What Sets Us Apart?

Affordability

Affordable housing isn’t just a buzzword or an afterthought. It creates options for the poor, the working poor, and key workers like teachers, health workers, firefighters, and police officers who often can´t afford to live where they work.

Beauty and sociability should be available to those who can´t pay top dollar, and to those who can´t pay much at all. Good site-specific design can help. So can innovative materials and methods.

The CBC sees America´s least desirable places, like on-grade parking lots, as opportunities for redevelopment and renewal.

Two technologies that can enhance long-term affordability are modular construction and automated parking. Automated parking allows cars to occupy much smaller amounts of valuable urban real estate, saves fuel and insurance dollars, and (when properly located) enhances streetlife. Modular construction allows faster on-site building. It reduces costly wait time, allowing adjacent commercial and residential spaces to be occupied at the same time, cutting the developer´s cost of construction and starting positive cash flow sooner. Modular construction also allows infill in tighter spaces than otherwise possible. Recent innovations allow it to be used more creatively and in smaller spaces than in the past. Learn more at www.championhomes.net.

Together these technologies and good design allow for infilling vacant lots and parking lots. By increasing density in attractive ways, they can enhance affordability in another significant way: by enabling residents to drive less and use fewer cars.

Sustainability

Anything that you can keep doing for a long period is “sustainable.” You can stay up all night to cram for one exam, but staying up 24/7 isn’t sustainable. What does it take for an activity, or a building, or a community to be sustainable?

All kinds of things, from structural integrity to not being ugly. At the Center for Building Communities we focus on three factors — and they´re obviously not the only ones. An activity, building, or community is more likely to last if it is:

  • environmentally friendly (by conserving resources and minimizing waste),
  • socially fair and equitable (by welcoming all income levels, races, and ethnicities), and
  • economically viable (by not constantly losing money).

These “three E´s” (environment, equity, and economy) come close to the beautiful thought that sustainable development “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” first voiced by the Brundtland Commission in 1987. But we can use resources thriftily, refrain from polluting unnecessarily, welcome all people, and not lose money, without knowing exactly what future generations may need. Those are all good ideas right now.

What we do need is pragmatic problem-solving and design work, because the three E´s don´t always play nicely together. It´s easy to be super-green if you only serve those who can pay top dollar. It´s easy to be open to all if you rely on constant infusions of money from outside. It´s easy to be economically viable (at least in the short run) if you pollute. Managing to be all three at once is much more challenging — which is why we prefer to design sustainable homes, neighborhoods, and communities rather than spend any more time talking about sustainability in general.

If you want something a little more specific, the Project Albums are a good starting point.

Catholic Social Thought

The CBC´s approach fits with the University of Notre Dame´s mission “to create a sense of human solidarity and concern for the common good that will bear fruit as learning becomes service to justice,” and with several more specific principles of Catholic social thought:

  • individual rights in the context of corresponding responsibilities and the common good;
  • the dignity of work; an economy that serves people;
  • making the needs of the poor and vulnerable known and their voices heard;
  • seeking an equitable and sustainable future through stewardship of creation;
  • and working toward goals at the most local and participatory level possible.

Learn more at centerforsocialconcerns.nd.edu/mission/cst/cst_into.shtml

Building Communities

Cities are big, dense, and diverse. Ideally they also bring people together, fostering both public life (civil interactions among strangers) and community life (neighboring among friends and acquaintances). Why are some places lively and others dead?

One reason is design. Good design attracts people and fosters public life and community life; bad or indifferent design, however well-meant, does neither. It’s about the way activities and buildings and open areas are laid out in space.

Poorly designed urban places can be as isolating as rural ones. And places too spread out to be called cities can foster both public and community life if designed properly, like the Duke of Gloucester Street in Colonial Williamsburg. An urban place may be studded with buildings that are architectural masterpieces viewed in isolation, but that contribute little to the public life of the city as a whole.