Albuquerque, NM
May 14 -16, 1997
Joseph Montoya, Principal Planner, Community Development Division
City of Santa Fe and
Steven Bruger, Executive Director
Tierra Contenta Corporation
The production of affordable housing is an important ingredient in preserving the centuries-old cultures which built the city of Santa Fe in the first place. Due to the amount of gentrification, Santa Fe’s indigenous people have been hardest hit by Santa Fe’s booming housing market. Families who have lived in their homes for generations are paying more in property taxes than was ever paid for the house. Even more significant, the children had nowhere to go where they could afford to live. A generation of people were being either forced out of town or were destined to pay too much for the few available, substandard homes. In creating mechanisms to work toward the production of housing and preservation of a people and their culture, it was essential to borrow important values which these indigenous cultures could teach us. This means that not only is the production of housing essential, but the manner in which housing is produced is just as important.
One of the most important elements of the Santa Fe Affordable Housing Roundtable is the decision making process. The process is rooted and molded after traditional patterns of group interactions and determinations. First, the people who implement the programs are those most affected, and they are also the ones who decide the allocations of resources. The decision makers are not distinct from the implementors. Because the group is expected to make far reaching policy decisions, it must be responsible. Members of the group must have a sense of accountability to the Roundtable and community as a whole. Another required aspect of this model is honesty. The group members must be honest about their capabilities and their needs. All members must remember their respective roles and their commitment to the strategic plan which they collectively developed. This is clearly a bottoms up consensus approach to self governance and decision making.
Another important aspect of the culturally influenced Roundtable process is the design of the individual programs. One example of the new program is the land trust. A land trust acquires parcels of land to be held in perpetuity for the benefit of that community. It provides secure affordable access to land primarily for housing through long term ground leases. This model prohibits speculation and absentee ownership of land. This model is especially effective in high cost land areas, such as Santa Fe, where developed lots can’t be found under $50,000. This system of land ownership takes the cost of land out of the equation thus making housing units produced on the land far more affordable. One of the models we used to design the land trust program in Santa Fe were old Spanish and Mexican land grants. Grants of land were made to families or groups of colonists for the purpose of allocating land in much the same way that the American government granted land through homesteading. The big difference, however, is that land was not granted free simple to an individual but land was provided toward a full clan of people. Most of the land was held in perpetuity for grazing, forest products or agriculture. The colonists held the land in common title so there was a unified interest in preserving the land and improving it. This led toward a unique system of land and organizational governship.
In designing the land trust program we borrowed liberally from these historic models. Not only do these models have hundreds of years of experience behind them, they are, most importantly, reflective of the culture which produced them. Since Santa Fe still has a historic living culture it was felt that this model would be more easily accepted here than in other parts of the country.
Another example of a newly developed program which is culturally influenced is the home-owner built program. The people of Santa Fe have a centuries old tradition of building their homes from the readily available materials of mud, water, stucco, cactus and wood. The tradition of home-owner building has degenerated as late because of changing financing instruments, complex code requirements and basic economic factors. People were being forced to sell land which was in the family for generations because they were caught between higher taxes and little ability to finance the construction of a new home. There are however, quite a few native people who still own land. A significant percentage of the population has some construction skills in view of the fact that construction represents over 20% of the economy.
With these contracts and opportunities in mind, we felt there was a chance to continue the tradition of home-owner building through the development of a new program. The home-owner built program is designed to assist with the construction process including drafting, construction supervision, permitting, construction management and training in areas such as cost containment strategies and alternative building techniques. In addition to construction assistance, the program includes assistance with general budgeting, legal and title work, and most importantly, access to alternative aspects of financing. Other assistance is provided in the form of referrals and access to lower cost materials, training of construction skills, and information on kit homes and a construction training camp.
Perhaps the most important aspect of attempting to borrow from indigenous cultural patterns is in the area of design. The premise in design philosophy is that there is a deeply intertwined connection between culture, design values, and human relationship. There is a firm belief that the built environment and its relationships affect and assist in molding human relationships. It is important to note that human relationships are reflective of cultural patterns. The manner, quality, depth, and degree of human relationships are in part molded by cultural background. Our living environment, including the man-made environment, helps shape that cultural background. In this context, language, rituals, literature, food, music, and art are not culture, they are images of a culture, but not culture in themselves. Culture is defined as a set of values and lifestyles which have a distinctive nature and history.
What does modern suburban development tell us about current American culture and how does this type of development shape our human relationships? Street layouts are often gridded and always uniform at least in width. The roadways are engineered in a way that usually has no relationship to the natural topography or any other site considerations except perhaps viewscapes. What this implies is that housing developments are designed to dominate nature, or at least for the few, visually conquer the natural landscape. The uniformity of roads is designed with the maximum amount of efficiency in mind. Perfectly perpendicular lines, right angles, consistency, and uniformity are rules that are held high. Remember, we invented McDonald’s. Street layouts are not only a function of those values but of the process by which they are built. Roads are conceived and drawn with tools that are mechanistic by nature. Usually these specialized tools and the specialized people who operate them are miles away from the site, getting paid to do a job they have little human connection too. Their guidance comes from national, state, and local regulations and national professional standards which also increase uniformity. The idea and value of specialization, fee for services, standardization, and the need and will of regulation are all very prominent in American culture.
One truly great American tradition is its love affair with the car. This love affair with the car is also reflected in our street layouts. Our streets and parking requirements are carefully engineered around the specific needs of our automobiles. This may not seem odd especially until when one considers that cars have become more important to the design of cities than are humans. Few, if any, urban design start with human scale pedestrian systems of transportation to build cities around, yet for most of our human history this is exactly how cities were built.
The housing patterns which are then tacked on to the automotive demonstrated street and street dominated design also reflect ongoing cultural values. Garages are set prominently in front, making a bigger statement than the front door. The houses themselves are at clear 90 degree angles to the street and perpendicular to each other.
Each house is a distinct element of its surrounding urbanscape with little or no relationship to the house next door. Most houses are built on a pattern that provides very little distinction between houses, so there seems to be a great need to differentiate between units through some kind of facade embellishment. The desire to make strong statements of individualism under the umbrella of mass production is a statement of our own internal conflicts. Not only is each house a statement of individualism it is also a statement financial wealth. Our houses are symbols of success, or what our culture sees as success, rather than simple habitats for humans. Houses are built of materials irrespective of their locations. Modern manufacturing, transportation, processing distribution, codes and construction techniques makes housing units constructed in the same manner with the same materials anywhere in the United States, lumber from Oregon, nails from Pennsylvania, gypsum from Arizona, asphalt from Idaho all come together anywhere in the United States.
This kind of residential building environment is influencing our human relationship patterns. Since streets are designed and used primarily for automobiles and not as social gathering places for human beings there is not surprisingly little social contact. People drive directly into their home through their garage, close the door, turn on the television and are physically separated, by design, from their neighbors. Private open space is highly valued, common open space or a front yard are used as landscaped monuments for the garage. The housing units themselves are designed for nuclear families which are increasingly occupied by smaller and smaller family units, highlighting the sense of individualism. Because personal economic growth is so valued, Americans have become a very transient people. Americans move on the average of once every seven years, primarily for increased economic opportunity or housing upgrades. This type of transition does not allow for deep ties to a specific community but indicates a greater value on a type of house rather than to a specific location. This kind of transience is made easier by the fact that housing units are often so similar from one part of the county to another that families can do this with very little social upheaval.
How are these aspects of the built environment different from Santa Fe’s traditional cultural and building patterns. In Santa Fe’s historic areas or those areas that were built before institutionalization of zoning and subdivision regulations, each street with its angles and corners is unique, thus providing visual adventure. Streets are small, winding and never uniform in width and length. The streets follow natural topographical constraints and are closely patterned around hills, vegetation, drainage systems, water access and spiritual points. Streets are clearly not designed around the car as may a frustrated visitor can testify. The streets themselves are of secondary importance to the landscape and housing. The street patterns and size are less of a feature than the massing of walls, portals and other architectural elements which demonstrate the fabric of the urbanscape. The housing blends with the street not simply placed on individual lots. Many homes are built up to the street and very close to each other. Each house is completely unique in design, yet does not stand as an individual statement but blends in with the surrounding homes and landscape. There is no clear distinction between large or small homes and often many homes are connected to each other. There is rarely a straight line between homes, nor do the homes themselves have straight angles or definitions, a fact which often drives surveyors crazy. Homes are oriented toward interior, not toward the street and private open space is provided through the connection between several homes. Houses are traditionally built out of mud, stone and vigas from the immediate natural environment.
These kinds of building patterns are reflective of quite a different set of values and have produced quite a different set of human relationship patterns. Because there is little difference between the massing and the style of housing units, there is very little perceivable difference between the people who occupy the units. This provides for a healthy socio-economic mix of people. Wealthy people do not flaunt wealth, and poorer people do their very best to maintain dignity. The overall value is not to individually make a statement, but to blend into the fabric of the community. The housing is not mass produced but hand crafted, often by its residences who have extended family units, who work together and often build next to each other. The idea of community was focused on the extended family and housing unit relationships promoted a high degree of daily contact. Human contact is mandatory because the building patterns do not allow for isolation. The importance of the extended family and the tie to same land for generations are often of greater value than the chasing of increased economic fortune.
The form of the architecture is simple, primitive and elegant. The combination of massing, muffed coloring, deep textures provides a type of serenity rather than spectacle. Again, it’s an architecture of tranquillity and repose rather than promotion.
The production of affordable housing can be used as a tool to maintain a living environment and promote traditional values and perspectives. Clearly the manner and system we use in producing housing are important in maintaining these traditional values. If, for example, extended families no longer have land, expertise or financial means to build next to each other, then this provides another force to fragment families leading to dislocation and employment transience. This then also leads to a profound breakdown in the social fabric of a cherished way of life and a fundamental breakdown of these healthy and nurturing cultural norms which have developed over the centuries. It is, of course, unrealistic to believe that if we design new development like old ones, all economic and social systems will also return and produce a living past. It may be possible, however, to provide a living environment which is less car oriented, provides areas for meaningful social contact, and a revised sense of community.
Copyright � 1998 by Joseph Montoya and Steven Bruger