The failed utopia of the tiny house movement

bonjourtus my name's alice and welcome back to my channel so i have a new mic i don't know if you can tell ready i hope so um i'm not gonna do french asmr i had a few requests on instagram but i'm not gonna do that um today i would like to talk about the tiny house movement so when i think about the future what i want to do where i want to live i constantly find myself switching between oh yeah i want to live in a city i want to be surrounded by different cultures and people i want to live life to the fullest i want to feel young and then spring shows up and i can't help dancing the idea of waking up every morning surrounded by nature go and see my goats pick up some flowers put them in a vase placed on a homemade wooden table while i've already covered the urge to move to big cities to be the main character of your own coming-of-age story i wanted to investigate the other side of that constant existential crisis namely the urge to go back to simple rural living and how it became a social movement [Music] the tiny house movement is both an architectural and social movement that advocates for living simply in small spaces in that sense this movement can be related to another big media trend minimalism because they both encourage people to reduce their conception and to adopt a more utilitarian approach to interior design living in a tiny house kind of forces you to adopt that minimalistic lifestyle in a way i came across that movement about a year ago i would say thanks to the youtube channel living big in a tiny house the channel is led by bryce a new zealander who's passionate about tiny houses small spaces and sustainable design the trend has become extremely popular in the past few years as it aligns with people's growing interest in sustainability alternative living coupled with a profound desire to escape the sea hassle and bottle on the living big in the tiny house channel you will usually find white couples or single individuals who work remotely or have their own small businesses the movement as they call it is growing so it means that it's becoming more and more inclusive so you see more people who live completely off-grid you see entire families and poor individuals as well but yeah it shows that this lifestyle is not accessible to everybody and that's something i would like to discuss later on in the video another thing i find quite interesting with the tiny house movement is that it defines itself as a social movement meaning that it's not limited to the tiny house itself but it also encompasses a certain philosophy and a set of values like sustainability financial freedom self-reliance and independence broadly speaking members of the tiny house movement want to detach themselves as much as possible from the rigid state structure they perceive as a threat and what i found very interesting is that the ideas and values of the tiny house movement have a super long history the picture you see here is henry david thoreau's cabin at walden pond in massachusetts in the u.s he stayed there for two years two months and two days sounds like a youtube video title and so he did that to escape what he called over civilization and he was just in search of the raw and the savage delight of the wilderness tho was a transcendentalist which was a very influential philosophical movement of the 1820s 1830s transcendentalism defended that capitalist institutions corrupted the purity of individuals which were at their best when they were self-reliant and independent while many of us would agree that thoros two years two months and two days experiments sounds a bit click-bait and superficial well thor himself framed it as an act of civil disobedience angry about the perpetration of slavery and the mexican-american war he declared in his essay titled civil disobedience that government is best which governs not at all an under government which imprisons any unjustly the true place for just men is also a prison his writings also inspired political leaders like martin luther king or ganji who were also a strong advocate of non-violent resistance therefore his desire to move away from cities to this little cabin in the middle of the forest was a way for him to detach himself from the state from its inadequacies and corrupting power it's something that we hear a lot in the interviews conducted by bryce from living big in a tiny house in one video in particular a woman living completely upgraded in wells said that she didn't want to be a wage slave that she didn't like the modern world and felt like she had to create that parallel reality that civil disobedience arguments also coincide with the fact that in many countries living in a tiny house is actually legal so when bryce went and visited this french couple one of the things they said is that what they are doing is illegal and roy's reaction was that we need people to take those risks in order to make the tiny house movement grow and change those regulations actually it's quite funny because another french couple went even further and they created their own civil disobedience movement called fertile disobedience this would be some svertil they settle without permission in forest or on agricultural land and they become guardian of the earth so yeah thorus transcendentalist legacy can be found in the tiny house movement and fertile disobedience as they both present themselves as alternatives to a capitalist economic model and more interestingly as social movements yet what bothers me is that by framing those initiatives as social movements or as a lifestyle by choice we tend to romanticize the fact that a lot of people do not have the choice but to live that way in the case of the french fertile disobedience movement while they're very often compared or contrasted with the famous zed zona de fund so zon to defend that was created in notre dame dylan where zadist inhabited the land to prevent the building of a new airport and the environmental consequences it would have had on the land and its ecosystem so on the one hand you have that it's going to be very stereotypical upper middle class parisian family who decided to move from a very privileged lifestyle to a less privileged lifestyle to pave the way for sustainable living which is similar in a way to the zero waste movement or the sustainability movement in general fertile disobedience is way more radical it's actually impressive but it relies heavily on people's ability to reduce their carbon footprint to fully take on that lifestyle and it's clear that for a majority of us this is not visible after two years only 100 similar tiny houses have emerged in france which is not a lot now if you look at what does that is start doing well there are a movement of individuals fighting to preserve their land and its ecosystem they had a series of significant political demands attached to their movement and their method of non-violent resistance was a success the airport project was abandoned they not only reduced their carbon footprints by adopting a sustainable way of living but also made sure that the land would be preserved for the generations to come now to come back to the tiny house movement while we're facing a similar dilemma while the channel living big in a tiny house showed individuals living in 500 100 or pounds houses so individuals who didn't have a choice but to live in very small cheap spaces you also come across very luxurious tiny houses including bryce tiny house in auckland which cost more than one thousand new zealand dollars to make it's still very low compared to what houses in auckland usually cost but still it's something that a lot of us cannot afford and when you start looking at tiny houses sellers all over the world prices average around 92 000 australian dollars up to 50 000 euros in france up to 170 000 new zealand dollars and 280 000 philippine pesos so usually above the average yearly salary in each of those countries so basically if you want to join that movement you either need a lot of time and effort or a lot of money and that's not how social movements are supposed to work so i do understand that the tiny house movement or fertile disobedience are often portrayed as revolutionary as they are led or supported by people who previously lived in cities and had limited experience of the countryside by moving to more rural environments they help revitalize arrears suffering from depopulation in a sustainable and respectful way yet they tend to forget that people have been living sustainably and in harmony with nature for decades if not centuries i'm immediately thinking about my mum whose house is in the forest and who's constantly growing things in her garden and building things on a land that does not belong to her it belongs to a group of monks actually and she's learned all the skills from her dad and taught me one or two things that i'll probably use in the future as well she doesn't brand herself as a guardian of the earth or a fertile disobedience activist because it has always been that way for her and for many same with the tiny houses gypsies have been living in off-grid tiny houses for such a long time all over the world people have built the social housing the state has failed to provide yet i don't think they would consider themselves as pioneers of the social movement there are survivors not revolutionaries and that is something we need to keep in mind when we engage with those sustainability related trends now whether it's a trend or real social movement the tiny house movement encourages sustainable living reducing our environmental impact as much as possible and that's something we can all work on at our own scale in the end the fact that the movement can be a bit exclusive comes down not to the construction businesses that produce quality tiny houses it doesn't come down to tiny houses owners but the fact that there is no incentive from our politicians city or town officials to make sustainable houses more affordable for working class or lower middle class people it's no secret that small sustainable living is where we're heading and i know it can be a bit frustrating when you watch those architectural digest videos you know where they showcase uh celebrity mentions um it seems a bit unfair but unfortunately that's what us poor people are gonna have to do the size of our living spaces is going to continue to decrease while living big in a tiny house channel usually shows tiny houses in the countryside or in the forest another channel never too small transferred the ideals of small sustainable living to cities yet the incredible apartments presented in those videos are usually owned by again middle class designers or architects or people hired architects and as much as i like those videos i know for sure that i cannot afford those apartments it seems that no one is making an effort to make them more affordable while researching for this video i did find one housing project that sounds like we're moving forward the 19 gale housing a social enterprise that is carbon neutral fossil fuel free and provides affordable housing that can only be owned not rented and access to a multi-generational community sounds like a dream and actually draws back to the transcendentalist utopia because they did some experimentation in a place for example called brook farm to sum it up briefly each member of brook farm invested 400 in the company and work to build a sustainable self-reliance self-sufficient community i know it's different with the 19gal housing project because each individual each family or couple is free they can do whatever they want but you still get that energy self-sufficiency reliance on community partnership and harmony with nature that is found in the transcendentalist alternative living philosophy those projects are supported by private and public investors and we need to encourage our politicians city or town officials to take on that opportunity and develop similar projects in public housing facilities so that sustainable living isn't limited to you know whites hipster indie families or couples with thor as they come and ancestor oh yeah that it's no longer a transcendentalist utopia but a reality for a soul thank you very much for watching this video it's been a while since i did an outro um i hope you enjoyed it feel free to like comment subscribe if it's not done already but also to share this video with a friend that might enjoy it and yeah i'll see you next week

Channel: Alice Cappelle

Views: 304,063

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Id: AYu_6B8UI0E

Length: 13min 41sec (821 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021