Greening the Apocalypse - 19 September 2017

We speak with Craig Byatt and Liz Franzmann about their recent experience building a tiny house.

Craig Byatt is a holistic architect and Liz has a background in sustainability and project management. We spoke about how the demand for tiny houses is on the rise despite the average size of the new Australian home being a whopping 231 square metres.

We discussed the laws around tiny houses and the way that councils are playing a game of catch up in this area. We looked at examples of tiny houses being used in a social justice context, for example, Quixote Village in the US is one of the first tiny house communities set up to address issues of homelessness.

Later in the show we hear from Nick Lamberton who until last week lived in a tiny house (and ran a tropical fish breeding enterprise) in a western suburbs caravan park for eight years. We discuss this article: Reclaiming "Redneck" Urbanism: What Urban Planners can Learn from Trailer Parks, and what life was actually like in an urban caravan park.

Craig and Liz are coming back to talk about Community Land Trusts, one solution to the problem of acquiring land to put your tiny house on. In the meantime check out the tiny house planning resource, Small Is Beautiful, the tiny house documentary, and this New York Times article about living with a lot less. Sarah makes reference to a tiny house being stolen last week allegedly by a 24 year old man believed to be from Canberra.