Housing is an investment. Investment prices must go up. Housing is shelter. When the price of shelter goes up, people experience distress. This is the housing trap. It’s time to escape. In Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis, renowned urbanists Charles (Chuck) Marohn and Daniel Herriges introduce a first-of-its-kind discussion of the tension between housing as a financial product and housing as shelter. This is the key insight that’s been missing from the Housing Crisis Conversation; and the insight that can help cities fight back against the crisis from the bottom-up. This book offers a serious, yet accessible, history of housing policy in the United States and explains how it led us to this point in time: where we face a market that is rigged against people who, only a few decades ago, could have been homeowners or stable, long-term rentals. Only local change, on a neighborhood or city-wide scale, can begin to restore balance to the housing market. Escaping the Housing Trap is the must-read resource for everyone with a stake in the future of housing in America—and that means everyone. Readers will find: Discussions of housing as an investment and how the country's neighborhoods are being transformed by the introduction of large amounts of investment Explorations of housing as shelter, including discussions of zoning policy and NIMBYism A comprehensive overview of the Strong Towns approach to solving the American housing crisis

Robert Scott Burn wrote this book in 1871 at a time of great developments in science, industry and exploration, and when materials for engineering and building were constantly being improved and replaced. It offers, therefore, a useful coverage of both traditional techniques and materials such as stone, brick and pise, but also examines the developments in the use of cement for wall covering as well as cement blocks to be used as artificial stone. This reprint of the original work contains over 400 pages of text dealing with materials, practical construction techniques, masonry and brickwork, principles of design, drawing, plastering and wall decoration, as well as many other aspects of construction. The 160 plates which accompany the text include a large number of drawings of different parts of buildings, including: window, door and wall details in various styles; arches; staircases; consoles and brackets in stone and terracotta; hollow and ornamental brickwork and designs of shop fronts.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1877.