The detached single-family home is synonymous with the American Dream. Although popularly associated with suburbs, single-family houses are also the basic building block of most U.S. cities and dominate their urban form. Join urban design and housing expert, Dr. Vinit Mukhija for a talk focused on how single-family housing neighborhoods are slowly but significantly changing through informal and unpermitted modifications by homeowners, in opposition to long-held norms and standards. Mukhija cites case studies in Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, and Vancouver to examine how homeowners’ economic interests are changing the rules of single-family living, while outlining the need for inclusive planning and public policies to expand the idea of housing as a social dream.
Mukhija's research draws from Global South-dominated informal economy literature on informal settlements and housing to understand how homeowners change their single-family homes without permits and how they avoid enforcement action from local governments. He uses the Global South as an analytical framework to focus on less advantaged groups, their linkages with the market economy, struggles with market-based housing policies, and their responses of survival and resistance. Through his scholarship, Mukhija challenges emerging conventional ideas in U.S. urban planning.