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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if people get hassled to no end by planning boards about one-off dwellings, infrastructure, etc. It's wonderful to see this sort of thing still exists, and you can in fact have a home without working on dumb shit that doesn't matter (aka most jobs) for 5-10 years to pay for it.

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In large parts of Africa we generally have two types of land. "Official" land that comes with a title deed and tribal land that you can be allocated by your chief or local leader. To build on "official" land you need your building plans approved. Inspectors will come and inspect your building during all the stages you are building. On tribal land you build whatever the hell you want. There was a time when upcoming African professionals shunned the village but now I sense we are starting to see things differently. Mansions are being built in villages. Less expensive than building in government areas. Less corruption too.

Thanks for this - I found some gorgeous homes after reading your comment and doing a search for tribal land homes.

https://www.reckontalk.com/the-painted-houses-of-the-ndebele...

That's fascinating - I'd be really curious to learn more about this system. Perhaps the initial intentions were good (I don't want a school next to a lead smelter) but planning seems to have become a tool to reduce access to housing and strangle places' growth.

Of course, do these mansions handle their own services? What do they do about externalities?

It's a continuation of pretty how much Africans lived in the past, before colonisation. My theory is when colonisers arrived it was probably too much of a headache to try and assign everyone a title deed. Lead smelters and mines will need government permits. I meant you can build any house that you pretty much want.

Most people will acquire the land in their village. Typically a young couple wanting their own home. There are two options. If you family has some land available, you can just go inform the headman that you will be building your home there. Second option is you approach headman who keeps tabs on land that is available. He will show you were to build. The community is always consulted before land is allocated. For example someone may object that you are too close to them and your livestock might cause problems with his garden. Other objecttions might be that the family closest has a son who is going to build there in near future. The headman tends to be aware of all these maters though and he tends to have spots ready to allocate.

In the past we used to build Blair toilets[0]. People still fetch water from the well. Carrying the bucket on their head or pushing it in wheelbarrow. We are starting to dig boreholes (very expensive) and flushing toilets with septic tanks are starting to appear. Very few though have piped water. Gas stoves also starting to appear along with solar panels for lighting. We still have a long long way to go though.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_toilet

That's really interesting. It sounds like long-term indebtedness isn't part of it? Or am I naive to think that? What happens if there's no land available?

Now that is an interesting question that I think the next generation is going to have to answer.

There is still plenty of tribal lands available. Currently, people tend to settle in the tribal lands that are close to roads and towns. Next step I guess is moving further away from towns. People also have land which they grow crops. This tends to be separate from the homestead and quite substantial in size. A good 100metres by 50/100metres. I see people have started subdividing these fields and settling in them. Fewer people are depending on the harvest now to survive so some of this land is not in use.

I know I haven't answered your question. I really don't know how we are going to transition from the rather informal way in which land is dished out and houses built to the more formal approach. What I do know is it is going to take a long time. Africa currently has other pressing problems. Healthcare, education, corruption ... Whilst there has been the odd controversy here and there land in the tribal areas is not one of the big issues. A lot of it is allocated to families that have lived in the area for generations.

Far enough away from civilization one can generally build anything without any permits etc.

By the time anyone 'official' finds out about your building, it will have been there decades, and usually it will have exceeded any time limit for them to tell you to pull it down.

Wales introduced the One Planet scheme in 2011 to try and make this easier [0] (it's debatable whether it is, in-fact easier).

The Lammas eco-village [1] in Wales is very similar to the one in the OP, and is one of the driving forces for this kind of movement (and the One Planet scheme).

[0] https://gov.wales/docs/desh/publications/090521susdev1wales1...

[1] http://lammas.org.uk/en/welcome-to-lammas/

Thanks! I considered moving to an eco-village in Ireland (Cloughjordan) but they told me it would be at least a year before getting planning permission to build anything.

Elon Musk appears to be developing a Two Planet scheme

It’s a step up from the No Planet scheme we had before.

I've been making plans for a three planet scheme, but the complexity keeps increasing so I'm not sure I will finish them.

You can find their planning applications here by searching for "Scoraig":

https://wam.highland.gov.uk/wam/

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