Envisioning Affordable Housing and Climate Architectures Across the Pacific

Kelema Lee Moses, Assistant Professor, Urban Studies and Planning, University of California, San Diego

Discussant:
Ginger Nolan, Assistant Professor of Architecture, USC

Second only to California, Hawai‘i has the most expensive housing market in the United States. Real-estate developers in both states point to aging infrastructure, the scarcity of available land, and complicated zoning and permitting restrictions as contributors to a full-scale housing crisis. That crisis is marked by high costs, low inventory, homelessness, and adverse environmental impacts ranging from sea-level rise and coastal erosion to increased susceptibility to wildfire. Since the 1980s, in continued attempts to mitigate the crisis, the Hawai‘i state government has codified a set of housing technologies among Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) and locals, developing model villages of tiny homes and ‘ohana dwellings (a typology specific to Hawai‘i). This lecture explores how community stakeholders work in, around, and through the islands’ housing histories to envision an urban future that accounts for Hawai‘i’s racial and ethnic diversity, aging population, and multigenerational families. Engaging novel spatial and temporal epistemologies, architects, community organizations, and Kānaka artists offer possibilities for abundant urban futures that promise to transform the practice of architecture and planning in Hawai‘i pae ‘āina and beyond.

Kelema Lee Moses is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of California, San Diego.