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California formalising: a story of deliberately designed inequality Share Add to Bookmarks
Self-initiated dwellings in Southern California support the formalised housing systems that surround them, while bearing the brunt of all risks
Southern California has remarkable topographic diversity, boasting mountains, rolling hills, canyons, valleys and deserts. Across this varied terrain, developers have built ticky-tacky houses, ‘little boxes all the same’. Yet woven around and between the multimillion-dollar mansions, luxury condos and middle-class stucco is an architectural diversity unseen in the everyday: repurposed materials have been shaped into housing and tucked into canyons. Tent cities emerge from dry riverbeds. Homeowners quietly rent out converted garages. Unhoused families use cars as bedrooms and living rooms. Most homeowners and renters are aware of alternate housing systems, but they are also uncertain: they do not know how many people are housed where, or un