New Cityscape Reflects on Housing Technology Projects

April 6, 2023  

New Cityscape Reflects on Housing Technology Projects

The newest edition of Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research presents findings from the research program Cooperative Research in Housing Technologies (CRHT), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Mike Blanford and Kent Watkins introduce the symposium on CRHT. HUD managed a total of 10 CRHT grants from fiscal year (FY) 2019 to 2022. This issue includes articles on all 10 projects.

Christine Barbour and James Lyons summarize field and regulatory solutions to consistently design and construct cost-effective area separation walls. The article suggests the need to harmonize codes through a holistic lens and adopt innovations to reduce complexity and maintain affordability.

Jeff Carney, Ravi Srinivasan, Stephen Bender, Bill O’Dell, Ryan Sharston, Abdol Chini, and Forough Foroutan demonstrate the results of a multidisciplinary research project that developed an advanced modular housing design called CORE+, which provides new housing opportunities for communities facing increased risk from environmental hazards. This project aimed to develop a roadmap to enable the modular housing industry to design postdisaster housing for rapid deployment, efficiency, and long-term resilience.

John W. van de Lindt, Maria Koliou, and Pouria Bahmani provide an overview of how researchers are working toward having the most important seismic performance factor (R-factor) adopted for use in U.S. building codes, thereby making cross-laminated timber an affordable option for multifamily construction.

John B. Peavey, Nay B. Shah, Chinedu Moneke, Kevin Kauffman, and Elina Thapa introduce the idea of prioritizing resilient construction practices based on the frequency of occurrence for any given natural hazard event. The authors posit that the Designing for Natural Hazards guides offer solutions that residential designers, builders, and developers can readily incorporate into their business practices, focusing on minimizing high-frequency damage while providing a wide range of solutions.

Victor Braciszewski, Stet Sanborn, Justin Tholen, Harshana Thimmanna, Tyler Pullen, Carol Galante, and Jamie Hiteshew demonstrate the impact of incorporating distributed heat pump water heater technology into modular construction practices to meet the urgent, intersecting demands of future U.S. housing stock. Their analysis revealed that centralized heat pump domestic water heating systems in multifamily housing projects could offer 29 percent energy savings compared with traditional, natural gas-fired systems.

Emanuel Levy, Jordan Dentz, and Yi-Jia Liao examine how plant-installed, commercially competitive, and fully integrated heating and cooling solutions can improve home performance and quality of manufactured housing. A production facility in southern Georgia integrated two system options into newly constructed manufactured homes — a packaged unitary system and a ducted mini-split heat pump — and found that both systems can be successfully implemented in the production facility and operated as intended after transport.

Isabelina Nahmens, Ondřej Labík, Alison Donovan, Kalee Whitehouse, Damon Lane, Desmond Kirwan, Leslie Badger, Ankur Podder, and Shanti Pless explore how factories building high-performance zero energy modular homes can incorporate solar + storage (S+S) into their existing construction system while improving quality and productivity and reducing energy costs.

John B. Peavey, Ed Hudson, Zachary A. Summy, and Jon Violette present preliminary data on the integration of 3D concrete printing (3DCP) technology in residential buildings. The researchers investigate two key critical construction issues: (1) barriers to the adoption of 3DCP technology (such as the lack of building codes or standards, the lack of design and construction guidance, and the lack of technical expertise to implement the new technology) and (2) how 3DCP components (primarily walls) will be installed with conventional building product components.

Mohammad Aghajani Delavar, Hao Chen, and Petros Sideris propose a 3D concrete printed (3DCP) building design that adopts a lateral force resisting system composed of reinforced 3DCP walls, making it suitable for low-rise 3DCP housing in seismic regions. This design process adopts the Equivalent Lateral Force (ELF) procedure as a design methodology, and this study sets to determine response modification factors (R-factors) and develop strength design equations for different failure mechanisms, which are crucial elements of the ELF procedure.

Nafisa Tabassum and Rifat Bulut examine recent developments in slab-on-ground foundations constructed over expansive soils, which swell or shrink ground surface during times of wet and dry conditions. The researchers found that commonly used foundation design software might not account for the effects of climate change on expansive soils. The findings of this work could improve the resilience of slab-on-ground foundations to climate change if accepted by standards and code bodies.

Refereed Papers
This issue of Cityscape includes one refereed paper.

Patrick J. Fowler, Andrew Foell, Anne K. Rufa, and Michael Schoeny examine the effect of the Family Unification Program (FUP) — a HUD-sponsored partnership between local child welfare and public housing agencies — on neighborhood attainment in Chicago. The findings show evidence of an unintended consequence of housing voucher receipt for child welfare-involved families’ mobility into significantly more disadvantaged and dangerous neighborhoods.

Departments
Articles in Cityscape's regularly appearing departments include:

Data Shop: Move-In Fees as a Residential Sorting Mechanism Within Online Rental Markets, by Remy Stewart, Chris Hess, Ian Kennedy, Kyle Crowder

Foreign Exchange: The Role of Forbearance in Sustaining Low-Income Homeownership: Evidence from Norway’s Public Starter Mortgage Program by Anna Maria Santiago and Kristin Aarland

Graphic Detail: Neighborhood Incarceration Rate Hot Spots in Maryland by Alexander Din; Visualizing Spanish Speaking Limited English Proficiency and Hispanic Populations in Fort Collins, Colorado by Brent D. Mast and Tricia Ruiz

Impact: Regulatory Impact Analysis of Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards by Michael Hollar

Industrial Revolution: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of FORTIFIED^TM Home Designation in Oklahoma by Somik Ghosh, Ben F. Bigelow, Alexander Smith, and Olayinka Omole; Concept of Thermal Bridging in Wood Framed Construction by Shawn P. Kelley and Mike Blanford

New on HUD User