“The solution is its salesware”

The month’s most important post came halfway through, a mantra I’ve been chanting for years now: The solution is its salesware:

Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said: ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’

Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll

The Wright Brothers couldn’t get venture-capital funding for the airplane.

Turned down again …

IBM thought the personal computer a toy.

For serious computing, you boys will need big iron

Facebook emerged out of a college dorm.

Want billions, kid?  Put on some shoes

In each case, until the thing existed, nobody could buy it, and thus you virtually couldn’t sell it.  To sell it, you need salesware, and the only good salesware in such cases is the thing itself.

The solution is its salesware.

Housing touches the richest and the poorest, so everyone in the world will have a connection to “Housing the Future,” a BBC World Debate in which I featured, and which you can view online here.  Highly recommended, and not just for my gesticulating self.

Not for my looks, either

During July, I inaugurated a new feature, Great Posts By Others (GPBO), designed to highlight provocative pieces worth your attention: Great posts by others (GPBO) 01: Introducing a new series, and GPBO 02: Pyramids, promises, and public transportation:

Rummaging about in Chapter 1 (available as a .pdf for free download), I found this useful listing of ‘business-school’ fallacies:

Prahalad and Hart (2002: 57) explicate six of such, often false, assumptions:

C. K. Prahalad is the doyen of BoP thinking, based on this book

1. The poor are not our target consumers because with our current cost structures, we cannot profitably compete for that market.

2. The poor cannot afford and have no use for the products and services sold in developed markets.

3. Only developed markets appreciate and will pay for new technology. The poor can use the previous generation of technology.

4. The bottom of the pyramid is not important to the long-term viability of our business. We can leave Tier 4 to governments and nonprofits.

5. Managers are not excited by business challenges that have a humanitarian dimension.

6. Intellectual excitement is in developed markets. It is hard to find talented managers who want to work at the bottom of the pyramid.

All this is incredibly thematic with AHI’s work, so we’ve ordered a copy.

Even as the market ecosystem reinvents itself after the shakeout, whining arises from many quarters, such as the appraisers in Value chain growing pains?:

As I posted previously, contact between an interested and a disinterested party isn’t necessarily improper; it may be the lifeblood of accuracy.

At my for-profit company, we do valuations of complex structured interests. After making our initial data request, which includes a comprehensive checklist of information we think relevant, we also invite our customers to provide any information they think worthwhile for us to know. Unless the circumstances are unusual, we also give our customers a chance to look at and comment upon our draft, and to provide additional evidence. This creates an intellectual argumentation, where the client is advocate for its view of the right value, and we are judge and jury of what we think is the right value.

Such contact also allows influence to be brought to bear:

Make up your own mind

Previously, brokers order the appraisal before submitting the loan application to the lender – and often, critics say, those brokers would pressure appraisers to come back with higher valuations.

Naturally that pressure will be applied, and the expert has to be intellectually and morally tough:

For this tension to yield improved (more accurate, more thoughtful) results, we as valuation experts have to be strong enough to repel improper suggestions and to resist flimsy or unsubstantiated argumentation.

Evidently, many appraisers were suspected of being weaklings.

And proud of it!

Also complaining were residents and local officials –

“Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!”

– seeking to force a lender to become a de facto landlord in No landlord at all: Part 1, the vanished landlord, and Part 2, the present lender:

That’s not enough for Senator Schumer:

“Fannie helped create this problem, and they have an obligation to solve it,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.

Someone’s at fault, and Senator Schumer wants to know who

Just how is Fannie Mae responsible for this problem?

Fannie Mae does not own the building.

Fannie Mae has never owned the building.

Fannie Mae has started foreclosure proceedings [in March, 2009 – Ed.].

As such, Fannie Mae has no legal authority to operate or improve the property.

In fact, Fannie Mae did not originate the loan – it bought the loan from the original lender.

We’re clean!

What then is the basis for the Senator’s complaint?

Unhappy too were elected officials seeking mortgage-restructuring relief for their constituents in Won’t or can’t? Part 1, who should be relieved?, and Part 2, how fast a fix?:

Won’t, can’t … or shouldn’t?

Mr. Meola says complaints spiked after Saxon took over a portfolio of 80,000 loans from a troubled rival in 2007.

No good deed goes unpunished. 

We’ll make your loan conform

The prolific Lucian Bebchuck fired off another salvo in his continuing besiegement of executive compensation, this one of interest because it highlighted a potential reason why the PPIP program never got off the ground in the cost of calling off the dogs?:

In any case, whether it’s logical or not, waiving the necessity to write down long-term debts – still performing, don’t forget, otherwise they’d have to recognize an impairment now because of the non-performing or default status – calls off the dogs.

Together, the policies adopted by accounting and banking authorities strongly discourage banks from selling any toxic assets maturing after 2010 at prices that fairly reflect their lowered value.  As long as banks don’t sell, the policies enable them to pretend, and operate as if, their toxic assets maturing after 2010 haven’t fallen in value at all.

Let’s pretend our assets are all grown up

While the market for banks’ toxic assets will remain largely shut down, we are going to get a sense of their value when the FDIC auctions off later this summer the toxic assets held by failed banks taken over by the FDIC.

An excellent point – there will be some data.  How comparable will it be depends on whether the assets sold are similar to those still held.  But I’ll be watching with interest.

If these auctions produce substantial discounts to face value, they should ring the alarm bells.

Yes.

Are they about to ring?

Although as far as I know Professor Bebchuk hasn’t yet commented on Treasury’s approach to selling the glass financial menagerie, I’m sure he’s interested in it:

One approach to valuing anything odd is to auction your headaches, but as in divorce, when the current holder(s) both know the asset well, a pre-auction negotiation is effective – and that, has been structured in to the TARP repayments that will be forthcoming shortly:

WASHINGTON — Now that large banks have started paying back government aid, the U.S. Treasury Department is shedding light on its process for negotiating warrant repurchases with banks, saying Friday that it has developed “a robust set of procedures” to protect taxpayers.

Strong enough to protect taxpayers

Treasury Friday released a packet of documents that explain the warrant repurchase process.

As an exercise in procedural negotiation, the TARP warrant repayment is an illuminating case study:

We’ll admit you, but then we’ll have to kill you

Reality is the raw material of theory and innovation, isn’t it?  At least it’s the raw material of blog posts, such as Employer-assisted housing: Part 1, the how, and Part 2, the why:

Employer-assisted housing encompasses both rental (as in Vicarage of the church of football) and ownership; it touches hard debt, hard equity, soft debt, soft equity and subsidy; and because it involves people in two parallel enduring economic bonds, employment and housing, it raises touchy questions about dependency and exploitation. 

But it was the $7,500 from her employer, the University of Chicago, that put the deal over the top.

Just the edge I needed!

What stake does the employer have in its employee owning this condo?  One can quickly think of three reasons:

1. To reward employee loyalty.

2. As golden velvet handcuffs to discourage job-hopping.

3. To protect the neighborhood around its campus.

“Without the loan, it would have impacted how fast we could renovate,” says Morin, 25, of the foreclosed property she shares with Hillstrom, her 27-year-old fiancé, who is studying for his doctorate.

Moving a property out of foreclosure emptiness and into employee occupancy has to be good for the value of all other U Chicago property.

We take our own environment for granted, unremarked and unexamined, until we’re forced to explain it to others, as I did in US property taxes: Part 1, local tax = local autonomy, and Part 2, local autonomy = local initiatives:

In light of all that, how do the US and Ireland compare?

)

Through the looking-glass: two ways of taxing

Ireland’s taxation is predicated on building and reselling of housing.  When times are good for the property market, government is awash in cash.  When times are bad, the cash dries up completely.  That’s probably contra-indicated because it’s in bad times that government is called upon to do more, and in good times it probably should do less. 

In short, I told my hosts, from what I could see of the US, and what little I understood about Ireland, a move to a recurring real estate tax on residential property would be wise – and the only way to do it without committing political suicide would be to connect it directly to increased local autonomy over visible local services. 

Local autonomy is desirable only when the local economy is viable, and when it is contracting, a town like Salisbury, MA undergoes a downward spiral.  Or the lure of easy money will move people to board strange craft and travel thousands of miles to an alien destination, where they are all too easy to exploit, on the dark side of the moon:

As the world globalizes information – which also implies globalizing capital – we observe a mobility of labor unprecedented in global history.  With that labor mobility comes the ebb and flow of people and money – people moving to cities to earn money, then sending that money ‘back home’ (wherever that may be), via capital’s underground river of remittances.  Although remittances are unquestionably a good thing, and among the largest forces driving slum upgrading in the global south, for every bright new invention there is a dark side.  One dark side that I’ve already profiled is human smuggling and extorted remittances.  Another is demonstrated by this Jenara Nerenberg article/ post from The Next Billion:

To serve Nepalis?  Nepalis returning to Qatar

In Development and Base of the Pyramid (BOP) circles, we often discuss remittance economies and innovative ways to send remittances home; what we don’t always think or talk about is what forces people to leave their home countries in the first place and what they experience when they go abroad.

To someone from a rural area, the job might as well be on the far side of the Moon – a completely alien, hostile environment, and one embarks on the journey in a state of excitement, hope, and trust.

Off to a great new adventure, honey!

The lure of earning money abroad is among the most powerful of vaporwares. 

To serve man book

Handbook of a multi-planetary conglomerate?

One needn’t journey to the moon to find occluded and invisible universes, such as Tthe slums inside the big bad blocks: Part 1, blame the architects:

If we design the buildings, ran the architects’ grandiose reasoning, why not design the whole city?

Here the group discussed concentrated on principles of “The Functional City”, which broadened CIAM’s scope from architecture into urban planning. Based on an analysis of thirty-three cities, CIAM proposed that the social problems faced by cities could be resolved by [1] strict functional segregation, and [2] the distribution of the population into tall apartment blocks at widely spaced intervals.

Although arrogant nonsense, it helped (grotesque thought) that the world was then distracted, first by a global depression that led to an infatuation with the ‘efficiency’ of Fascism (the Lewis Mumford vision) –

[Le Corbusier] drifted into a fascist-like philosophy and his and similar authoritarian architecture is often seen as the backdrop for fascist political thinking.

– and then by its bastard offspring a global war, leaving the intellectual field empty for Le Corbusier, who sat out the war from the comfortable perch of Switzerland:

Have we got our relative importance clear, common man?

Always remember, dear reader, the solution is its salesware:

At AHI, we invent new financial program, products, and participating Mission entrepreneurial entities (MEEs) that do not exist in the country where they’re needed.  That’s our niche, our unique value.  We observe a country’s housing finance ecosystem, describe it typologically and taxonomically, compare it with all the other countries and times and programs in our experience (of which the US is a rich source of experiences, since we’ve done more, for longer, with more variations – fifty states, baby! – than anybody else), and propose a sui generis new solution. 

We constantly face the challenge of disbelief; in fact, we face the challenge that our listeners believe what we envision is impossible.

Croquet with hedgehogs and flamingos?  Impossible!

Seeing is believing

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Continuing our if-the-opportunity-will series of Great Posts By Others (GBPO), here are three more provocative slices of the housing finance world:

Down these mean streets a blogger like Jockin goes

2.1 Business for Development

The site Business For Development [Hat tip: Yousuf Marvi] advertises Martin H. Klein’s book, Poverty Alleviation through Sustainable Strategic Business Models, written from his doctoral thesis, which yields this AHI-resonant insight:

Conditions in the low-income context differ from those in high-income markets. These include differences in cultures, institutions, cognitions, dependence on the informal economy, economic development, living conditions, and motivation.

The per-customer revenues are minuscule, but the customers are limitless

The characteristics of the poor and the challenging circumstances in which these firms operate necessitate business model innovation to enable firms to operate successfully in low-income markets. This includes disruptive innovation in distribution, price-performance ratios, value chain management, workflows, organization, payment schemes, customer education, and human resource management. Hence, success at the BoP requires simultaneous disruptive innovation of multiple aspects of the ways in which firms do business.

To that I’d add, new financial products, such as Home Asset Finance.  Finance and governance are the DNA from which visions grow into Mission entrepreneurial entities (MEEs).  We don’t yet know how to grow them, so any insights that help are welcome:

Plenty of skills down there: DVD repair, Dharavi

Among the key features covered in the book are:

1. The first rigorous survey of pro-poor for-profit businesses. In cooperation with NGOs, development organizations and micro finance institutions, I collected a unique dataset of 143 firms operating in base-of-the-pyramid markets in a total of 105 countries. Their focal group of customers, employees, suppliers, and/or distributors have an average daily purchasing power of $2 or less.

2. Building upon this dataset, I develop a classification of the business challenges pro-poor for-profit firms face and investigate how these challenges change as firms develop and as the investment climate changes.

3. An examination and testing of the central postulate that embedding social and environmental value in a firm’s business model drives a firm’s financial performance at the base-of-the-pyramid. I find evidence that firms’ profit motive motivates firms to do well by doing good socially, and that addressing social issues is not adjacent but central to strategy at the base-of-the-pyramid.

That’s certainly correct.  If it’s not built into your DNA from the beginning, the talent updraft will always take you to more profitable, higher-income bands, and away from the BoP.

Always looking for the updraft, aren’t you?

4. A conceptual explanation of the concept of “business models” from a strategic management perspective.

5. Building upon case studies of pro-poor businesses, the book creates an understanding of why some businesses are successful at the base-of-the-pyramid whilst others fail.

6. A management support model for developing profitable pro-poor business models. I present business model qualities divided over five dimensions around which firms focused at the base-of-the-pyramid should build their business model.

The right model has to be fund asset management of social venture capital model, concepts we’re developing and putting into practice here at AHI. 

Rummaging about in Chapter 1 (available as a .pdf for free download), I found this useful listing of ‘business-school’ fallacies:

Prahalad and Hart (2002: 57) explicate six of such, often false, assumptions:

C. K. Prahalad is the doyen of BoP thinking, based on this book

1. The poor are not our target consumers because with our current cost structures, we cannot profitably compete for that market.

2. The poor cannot afford and have no use for the products and services sold in developed markets.

3. Only developed markets appreciate and will pay for new technology. The poor can use the previous generation of technology.

4. The bottom of the pyramid is not important to the long-term viability of our business. We can leave Tier 4 to governments and nonprofits.

5. Managers are not excited by business challenges that have a humanitarian dimension.

6. Intellectual excitement is in developed markets. It is hard to find talented managers who want to work at the bottom of the pyramid.

All this is incredibly thematic with AHI’s work, so we’ve ordered a copy.

2.2 Access Housing, from FinMark Trust

FinMark’s banner

Access Housing, published by South Africa’s FinMark Trust, whose housing director Kecia Rust is an AHI affiliate, puts out a fantastic periodical [Hat tip: Kecia Rust], Access Housing, whose most recent issue shines a spotlight on South Africa’s Financial Sector Charter:

Kecia Rust, FinMark Trust

The first phase of the Financial Sector Charter came to an end on 31 December 2008. By this date, it had been promised that financial institutions would lend R42 billion into the low income housing sector, with a promised growth in net book value of R32 billion.

Five years ago, I twice spent a week with the Banking Association, helping them brainstorm ways the banks could collaborate on structure and compete on products and customers to meet the target. 

I also got a little time for game parks

They were heady days, and it appears in some small way, we contributed to pointing the banks in the right direction.

They did it!

All too often advocates find fault or quibble about success.  Nice to see Kecia giving credit where it is due.

You gotta give it, Ali G

More so even.

Unaudited figures from the Banking Association show a total value of R44,8 billion originated by the Big 4 banks (Absa, FNB, Nedbank and Standard Bank), constituting a total of 984 730 loans extended to the FSC target market between January 2004 and 31 December 2008. This is no small task and the housing sector has clearly benefited.

In a paper prepared for the FinMark Trust by Linda Sing [Scoping the Pension-backed Loans market, forthcoming on the FinMark web site – Ed.], Linda offers the following analysis:

“With the commencement of the FSC, originating banks invested aggressively in resources and significantly heightened focus on the lower income market. Through 2004 to mid-2007, this resulted in historically pent up demand for housing finance being satisfied through a frenzy of marketing initiatives, amply bolstered by a generally booming property sector. Towards the end of 2007, however, the effects of the sub-prime crisis and the shortage of housing stock finally began to take effect, and the sector’s performance was only salvaged by a few, exceptional property finance transactions. The apparent spike in unsecured housing loans is mainly due to previously unavailable data being included in the report, following upgrades to banks’ measurement systems, rather than an actual increase in the number of loans granted.”

All this shows in the charts, with steady loan numbers and a falloff in aggregate loan volume, as the banks, having picked all the low-hanging fruit, were moving down-market almost in spite of themselves.

Excellent work – thorough, quantitative, evenhanded.  Read the whole nine-page issue, and subscribe (free) to Access Housing.

2.3 Future Pundit

In the century of cities, public transportation will be essential – but let us not think public transportation a panacea, as revealed in this HIGH-VOLUME POST, Mass transit is hard on your hearing

Hard on what?

Contrary to the view in some quarters that mass transit is an unalloyed blessing, buses and subways around New York City generate harmful levels of noise.

Cities are intrinsically noisy, and city streets very noisy, as anyone knows who’s tried to hold a cell-phone conference call outdoors in a city.

Using sensitive noise dosimeters, the team of researchers, led by exposure scientist Richard Neitzel from the School of Public Health at the University of Washington and Robyn Gershon, DrPH, an environmental and occupational health scientist and faculty member at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, conducted hundreds of measurements of noise levels at platforms and stations, as well as inside of vehicles on New York City subways (MTA and PATH), buses (MTA), ferries (Staten Island), commuter railways (LIRR, SIRR and Metro North), and the Roosevelt Island tramway.

Gershon descended into noisy subways so you don’t have to

The scientists found that on average, the MTA subways had the highest noise levels, at 80.4 decibels (dBA), followed by the Path trains, at 79.4 dBA, and the tram, at 77.0 dBA.

Having ridden both systems, I can attest that when it comes to noise, Boston’s subways are little better.  Nancy and I often ride the Boston subways, and she’s taken to plugging her ears when trains are squealing around

The lowest average levels measured, 74.9 dBA and 75.1 dBA, were obtained from the LIRR and Metro-North trains, respectively. The very highest levels measured in the study were found on an MTA subway platform (102.1dBA) and at a bus stop (101.6 dBA).

In contrast, the noise level of a whisper is 30 dBA, normal conversation is 60 to 70 dBA, a chainsaw is 100 dBA, and gunfire is 140 dBA.

Quieter than an MTA subway?

According to Dr. Gershon, of all mass transit, subways had the highest noise levels, with roughly half of the maximum levels exceeding 90 dBA. “At some of the highest noise levels we obtained (ex. 102.1 dBA on the subway platforms), as little as two minutes of exposure per day would be expected to cause hearing loss in some people with frequent ridership, based upon the International Organization for Standardization models for predicting hearing impairment from noise.”

Here’s the authors’ punchline, from their study’s abstract:

Conclusive, I think

Conclusion

Recent research has shown that many construction workers are exposed to levels of noise which are high enough to cause permanent noise-induced hearing loss.  In Washington state, construction workers represent approximately 7% of the workforce, but file 21% of accepted workers compensation hearing loss claims. Obviously construction noise exposure and the resulting hearing loss is a big problem. A number of research groups and regulatory agencies are working on ways to lower construction noise exposures and reduce hearing loss claims. While noise control efforts have the best chance at long-term success, effective hearing conservation programs will always be needed to insure that workers receive adequate training and protection from noise exposure.

Here’s the blogger’s point, one not to be lost:

Cars take you from where you want to start to where you want to end up. You can control who you ride with. You can choose a car with very good noise insulation and a quiet engine. You can choose which music to listen to and do not need ear plugs to listen to it. Granted, you have to drive and pay attention to the road. Cars come with trade-offs.

But given the advantages it is not surprising that most people choose to drive.

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We seek out new posts and new inspiration

1.1 Atlantic Yards Report

Ever since I first encountered the Atlantic Yard report blog, I’ve considered it essential reading for understanding Atlantic yards, an enormous and seemingly endless current eminent-domain-like redevelopment in Brooklyn.

Single-handedly putting the New York media to shame:

Norman Oder

Single-handedly researched, written, and posted by the indefatigable and Pulitzer-prize-deserving Norman Oder, it is a sole-source reference, using the Web to publish documents obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests, chronicling public hearings, and mercilessly comparing what officials said once with what they say now.

Putting elected officials on the record:

One of the hundreds of documents posted by Norman Oder

I’ve been agog at two things:

* The extraordinary diligence that Mr. Oder has poured into his blog, even quoting people like me.

* The significance of Atlantic Yards on discussions (for or against) of eminent domain for economic development (ED4ED), which often bears on affordable housing.

Over and over, Mr. Oder had exploded public pronouncements with evidence, leaving the developer’s credibility (and that of many of its supporters, such as ACORN) in tatters.

Nonsense, everything’s fine

Most recently, his quest for transparency and truth has led him, to discover that leak-tolerant architect Frank Gehry’s original design was impossible, and that, as shown in the following excerpt, virtually nothing about Atlantic Yards will be what it was sold as:

This got the approval; who knows what will be built?

What we learned

But we did learn some important things:

* The Independent Budget Office (IBO), recalculating its 2005 cost-benefit analysis, concluded the arena would be a money-loser.

* The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is willing to compromise with Forest City Ratner on the timetable (and perhaps the total) for the $100 million owed, as well as the quality of the new Vanderbilt Yard.

* Neither the state nor the city have updated their analysis of new revenue–already deeply flawed, because it excludes costs–to acknowledge current conditions

* The New York City Housing Development Corporation is waiting for Forest City Ratner and ACORN (which is in hock to the developer) renegotiate the configuration of the affordable housing.

* The Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) likely will produce a revision of the Modified General Project Plan (GPP) in the next month or two, which will trigger a new public hearing.

There are many known unknowns, and we don’t know when we won’t know them

What we didn’t learn

Some other important things we didn’t learn:

* How long the project might take

* When construction might begin

* When affordable housing might begin

* Whether there are enough bonds for affordable housing

* How the per-unit cost of affordable housing compares to other projects

* Whether architect Frank Gehry is on the project

* Whether officials realized FCR decided to seek more subsidies well before the economic downturn.

* Why the ESDC lets private companies benefit from naming rights to public buildings.

Though I generally support eminent domain for economic development, Mr. Oder’s investigative reporting – all of it, I might add, from public-domain sources and out of his own pocket – reveals a seamy side to glitzy projections and hollow promises. Long may he prosper.

1.2 India Development Blog

Because we are doing some modest work in India – Slum Dwellers International in Mumbai, and SEWA Bank in Ahmedabad, almost anything to do with Indian affordable housing is interesting to us, and because India is the world’s fastest-growing democracy, and quite probably its fastest growing middle class, anything to do with Indian affordable housing is important for the wider world. Over at the India development blog [Hat tip: Yousuf Marvi], we came across this post is the next challenge scale or flexibility?

Indian MFIs typically offer very general and standardized products.  The 1st loan is often in the range of Rs 6,000-10,000 (USD $120-200), and is paid back weekly over one year.  The 2nd loan is typically about Rs 12,000 (USD $240) and the 3rd loan is about Rs 15,000 (USD $300), and repayment is done the same way with both of these cycles as was done with the 1st loan.

Microfinance remains among the last quarter-century’s greatest financial innovations, yet its very success has led to a tyranny of sameness. The more financial products, the more robust the financial ecosystem, and the greater the consumer choice.

One size does not fit all.

You might want to rethink that …

Even the most successful entrepreneurs would fall under this rigid structure, and would only be able to receive about Rs. 15,000 (USD $300) in their 3rd year of successful repayment.  If they need more capital, they will need to go to a moneylender or another MFI, regardless of their track record.

I think MFIs in India should better tailor their microcredit products to their clients.  Some clients need larger loan amounts, a monthly infusion of cash, or daily loans (e.g., auto-drivers that rent their autos at a daily rate).

Just as birds can fly only if they are smaller than a certain size, classical microfinance has upper-bound limitations.

Nothing bigger can fly: the Andean condor

When the scale reaches above a particular size, new engineering is involved.

For that load, you need new technology: the gossamer condor

In our view, microfinance will never scale to housing; instead we must introduce new products, such as what we at AHI are calling Home Asset Finance.

It could be difficult to train loan officers on how these different loan products work, and which type of client may benefit from these differentiated products, but it’s crucial that Indian microcredit becomes more flexible.  In my mind, more flexibility would benefit clients more than the growth in scale of the microcredit available today.

Yes, and we’re working on it.

Seeking the elements of a new form of housing finance

1.3 Bldg blog

On a lighter note, we [Hat tip: Janaki Blum] found the Bldg blog, which presented a great post on urban X-rays:

See the blog post’s structure?

At one point Beard refers to the “theaters and porticoes” built in ancient Rome using wealth taken during Pompey’s “eastern campaigns” in Armenia and elsewhere. However, she writes:

The term “theaters and porticoes” hardly does justice to this vast building complex, which stretched from the present day Piazza Campo del Fiori to the Largo Argentina, covering an area of some 45,000 square meters. A daring – and, for Rome, unprecedented – combination of temple, pleasure park, theater, and museum, it wrote Pompey’s name permanently into the Roman cityscape. Even now, though no trace remains visible on the ground, its buried foundations (and particularly the distinct curve of the theater) determine the street plan and housing patterns of the city above; it remains a ghostly template which accounts for the surprising twists and turns of today’s back-streets, alleyways, and mansions.

The not entirely surprising realization that the present-day street grid of Rome is actually an articulation of other, previously buried cities – cities not lost to history, then, but accessible in outline through the indirect archaeology of contemporary urban planning – reminds me of something that came up back at Postopolis! LA.

[Image: Fallen Fruit's map of the lost orchards of Silver Lake].

During their presentation, the ingenious duo Fallen Fruit mentioned that, when they were mapping fruit trees in today’s Los Angeles, they stumbled upon the borders of much older, abandoned fruit orchards. In other words, what appeared simply to be a random fig tree growing in someone’s front yard was, when seen on a map together with other such trees, actually the remnant presence of a now-forgotten farm. Those trees, to use Beard’s term, are the “ghostly template” from an earlier phase of land use.

As I’ve written elsewhere, streets and other lines of transportation are a city’s nervous system, so even today main tunnels come into New York at the Battery, because that is where the trains started, because that is where the ferries docked.

A tunnel to connect to railroad lines that have since vanished …

There is a different grid inside the grid, you might say – where each tree becomes something like a legal document, marking the outer boundaries of a lost landholding.

I love this evocation of the past still around us, forgotten. The front yard of our old house on Avon Hill Street, had two bearing pear trees, one a Bosc, the other a seckel. Every fall, Nancy used to gather both kinds, which made good eating.

Who planted the tree whose fruit I ate?

After we bought the house, I learned that our neighborhood had indeed been an orchard, and I allowed myself romantically to think that these trees were in fact survivors of that bygone age.

Perhaps I wasn’t being so romantic after all.

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