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Housing Forecast

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One breakthrough drat Iong has been expected, for imitance, is wide application of mass-production techniques to housing con. struction. There are many obstacles to t}ris developmenl however, in the tangle of union work rules and building-code provisions that hamper innovation.

E'I,IERGING TRENDS

Still, some new concepts in housing are emerging. In the last few yearq for instance, builders have developed a number of "open-space communities." Ranging widely in size-from less than l0-acre developments to ones that stretch over more than 20,000 acres-these communities share the common characteristic that their land is developed as a unit rather than lotbyJot as in conventional suburbs.

Enthusiasts see this kind of planned development of communities with controlled environments as at least a partial answer to the often unattractive consequences of unplanned, lot-byJot suburban sprawl. How rapidly it will color the over-all housing picture, however, is somewhat uncertain, since public acceptance of open-space c"ommunities so far has been mixed.

Another development that could speed innovation is the tendency in recent years for major corporations to increase their involvement in housing activity. This has taken the form of sponsorship of some of the "new towns" and also of sizeable marketing-research efiorts aimed at finding out what kind of product changes prospective home buyers would like to see come about. Potentially, this is an extremely important developmeng since historieally the home' building industry has been one of the predominantly small builders who typically have lacked the financial and managerial resources for extensive experimentation. The stepped-up interest in housing which larger companies have been showing sug' gests a possible evolution in the direction of nationwide producers and distributors of dwellings.

In view of the various lmPediments which lie in the way of speedy innovation, the likelihood is that housing construction in the years immediately ahead will follow much the same pattern as in the recent past. Thus new unitsvery much like those now going upprobably will be situated for the most part along the main transport arteries in locations convenient to central cities. If the housing industry should succeed in overcoming some of its problems, the dimensions of the coming boom could exceed.the 2 million starts a year that housing analysts are talking about. For the presen! howevern that looks to be as gmd a working estimate as eny.