Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 732

In Athens, I have a learned, there is something known as antiparochi . The practice took hold in the middle of the 20th century at a time when Athens was in desperate need of new housing. Supposedly during the 1950s , an estimated 560,000 people came to Athens from the countryside in search of opportunity -- effectively doubling the population of the city. That was a bit of a problem for a city with no money to build new housing. So something needed to be done. The solution was a ground-up arrangement (i.e. it wasn't a government initiative) that allowed developers and contractors to increase the supply of new housing without having to ever pay for land. And given the time period in which this took hold, it also spurred quite the modernist building boom, leaving an architectural legacy that to this day continues to define Athens.

Here's an explanation of how antiparochi works (taken from this BBC article by Alex Sakalis ):

Here’s how it worked: a contractor would approach the owner of a house and offer him a deal. He would knock down his house, and build a block of flats in its place. In return, the homeowner would be given a certain number of flats (usually two or three), while the contractor would then make his money by selling the remaining flats to Greeks who were seeking accommodation. Generally, no money was exchanged and no contracts were signed.

What’s so incredible about antiparochi is that it emerged spontaneously out of the housing crisis in Athens. “There was no specific law which told people ‘OK now you have the right to collaborate and build whatever you like’. It was the people themselves that found out this possibility,” says Panos Dragonas, professor of Architecture at the University of Patras.

Even more incredibly, the state completely accepted what its citizens had started doing, introducing only a few minor regulations, such as a maximum height for the apartment buildings – known as polykatoikies in Greek – and a ban on building over archaeological sites or on top of Athens’ seven historical hills. There were no property taxes – the state never made any direct income from antiparochi.

The elegance of antiparochi was that it appeared to solve all of Greece’s problems at once. It provided homeowners and home seekers with modern apartments, while creating enough profit for the contractors to continue investing in construction without state subsidies or bank loans.

Photo by Anastase Maragos on Unsplash

In 1987, Apple thought working from home should look something like this:

https://twitter.com/vanlancker/status/1284260944906878976?s=20

Cool studio apartment with killer view. Hard disk that stores over 10,000 pages. Curious photoshoot-type lamp facing your bed. And fascimile machine capable of sending hard copies to anyone in the world. All while being steps from your refrigerator.

But over three decades later, it instead turned out to be more like this:

https://youtu.be/6_pru8U2RmM

Isn't technology liberating?

Fashion, like architecture, says a lot. It is, according to Wikipedia , an "aesthetic expression at a particular time, place and in a specific context." So it's interesting to consider how fashion might translate, and not translate, around the world. This recent article by The Economist, called " The United Nations of Uniqlo ," offers up one comparison, albeit a generalized one, between Japanese and American clothing preferences. (It's an article about the Japanese fashion label Uniqlo .)

Japan:

At first glance there seems nothing obviously Japanese about Uniqlo’s wares. But a strong strain of minimalism pervades Japanese culture. Buddhism remains an important influence on Japanese society even in an increasingly secular age, and among its core tenets are renunciation and detachment – concepts that mean being able to suppress one’s lust for the material elements of daily life. Mario Praz, an Italian critic, contrasts the Japanese style with the suffocating abundance of Victorian interiors in Europe and America which, he says, stemmed from horror vacui (fear of emptiness). More recently, young people in the West have also grown less enamoured with acquiring stuff, hence the widespread popularity of another Japanese export: Marie Kondo, a professional declutterer.

America:

The American market has proved harder to crack. The 56 Uniqlo stores in America fall far short of Yanai’s plan, in 2012, to open 200 there. They still operate at a loss. “When you think about the American market, you don’t always think of subtlety,” said Steve Rowen of Retail Systems Research, a consultancy. “This is a social-climber society. Even if you want to fly under the radar, there still has to be some indication that you’re fashion forward.” Once that urban millennial with a starter job begins to make real money, Rowen postulated, “they move past a brand like Uniqlo pretty quickly.” Americans are perhaps willing to embrace invisibility only until they are rich enough to want to be seen.

You could probably also fashion a similar argument around housing preferences. The Japanese are known for their minimalist houses , as well for completely different views on housing in general. But we shouldn't forget that good minimalism is expensive. Remember: " Only the rich can afford this much nothing ." Maybe that's what Uniqlo needs to do in America. The problem is that its nothingness isn't expensive enough.