Understanding affordability.

What is affordable housing? How do we tell if a project will be affordable before we build it? Affordability means balancing outputs and inputs over time, right? Does it also mean matching cost and benefit? Mulling over a metric for affordability while discussing a housing project (affordability from the perspective of an individual), I came up with this diagram system.

Redundancy creates resiliency. Looking at where different systems overlap (money and nutrients, for example) can help balance budgets and provide multiple ways to achieve goals.

Larger loops spanning more space and involving more people tend to provide delayed and diluted feedback, so much so that it can be hard to recognize any impact of our individual actions. However, working with a variety of loop sizes can help us understand the world both as a compilation of individuals and as an entity in itself.

The more we interact with our environment and experience the feedback of our actions, the more we are empowered to act in our own best interest.

An affordable lifestyle is one that we actually want to live, that supports both self and world.

In these diagrams, the circles represent our selfhood. Black lines represent active transactions in money, in nutrients, and self-awareness

The red text in this diagram shows how money can start to be replaced or supported by actions more directly meeting individual needs.

Nutrition is where we are most inextricably part of an ecosystem, and it is easier to see how we are simultaneously individual and part of the whole.

Sometimes actions themselves make us feel good (for instance, smiling). Other times just the results make us feel good. Either way, noticing our impact is empowering.