What if the way we live together could look different?

Join us on October 2nd at Village of Industry & Art for "Rewriting the Family Home: Three Philadelphia Authors Imagine a Way Out of the Single-Family Housing Trap". Across Philadelphia and the country, rising housing costs and changing family structures are prompting people to rethink where, and with whom, they live. Yet those possibilities often come up against cultural judgment and restrictive zoning laws.

At Rewriting the Family Home, three Philadelphia-area writers will explore how current zoning makes finding a way and place to live increasingly, and unnecessarily, hard. Drawing from research and imagination in their recent books, Rachel Pastan, Diana Lind, and Samantha Paige Rosen will discuss the challenges of the single-family home and envision alternatives to the ways we have traditionally been taught to live.

In Rachel Pastan’s novel, We’re So Lucky To Live Here, a young theater director tries to remain in the big, old, lovely, falling-apart house she grew up in after her mother’s death. Unable to afford it, she considers a series of solutions, including inviting friends to move in and building an ADU, both of which are illegal.

Diana Lind’s Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing traces the history of single-family housing to explore how we arrived at the current housing landscape. The book considers possibilities including multi-generational living, in-law suites, co-living, microapartments, and tiny houses.

In Living, Together: Reimagining Community in the Age of Disconnection, Samantha Paige Rosen brings together essays and conversations from 21 writers and organizers, including Kristen Arnett, Rhaina Cohen, and Kim Stanley Robinson, exploring their decisions to make home with chosen family in a variety of forms and places.

The conversation will be moderated by Elizabeth Greenspan, whose forthcoming cultural history of Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, cities, and the 1970s will be published by Norton.

The event begins with a reception at 4:30 PM, followed by the panel at 5 PM.