More half-baked social planning ideas

[John Young]

A furnace makes heat, a boiler makes steam or hot 
water. Many small buildings have a boiler that does
all three by combing components in a single unit.
Large buildings have three separate units, and more
for specialized tasks.

In New York City, there is an important distinction between
cellar and basement. Cellars are not habitable while
basements are. The building code definition of a basement 
is that at least half its height is above street level, and that
of cellar is that just over half its height is below street
level. Many residential buildings are designed to
take advantage of that distinction. The rule covers
sloping site conditions to average the difference between
front and back.

The basement level is often called the Ground Floor to
take away any stigma associated with basement.

Much mechanical and electrical equipment is located in
the cellar to maximize habitable space above. Same goes
for the roof.

Terrific expenditures for excavating multi-level cellars are
the norm for high-rise buildings -- even in hard rock as in
Manhattan -- to produce maximum habitable space allowed
under the zoning code, which, in combination with building
health, and environmental codes, regulates bulk, height, light,
air, room sizes, window sizes and a host of requirements
for barely tolerable human habitation -- and legal standards
are ever dropping in squalid, squirming cities for luxury as
well as dirt cheap holes.

We architects are expected to, well, cheat, to maximize what
property owners want at the expense of building inhabitants
and the inccreasingly squeezed and violated public. What 
helps us get away with cheating is massive PR by our 
professional flacks, sophisticated aesthetic and environmental 
theories that claim wretched architecture is beautiful, 
drunken orgies with regulatory officials, revolving 
door participation in standards committees and holding
public office -- to be sure, as practised by all professions, 
in particular those that are solemnly licensed and sworn
to protect the public from people like us.

Occasionally an idiot architect, like this one, tries to go against
the grain, and work dries up instantly and family says dont
be stupid, dont shame us. Then back to doing what church 
and family command to be an outstanding citizen/bandit.

Social planning is a useful deception, twinned with the 
free market -- the two backed beast.