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Outside a warehouse in a Los Angeles suburb, there’s a fascinating experiment underway in how people can live in places at high risk of flooding. A prototype of a new type of housing has been undergoing tests in a large tank of water. The homes, made from a kit of plastic parts, are designed for flood zones: The foundation and the watertight shell of the house can float. When the water rises, the house rises, too. Normally, it just sits on land, says Charles Wee, the architect behind the design. And then during a flood, it can actually just rise in the same position. Wee spent most of his career working on conventional high-rise projects. But a decade ago, after visiting a relative who worked with indigenous communities in the Amazon, he decided to change direction. He’d seen how people living along the Amazon River lost their homessimple shacks on stiltsevery time the river flooded. Globally, more than a billion people face a significant risk of flooding, and that number is growing. Wee began considering how to build housing in flood plains differently. Learning from a disaster At first, Wee wasnt sure how to approach the idea of making a buoyant home. But he happened to see a photo taken after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The image showed wreckage from destroyed buildings filling the coastline. Wee noticed large blue boxes floating intact in the water. He discovered that they were molded tanks used by the fishing industry. They were cheap to produce and seamless, so water couldnt intrude. He realized that he could use the same low-cost manufacturing technique to make building parts. Wee closed his own lucrative architecture practice and founded a startup, LifeArk, to work on the new concept. The development was challenging. He wanted to make homes that would not only be resilient in floods, but that could withstand other disasters, including earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires. After years of R&D, his team had a system that worked. It also meets the requirements of the California building code, one of the most restrictive building codes in the world. In its factory in Californias Central Valley, the company now makes prefab housing parts using rotational molding, the process uses to make other hollow plastic products like coolers or playground equipment. Inside a large machine, a plastic-filled mold rotates, producing seamless roofs, doors, columns, and other parts. The shell is high-density polyethylene (HDPE), the same plastic used in products like milk jugs and shampoo bottles. Its filled with foam insulation that makes it energy efficient, strong, and buoyant. A better use for plastic Most plastic is used in the worst possible way, Wee says. But one of plastic’s environmental flawsthe fact that it doesnt easily break downcan be an advantage in a building. Plastic will last 100 years without degradation, he says. Its a great material to build homes, but we use it to make shopping bags. LifeArk’s homes, which are the first to use plastic as a load-bearing material, can last longer than modular homes made from more typical building materials. At the end of a home’s life, the manufacturer can fully recycle the plastic. (The company also uses around 30% postconsumer recycled material.) Plastic makes the homes resilient in earthquakes. In seismic testing on shake tables, the material was flexible enough that it bent but never broke. Similarly, in a hurricane, the buildings can bend in strong winds. Making the homes resilient to fires was a bigger challenge, since plastic easily melts. But the team developed a compound thats mixed into the plastic that makes it carbonize in the event of a fire, forming a layer of black soot so the fire cant penetrate and it self-extinguishes. The Lego-like parts can be assembled into simple 8-by-8-foot modules without equipment. Then those modules can be laid out into homes. In one version of the housing, with a floating foundation and piers, the homes can adjust to floods or float permanently on water. (One proposal from the company looked at how the design could be used for ocean-based housing in the Marshall Islands to help deal with sea level rise.) In another version, the modules sit on a foundation thats raised 28 inches above the ground. The company has already built multiple projects, with others underway. But so far, the first developments havent yet used the amphibious version. Because the concept is new, it isnt yet possible to insure. It also needs to overcome regulatory barriers. The first projects use a more standard foundation, though they also have advantages in flood zones. A new solution for supportive housing In a project in Watsonville, California, the design makes it possible to build in a flood zone. When a nonprofit in the small city wanted to build housing for people experiencing homelessness in a church parking lot, they initially planned to use another type of modular housing. But it would have cost $1 million to raise the other homes above the flood level. Because LifeArk’s homes are already raised off the ground, it was far less expensive to make the housing high enough to avoid an extreme flood. The company also used the design in other supportive housing projects. In West L.A., one project that just opened on a city-owned parking lot includes 33 bedrooms and bathrooms around a central courtyard. Another project that opened last year, in an L.A. suburb, has 25 units for short-term stays for people experiencing homelessness. [Image Rendering: LifeArk] For supportive housing like ths, the design can help significantly reduce costs. Its faster to build than other modular housing, with less labor required. The raised design also allows contractors to install utilities under the homes, rather than in trenches underground that are expensive to build. The company’s first project, in another L.A. suburb, demonstrated the advantages. “At the time, California was spending a minimum of half a million dollars a unit for housing,” Wee says. “That was our first project, and so we made a lot of mistakes. But we still came up at least two to three times faster and at least half the cost.” As production scales up, the cost could come down further, making it more viable for use in disasters and in developing countries. And as the company builds more supportive housing projects, it’s still working to make the amphibious version of the housing a reality. “There’s ample evidence that it will be far more economical in the long term to build an amphibious house in flood-prone zones than to repair homes damaged by floods,” says Wee. “I am a strong believer that if we can crack this nutmostly regulatory and insurancethis could open up whole new housing opportunities.”
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You wake up in the morning and, first thing, you open your weather app. You close that pesky ad that opens first and check the forecast. You like your weather app, which shows hourly weather forecasts for your location. And the app is free! But do you know why its free? Look at the apps privacy settings. You help keep it free by allowing it to collect your information, including: What devices you use and their IP and media access control addresses. Information you provide when signing up, such as your name, email address, and home address. App settings, such as whether you choose Celsius or Fahrenheit. Your interactions with the app, including what content you view and what ads you click. Inferences based on your interactions with the app. Your location at a given time, including, depending on your settings, continuous tracking. What websites or apps that you interact with after you use the weather app. Information you give to ad vendors. Information gleaned by analytics vendors that analyze and optimize the app. This type of data collection is standard fare. The app company can use this to customize ads and content. The more customized and personalized an ad is, the more money it generates for the app owner. The owner might also sell your data to other companies. You might also check a social media account like Instagram. The subtle price that you pay is, again, your data. Many free mobile apps gather information about you as you interact with them. As an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and a doctoral student in computer science, we follow the ways software collects information about people. Your data allows companies to learn about your habits and exploit them. Its no secret that social media and mobile applications collect information about you. Metas business model depends on it. The company, which operates Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is worth $1.48 trillion. Just under 98% of its profits come from advertising, which leverages user data from more than 7 billion monthly users. What your data is worth Before mobile phones gained apps and social media became ubiquitous, companies conducted large-scale demographic surveys to assess how well a product performed and to get information about the best places to sell it. They used the information to create coarsely targeted ads that they placed on billboards, print ads, and TV spots. Mobile apps and social media platforms now let companies gather much more fine-grained information about people at a lower cost. Through apps and social media, people willingly trade personal information for convenience. In 2007a year after the introduction of targeted adsFacebook made over $153 million, triple the previous years revenue. In the past 17 years, that number has increased by more than 1,000 times. Five ways to leave your data App and social media companies collect your data in many ways. Meta is a representative case. The companys privacy policy highlights five ways it gathers your data: First, it collects the profile information you fill in. Second, it collects the actions you take on its social media platforms. Third, it collects the people you follow and friend. Fourth, it keeps track of each phone, tablet, and computer you use to access its platforms. And fifth, it collects information about how you interact with apps that corporate partners connect to its platforms. Many apps and social media platforms follow similar privacy practices. Your data and activity When you create an account on an app or social media platform, you provide the company that owns it with information like your age, birth date, identified sex, location, and workplace. In the early years of Facebook, selling profile information to advertisers was that companys main source of revenue. This information is valuable because it allows advertisers to target specific demographics like age, identified gender, and location. And once you start using an app or social media platform, the company behind it can collect data about how you use the app or social media. Social media keeps you engaged as you interact with other peoples posts by liking, commenting or sharing them. Meanwhile, the social media company gains information about what content you view and how you communicate with other people. Advertisers can find out how much time you spent reading a Facebook post or that you spent a few more seconds on a particular TikTok video. This activity information tells advertisers about your interests. Modern algorithms can quickly pick up subtleties and automatically change the content to engage you in a sponsored post, a targeted advertisement or general content. Your devices and applications Companies can also note what devices, including mobile phones, tablets, and computers, you use to access their apps and social media platforms. This shows advertisers your brand loyalty, how old your devices are, and how much theyre worth. Because mobile devices travel with you, they have access to information about where youre going, what youre doing, and who youre near. In a lawsuit against Kochava Inc., the Federal Trade Commission called out the company for selling customer geolocation data in August 2022, shortly after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Kochavas customers, including people who had abortions after the ruling was overturned, often didnt know that data tracking their movements was being collected, according to the commission. The FTC alleged that the data could be used to identify households. Kochava has denied the FTCs allegations. Information that apps can gain from your mobile devices includes anything you have given an app permission to have, such as your location, who you have in you contact list, or photos in your gallery. If you give an app permission to see where you are while the app is running, for instance, the platform can access your location anytime the app is running. Providing access to contacts may provide an app with the phone numbers, names, and emails of all the people you know. Cross-application data collection Companies can also gain information about what you do across different apps by acquiring information collected by other apps and platforms. This is common with social media companies. This allows companies to, for example, show you ads based on what you like or recently looked at on other apps. If youve searched for something on Amazon and then noticed an ad for it on Instagram, its probably because Amazon shared that information with Instagram. This combined data collection has made targeted advertising so accurate that people have reported that they feel like their devices are listening to them. Companies, including Google, Meta, X, TikTok, and Snapchat, can build detailed user profiles based on collected information from all the apps and social media platforms you use. They use the profiles to show you ads and posts that match your interests to keep you engaged. They also sell the profile information to advertisers. Meanwhile, researchers have found that Meta and Yandex, a Russian search engine, have overcome controls in mobile operating system software that ordinarily keep peoples web-browsing data anonymous. Each company puts code on its web pages that used local IPs to pass a persons browsing history, which is supposed to remain private, to mobile apps installed on that persons phone, de-anonymizing the data. Yandex has been conducting this tracking since 2017, while Meta began in September 2024, according to the researchers. What you can do about it If you use apps that collect your data in some way, including those that give you directions, track your workouts, or help you contact someone, or if you use social media platforms, your privacy is at risk. Aside from entirely abandoning modern technology, there are several steps you can take to limit access, at least in part, to your private information. Read the privacy policy of each app or social media platform you use. Although privacy policy documents can be long, tedious, and sometimes hard to read, they explain how social media platforms collect, process, store, and share your data. Check a policy by making sure it can answer three questions: what data does the app collect, how does it collect the data, and what is the data used for. If you cant answer all three questions by reading the policy, or if any of the answers dont sit well with you, consider skipping the app until theres a change in its data practices. Remove unnecessary permissions from mobile apps to limit the amount of information that applications can gather from you. Be aware of the privacy settings that might be offered by the apps or social media platforms you use, including any setting that allows your personal data to affect your experience or shares information about you with other users or applications. These privacy settings can give you some control. We recommend that you disable off-app activity and personalization settings. Off-app activity allows an app to record which other apps are installed on your phone and what you do on them. Personalization settings allow an app to use your data to tailor what it shows you, including advertisements. Review and update these settings regularly because permissions sometimes change when apps or your phone update. App updates may also add new features that can collect your data. Phone updates may also give apps new ways to collect your data or add new ways to preserve your privacy. Use private browser windows or reputable virtual private networks software, commonly referred to as VPNs, when using apps that connect to the internet and social media platforms. Private browsers dont store any account information, which limits the information that can be collected. VPNs change the IP address of your machine so that apps and platforms cant discover your location. Finally, ask yourself whether you really need every app thats on your phone. And when using social media, consider how much information you want to reveal about yourself in liking and commenting on posts, sharing updates about your life, revealing locations you visited, and following celebrities you like. This article is part of a series on data privacy that explores who collects your data, what and how they collect, who sells and buys your data, what they all do with it, and what you can do about it. Kassem Fawaz is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jack West is a PhD student in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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“Plan for traffic jams, get traffic jams. Plan for human flourishing, get human flourishing.” Thats not just some cheesy urbanism mantra, its behavioral science. Human behavior is often just following the path of least resistance. Not necessarily because we’re lazy, but because our brains are wired to conserve effort. Psychologists will tell you that the more friction we encounter (physical, mental, or procedural) the less likely we are to continue the thing were doing. The fox and the grapes Aesops fable The Fox and the Grapes is a parable about decision-making. The fox cant reach the grapes that are way up high on the vine, so he figures they must not be ripe. Its where we get the phrase sour grapes to describe how someone rationalizes their poor reasoning. I came across a research study that applied Aesops fable. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}} Fifty-two participants judged the direction of moving dots on a screen by using handles in either hand. When researchers subtly increased resistance in one handle, participants unconsciously altered their judgments to favor the easier action. For example, adding resistance to the left handle made participants more likely to perceive the dots moving to the right, since moving the right handle was easier. “Our brain tricks us into believing the low-hanging fruit really is the ripest, neuroscience researcher Dr. Nobuhiro Hagura said. We found that not only does the cost to act influence people’s behavior, but it even changes what we think we see.” Dr. Haguras team found that bias occurred without participants realizing that one response required more effort. In other words, their brains recalibrated what felt right based on ease, not accuracy. Unconscious decisions People dont read zoning ordinances. They dont memorize bus schedules. They dont have a photographic memory of where to find bike lanes. They dont make pro/con lists before deciding whether to walk to the store or drive. Most daily decisions are unconscious. So if local government leaders want people to choose healthy, sustainable, socially beneficial behaviors, those behaviors have got to be the easiest ones to choose. Unfortunately, most American towns and cities are built the opposite way. Walking your child to school often means dodging traffic, climbing over curbs, and waiting at unshaded intersections with no bench in sight. Riding a bike might mean taking a lane next to speeding trucks. Taking transit might mean waiting in the mud with no sidewalk or shelter. But hopping in a car? Thats easy. Weve paved a deadly path of least resistance. Whats doable, but requires some up-front energy by the expert planners and engineers, is to make safe and healthy choices as simple and intuitive by creating a system that nudges you in the right direction. Organizing principles Entrepreneurs often cite their one-line hook for a product or service as the key to staying focused. Urban planners, policy writers, and elected officials should steal this tactic. Every transportation plan, housing study, parking reform, or downtown revitalization effort could begin with a one-sentence purpose thats clear, memorable, and anchored in human flourishing. That sentence becomes your compass when debate veers off course. For example: Our streets will be safe for 8-year-olds riding bicycles. We will eliminate policies that interfere with abundant housing. Cars are welcome on our streets, but they will move slowly. Townhouses should be legal in every neighborhood. Our residents should not be forced to drive to get around. Housing people is more important than housing cars. The bus should not be stuck in traffic. These types of one-liners can be organizing principles, which is more powerful than empty slogans. If the plan, ordinance, or capital project doesnt help achieve the one-sentence purpose, its off-mission. If it conflicts, it should be stopped. People choose whats easy, so make good urbanism easy. Make it the path of least resistance. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}}
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