villagewinery t1_j8jfm1g wrote on February 14, 2023 at 7:23 PM

Reply to comment by brillow in Can 3-D Printing Help Solve the Housing Crisis? - Standard construction can be slow, costly, and inefficient. Machines might do it better. by speckz

There was just a piece in The Economist (I think) about how productivity has not improved in construction in the last 30 years.

Basically labor saving devices and technologies have been more than offset by more paperwork, permitting, safety standards, environmental constraints, not to mention limited land supply, local zoning, NIMBYism, and many many other factors.

So yeah, one or two or 10 "cheap building techniques" aren't going to offset all the other factors.

So the answer to the headline is "No."

RedCascadian t1_j8lcvdx wrote on February 15, 2023 at 3:41 AM

First thing that needs to change is zoning in cities, particularly west coast cities like I'm Washington and California.

I live in WA and hope the state zoning bill and Seattle housing bill both get passed.

not-on-a-boat t1_j8pox3a wrote on February 16, 2023 at 1:31 AM

I think productivity has improved. Those gains might not be reflected in housing costs, but that's not the same. I saw two guys put up a whole house of windows in one day a couple years ago. When my parents built a house in the 90s, that took a week. Concrete pours are faster, electrical is faster and cheaper, roofing is more efficient. There are lots of efficiency gains.

CrashSlow t1_j8w66tg wrote on February 17, 2023 at 11:29 AM

Kitchens come flat packed and are hung on the wall. Massive improvement on how it was done before. Laser measuring, CAD software, precision cutting tables.