So I am sure most have seen a typical suburban neighborhood. Some of us probably live in them. One of the strategies I have been reading about to help reduce the energy usage of homes is to properly site a house on a piece of property.

Most of these neighborhoods are always situated the same. Winding streets with no organization with relatively equal sized lots and all the houses face the street with a large garage and the long axis facing the street and the back yard.

Now unless the street is north or south, this is not going to be efficient energy-wise.

So how do you overcome this? How do we take the standard "house farm" and make it more about sustainability from the aspect of house siting?

For what its worth, the existing "house farms" may be a lost cause as far as siting. The houses are already there, and you have to deal with your solar orientation. Its not like you could tear down all the poorly oriented houses and build new. So those you are stuck with.

There isn't much light at the end of the tunnel for new construction either. The consumer wants more house for less cash. That is the driving factor. It is as true in the housing market as when you are shopping at the grocery store. Most people will sacrifice some quality to gain quantity and reduce cost. It is a sad tale but the consumer driven housing market is not the most conducive to the green aspirations of this new era.

I don't know how you overcome siting issues on an existing house. If you have too many windows on the north side of the house or too few on the south, you pretty much have to deal with the problems those situations pose. Only when people start to build in response to nature rather than in response to market trends and dollar signs will houses be efficient and people will want to stay in them for a long time.

You don't. Quite simply, bad siting of houses is next to impossible to overcome. You can work with what you have, but as far as overcoming the poor siting of a home, you have little chance.

If you are talking more theoretically about the building industry, then that is a question of market forces and educating the home buying public, and they are typically more worried about how many beds, baths and square feet a home rather then which way is south in relationship to that large gaudy window.

So is there any way to take an existing "house farm" in anywhere america suburbia and transform it into a sustainable community. How do you take what is existing and make it work in a new paradigm.

I just think it is a bad practice to place certain people in one box where they are doing right and the rest in another box where they don't have a choice.

I don't think you can take something such as the "house farm" and transform it in situ. I think this is one of those times when its better to do as much as you can with what is already built and focus idealism on new construction and major renovation. Even that is going to be a challenge as there is a large resistance to change and a skepticism that pervades the rhetoric surrounding green building.

here here to being skeptical about all of this "greening" of our lives.

I was actually criticizing the skepticism not promoting it. I know its an unstoppable force in many cases, but what is there really to be skeptical about when it comes to living more sustainably.

you move. or don't live in one of those atrocious house farms. the market won't change so long as money, square footage, bedrooms and bathrooms are the major concern. you just can't overcome those forces with ideas of good will.

pa, that seems kind of defeatist. Is that the attitude that will help us achieve a goal of living greener lives and creating a more sustainable residential fabric? Moving won't change the way the market is driven and in fact moving and buying/building new will only serve to reinforce the bad trends, that is unless you intend (and so does everyone else) to build/renovate green and sustainably. If everyone bought green the market would respond, but they don't, so I ask you how do you overcome the issues you mention?

i think phil brings up a good point, albeit in a pessimistic fashion. The market is driven by the consumer first and foremost, but the trends set in the past decades have created adaptations in the building and real estate industries. A focus on square footages and the types of rooms, quickly built, not so customized homes, short term residency. These are all trends that have created a housing market that values nothing more than money and capital. Overcoming this is not impossible as phil's post suggests, but it involves a massive shift in consumer awareness and buying trends. I don't see it happening next week, but through education and slowly shifting the market, it could happen.

Maybe we can't help the mistakes that were made in the past and maybe we can't salvage the tract home farms that dot the American landscape, but to fix the problem, perhaps we must focus on the future houses and push for trends where people pay attention to their homes as they are constructed. The professionals will be on board with this far before the consumers and because of that, builders, architects, contractors and developers must educate the public on how to better structure or neighborhoods and communities.

While I often question the green movement and the viability of many of the tenants, I must say, I do loath the suburban tract home. YUCK. I wish we could find a way to correct the mistakes of the past, but to be honest, there is really nothing that can be done with the houses already in existence. The best thing we can do is to live in them, improve them where we can and build new with a new paradigm as the old houses fade away.

It seems like there are no good ideas to correcting or overcoming the missteps of the suburban tract home. I don't know if I accept that but I too find problems trying to overcome the environmental bane that is the suburban neighborhood. We can fight little battles and win some, but I don't see many developers driven to change anything.

Anyone? c'mon. there has to be something we can do to improve our current situation.

time, education and incentives. That is how you change the current building trends. You won't do it with scare tactics and pleading with your neighbors. The markets are so entrenched that it may take decades to undo the monstrosity that is the american suburb