POD & SHELL™ Housebuilding

POD & SHELL™ is a housebuilding strategy that combines a compact, “manufactured-house component” with a site-built Living-Space SHELL. The manufactured component—the POD—is an integrated, Kitchen-Bath-Laundry-Off-Grid Power module. It provides—in a “ready-to-use” package—all the mechanical, plumbing, electrical, appliance and cabinetry systems necessary for a modest, fully functional, off-grid or grid-tied dwelling. In essence, the POD provides everything a modest sized dwelling needs except Living-Space!

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SMRTram and The Horizontal Skyscraper

SMRTram™ is a high-capacity people-mover–a “HORIZONTAL ELEVATOR” that can be inserted into virtually any existing urban street corridor to extend the distances a pedestrian can access from a parked car, or a hotel room, or an apartment. This “pedestrian access distance” is typically a quarter mile or less. SMRTram™ can extend that distance to a mile or more. This may seem a simple (and obvious) functionality that every urban business district ought to have (with enormous implications for reducing traffic-congestion and increasing livability) but the technology to make it happen must achieve four necessities that pose a significant challenge:

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SOHO in the SKY

Community Infrastructure & Affordable Housing Soho is an example of a “Community Infrastructure” (CI) that could be funded with the operations of modern fiat money. It looks like a “building,” but it is actually a vertical “building site” for 165 individual residential projects each of which is designed, financed, constructed and owned separately. The CI—and the land it sits upon—are owned in perpetuity by a non-profit National Housing Coop. (“National” is important because modern fiat money can only be issued by a sovereign nation.)

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A Place To Build

  Many readers of Re-Thinking Tiny Houses will no doubt be saying to themselves: “A new strategy for building affordable dwelling structures is all well and good—BUT there’s a bigger problem to be solved as well! Where can you find an affordable place to build an affordable house?” This question goes to heart of a dilemma that Market Society has created for itself from the very beginning. Visualizing how Modern Fiat Money and Architecture can confront this dilemma is the goal of my next book.

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