Social mix

Since the middle of the last century, the planning of many residential areas has been based on the assumption that a socially mixed community is a desirable goal and that housing planners can reach real social mix, interaction, awareness and a “feeling of community”.

As early as 1849, a British industrialist proposing a new “model town” for his employees claimed that “the highest degree of health, contentment, morality and enjoyment yet seen in any existing community” would result if his town of New Victoria were peopled by “an adequate number of inhabitants with such due proportions between the agricultural and manufacturing classes and between the possessors of capital, skills and labour” (Buckingham, 1849).

Some writers have argued that without a heterogeneous population a neighborhood cannot provide the choices and experiences necessary for a meaningful life. Others argue that age mix is essential if community organizations are to have effective leadership.

But there are situations where forcing the mixing of people is not a “good” idea. So, having social mix is always good? Can there be “bad” social mix?

Housing or dwelling?

“The different forms taken by dwellings are a complex phenomenon for which no simple explanation will suffice” Amos Rapoport. Form and culture (1969).

So, the factors that differentiate a dwelling of another are so wide that it becomes impossible to extract any standard. To start understanding what a dwelling is, the first thing we should know is who the dweller is. But every single group of people (family) in the world could be the dweller, because they are all different.
Even so it’s possible to establish groups with similar necessities generated by the “SOCIO-CULTURAL FACTORS”. And that could help to establish different types of houses, but not different types of dwellings, because a house isn’t a dwelling until the dweller come to live in it.“A dwelling is only a dwelling, not when it has a certain form, not when it fulfils certain conditions, which have been written down after long study, not when certain dimensions and provisions have been made to comply with municipal by-laws, but only and exclusively when people come to live in it.” N.J.Habraken. Suports. An alternative to Mass Housing, 1961 (1972).

Then architects design houses, and they are able to make dwellings just when the dwellers participate in the designing, constructing and modifying process.

In conclusion, must a HOUSE adapt to each dweller in order to be the perfect HOME?