fried concludes, as a result, that contemporary nonconsequentialist political philosophy has to date relied on weak justifications for some very strong conclusions.

From its creation in January 2012, The Scarcity and Creativity Studio has developed a teaching method which reaffirms a commitment to architecture as a service to society, questions the idea of the individual creator in favour of collaborative design, and challenges the traditional master-student relationship. This book documents the projects and, in so doing, explains the practices and pedagogic methods which the studio has developed in relation to architecture education in general and design build education in particular. Aimed at students, teachers, and professionals who are exploring the possibilities of design build, the 16 built projects are fully documented in text, drawings, and photos and can be used as both inspiration and references. Projects are based in Norway, Finland, Chile, Ecuador (Galápagos), Kenya, South Africa, China, Argentina, and Lebanon.

John Heskett was a pioneering British design historian, with a particular interest in design and economics. Design and the Creation of Value' publishes for the first time his groundbreaking seminar on design and economic value. In remarkably clear and accessible prose Heskett explores the how the key traditions of economic thought conceive of how value is created. Critically teasing out the role of design in this process, Heskett shows how design's role in innovating and creating value creating value for organisations and products can be given a firm grounding in economic theory. Featuring examples of businesses which have successfully responded to the value of design in their practice, as well as others who have failed because of their inability to understand value-creation, Heskett looks in detail at the relationship between producers, markets, products and consumers, using these instances to offer a both a strong critique of the limitations conventional economic thought and new model of the economic importance of design thinking in value creation.

“While you’re reading Neuro Web Design, you’ll probably find yourself thinking ‘I already knew that…’ a lot. But when you’re finished, you’ll discover that your ability to create effective web sites has mysteriously improved. A brilliant idea for a book, and very nicely done.” – Steve Krug, author of Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability Why do people decide to buy a product online? Register at your Web site? Trust the information you provide? Neuro Web Design applies the research on motivation, decision making, and neuroscience to the design of Web sites. You will learn the unconscious reasons for people’s actions, how emotions affect decisions, and how to apply the principles of persuasion to design Web sites that encourage users to click. Neuro Web Design employs “neuro-marketing” concepts, which are at the intersection of psychology and user experience. It’s scientific, yet you’ll find it accessible, easy to read, and easy to understand. By applying the concepts and examples in this book, you’ll be able to dramatically increase the effectiveness and conversion rates of your own Web site.

Leading analysts of all the major resource domains - water, food, material, energy and finance - are all telling us that our global industrial growth models are taking the planet to the brink of chronic scarcity. In architecture, concerns about depleting material and energy sources have largely been centered on the more emollient category of 'sustainability.' This book brings together leading thinkers for the first time in a single volume, including Ezio Manzini, Erik Swyngedouw, John Thackara and Jeremy Till. In addition, featured architects and designers include Jody Boehnert, Katrin Bohn and Andre Viljoen.