Not only … but also …
Much though I love Monty Python, the Sixties’ funniest comedian ever was the incomparable Peter Cook, who with partner Dudley Moore hosted, wrote, produced, and performed a series of side-splitting shows called Not only Peter Cook but also Dudley Moore.
Because, ever since the Cook-Moore Not only … but also … I have been unable to use the phrase without thinking of Pete and Dud, I find myself bringing them up frequently when I talk about housing, because housing is not only an essential attribute of each person’s life, but also a link to family and societal success.
For the informally employed, not only secure tenure but also the cocoon of entrepreneurship. Women who can work at home earn money as seamstresses, laundresses, and cooks.
Mahila Milan (Women Together), savings co-operative, Mumbai
For families with children, not only the home but also the incubator of good citizens. A safe and secure home is where children get most of their education about life.
Mother and son, Mumbai slums
For homeowners, not only shelter but also wealth accumulation.
Self-Employed Women’s Association bank,
Homeownership is the largest investment most people make in their lives, their principal source of retirement income.
For aspiring entrepreneurs, not only a work space but also the principal source of equity to start new businesses.
Apples grown in a garage
For cities, not only neighborhoods but also the largest share of total property value, the largest source of municipal revenue, and the city’s skeleton. What is a city? It is a place where strangers live peaceably together in very close proximity.
Everyone who moves to a city is at first
For developed nations, not only the hillside sod of society but also the driver of private capital markets.
Housing Development Finance Corporation of
For developed-national governments, not only a critical delivery program but also the driver of public-private partnership. Innovation is vectoring through housing via privatization, separating technical activities from essentially governmental functions. The statist model doesn’t work.
Pruitt-Igoe, coming down
For emerging nations, not only expanding cities but also the customer of municipal improvement. There ain’t no such thing as free infrastructure, and urbanization — whether formal or informal — creates both demand and political capital for infrastructure. Water and sanitation, the power and information grids, sites and stands: twenty-first centuries will thrive or wither as they are able to bring infrastructure to their expanding neighborhoods.
The city comes first, the utilities come second
For policy makers, not only a critical sector of urban environments but also a complex and distinct asset class of its own.
Piet Mondriaan’s Broadway boogie-woogie: the city as its circulatory essence
Housing is not only fascinating in its own right, but also of critical importance to our modern world.
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