In the late 1960s, the US was perceived to be on the cusp of a severe housing shortage. Several national advisory groups (The National Commission on Urban Problems, the President’s Committee on Urban Housing , and the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders) estimated that 26 million homes needed to be built over the next 10 years, a rate of production that had never been achieved [0]. 6 million of those would need to be affordable to low-income families, at a time when half of all US families were unable to purchase a home of average cost. Failure to provide sufficient housing, they warned, would result in riots, unrest, and “urban chaos”.
They wouldn't have written this in the official reports, but one wonders if this was partly to outdo the perceived success of the Khrushchev prefab building boom...
Thanks for the link. I actually used this source for this edition - it's interesting since it was written while Breakthrough was still going on, so it remains optimistic about how it might turn out.
Might we eventually see a follow-up comparing Operation Breakthrough to similar efforts in other countries and why prefabricated construction failed or succeeded in those cases?
The excellent Postwar building materials project notes for example, that while heavy prefab systems were popular in France between the 1950s and 1970s, they never really gained much ground in Belgium for various reasons.
This is in stark contrast to e.g. the Finnish market, where the BES system (Betonielementtistandardi, lit. "Concrete element standard"), is to this day wildly successful, with a 3/4 market share in residential and commercial high rise construction.
They wouldn't have written this in the official reports, but one wonders if this was partly to outdo the perceived success of the Khrushchev prefab building boom...
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6968&context=etd
Thanks for the link. I actually used this source for this edition - it's interesting since it was written while Breakthrough was still going on, so it remains optimistic about how it might turn out.
Might we eventually see a follow-up comparing Operation Breakthrough to similar efforts in other countries and why prefabricated construction failed or succeeded in those cases?
The excellent Postwar building materials project notes for example, that while heavy prefab systems were popular in France between the 1950s and 1970s, they never really gained much ground in Belgium for various reasons.
http://postwarbuildingmaterials.be/material/heavy-prefab-systems/
This is in stark contrast to e.g. the Finnish market, where the BES system (Betonielementtistandardi, lit. "Concrete element standard"), is to this day wildly successful, with a 3/4 market share in residential and commercial high rise construction.