How to Choose a Building Lot for Your New House

Youre building a house. Which do you do first? 1. Select a style and a plan OR 2. Select a building lot? Both approaches have merit. If your heart is set on a Spanish style adobe home, a heavily treed lot may not make sense for you. Having an idea of the architectural style you prefer will determine the size and characteristics of your building site. You may run into problems, however, if you select a specific floor plan too soon. You can always design a home to suit a landscape, but you may not be able to alter a landscape to accommodate the specifications of predetermined house plans. The configuration of rooms, the placement of windows, the location of the driveway and many other design elements will be affected by the land you build on. The land itself has long been the inspiration for truly great homes. Consider Frank Lloyd Wrights Fallingwater. Constructed of concrete slabs, the house is anchored to a rugged stone hill in Mill Run, Pennsylvania. Compare Fallingwater with Mies van der Rohes Farnsworth House. Made almost entirely of transparent glass, this unearthly structure seems to float above a grassy plain in Plano, Illinois. Would the Farnsworth House seem as graceful and serene perched on a rocky hill? Would Fallingwater make such a powerful statement if it sat in a grass field? Probably not. Questions to Ask About Your Building Lot Once you have located a promising building site for your new home, spend some time on the building site. Walk the full length of the building site at different times of the day. If you are a follower of feng shui, you may want to think about the land in terms of its chi, or energy. If you prefer a more down-to-earth evaluation, think about ways the building site will influence the shape and style of your home. Ask yourself: What are the general characteristics of the land? Is it green and woodsy? Rocky and gray? Or, is it a vast open stretch with a golden hue? Will the prevailing colors of the landscape change with the seasons? Will the home you imagine blend with the landscape? Does the landscape suggest particular colors or materials you might include in the design of your home?Can other structures be clearly seen from the building lot? What is the prevailing architectural style? Will your proposed home fit the overall context of the neighborhood?Will the size of your proposed house be proportionate to the size of the lot? (You dont want to squeeze a mansion onto a postage stamp!)Is there a street or road? Should the house face toward or away from the road?Where should the driveway be located? Will there be enough room for cars and delivery trucks to turn around?Where are the most pleasing views? Where does the sun rise and set? Which views would you like to see from the living areas? From the kitchen ? From the bedrooms? Where should windows and doors be placed?If you are in a northern climate, how important is it to face the south? Will a southern exposure help you save on heating costs?Is the site flat? Are there hills or streams? Are there any other geological conditions that might affect the design or placement of your home?How much landscaping will be required? Will preparing the land for building and planting trees and shrubbery add to your final costs? The waterfall views at Fallingwater may look idyllic, but for most of us, building on a rocky hillside isnt practical. You want the site of your new home to be beautiful, but it must also be safe... and affordable. Before you make a final decision, youll need to consider a mind-boggling list of technical details. Check Your Building Lot For Common Problems As you narrow your search for an ideal building site, dont scrimp on getting expert advice on home building. Your builder can put you in touch with consultants with the legal and scientific expertise to offer building advice. Your consultants will investigate the characteristics of the land and explore zoning, building codes and other factors. Land Conditions Soil. Has the property been a victim of hazardous waste? Are there pollutants that may not be apparent to an untrained observer?Land Stability. Is the property is subject to land slides or sinkages?Water Drainage. Is the property located near a river? Are there hills or low spots which may make your home subject to water runoff? Err on the side of caution. Even Mies van der Rohe made a grievous mistake. He placed the Farnsworth House too close to a stream, and his masterpiece suffered serious flood damage as a result.Noise. Is there a nearby airport, highway, or railroad? How disruptive is it? Zoning, Building Codes and More Zoning. In five years, your beautiful views may be replaced by a highway or a housing development. Zoning regulations will indicate what may be legally constructed in the surrounding area.Building Codes. A variety of ordinances will affect the placement of your new home on the lot. Regulations will specify how close you can build to the property line, roads, streams, and lakes.Easements. Easements for electrical and telephone poles will limit the space you have for building your home.Public Utilities. Unless the property is in a development of suburban tract homes, there may not be easy access to electricity, gas, telephone, cable television or public water lines. Sewers. If there are no municipal sewers, youll need to know where you may legally place your septic system. Costs You may be tempted to skimp on the cost of your land so that you can spend more money on building your house. Dont. The cost of altering an unsuitable lot is likely to be more expensive than purchasing land that is meets your needs and your dreams. How much should you spend on a building lot? There are exceptions, but in most communities your land will represent 20% to 25% of your total building costs. Advice From Frank Lloyd Wright Building a house is often the easy part. Making decisions is stressful. In Wrights book The Natural House (Horizon, 1954), the master architect gives this advice on where to build: When selecting a site for your house, there is always the question of how close to the city you should be, and that depends on what kind of slave you are. The best thing to do is go as far out as you can get. Avoid the suburbs—dormitory towns—by all means. Go way out into the country—what you regard as too far—and when others follow, as they will (if procreation keeps up), move on.~p. 134

Globalization and Its Impact on Marketing Strategies

DISSERTATION ON â€Å"GLOBALIZATION AND ITS IMPACT ON MARKETING STRATEGIES† OBJECTIVE OF STUDY The objective of this research is to gain a better understanding of the effects of globalization on firms’ international marketing cooperation and performance of firms, both in developed and emerging economies. This dissertation mainly focus on two questions, first is does globalization affect firm performance? And second is the relationship between global market opportunities and performance stronger than the relationship between global market threats and performance? By answering these questions, the study indicates the extent to which firms in two different economic contexts are affected by globalization. It also shows which dimension of†¦show more content†¦The last study makes an empirical investigation of the effects of globalization on the Degree of co-marketing alliance and international marketing performance of firms from two distinct economic contexts—developed and emerging economies, which are represented by American and Thai firms, respectively. Thailand and the U.S. are appropriate research settings since these two countries differ greatly in their degree of globalization level of economic development, and national competitiveness. While the U.S. is highly globalized, Thailand is considerably less globalized. According to the survey conducted by AT Kearney and EDS Company in cooperation with Foreign Policy Magazine Thailand is ranked 48th, and the U.S. is ranked 7th on the globalization index. Thailand is classified as a lower-middle-income economy, one in which the Gross National Income (GNI) per capita is between $736 and $2,935, while the U.S. is considered a high income- economy whose GNI per capita is above $40,000. Furthermore, the national competitiveness of these two nations differs dramatically. The U.S. is The second most competitive country in the world whereas Thailand is ranked number 40 on the national competitiveness index. In this introduction, the phenomenon of globalization, including the effects of globalization on businesses, is first described. The purpose of the study, the major research questions,Show MoreRelated The Impact of Globalization on Qantas Airlines Marketing Strategy1777 Words   |  8 PagesGlobalisation is having a significant impact on marketing. 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Modern Organizational Theory vs Improvisation Essay Example For Students

Modern Organizational Theory vs Improvisation Essay Modern Organizational Theory vs. Improvisationâ€Å"Organization theory deals with the formal structure, internal working, and external environment of complex human behavior within organizations. As a field spanning several disciplines, it prescribes how work and workers out to be organized and attempts to explain the actual consequences of organizational behavior (including individual behavior) on work done and on the organization itself.†(Gordon and Milkavoich, 147) It has been evolving for centuries on how should work be done in the public administration and how the organization should be. â€Å"Research findings have emerged about what motivates workers and how different incentives affect various tasks, employees, and situations; and the environments in which they operate.† (Gordon and Milakovich, 147) Even with all those research statistics and different modes of thought toward organization there are still situations in which the rational approach to public decisio ns does not help. For instance, what if the environment is instable and has no guidelines or precedents to follow? In the case of Israel, improvisation has changed the organization of public administrations, uprooted the conventional models for policymaking, and strayed off from the Weberian model of administration. This kind of improvisation is the product of â€Å"cultural and personal predilections and environmental circumstances,†(Sharkansky and Zalmanovitch, 1) The use of improvisation is dependent on the culture and the environment in which policy decisions are made. For example, the use of improvisation is found more so in Spanish managers. Why? â€Å"Spanish mangers express an explicit preference for spontaneous, improvised managerial style over the methodical and formal planning favored by their American, English, and Dutch counterparts.† (Sharkansky and Zalmanovitch, 2) Another proponent of improvisational technique is the Israelis. Improvisation is made inev itable in a situation where problems must be dealt with expediently and on the spur of the moment. Taking into consideration the conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis, improvisation is essential to running administrations. The formal theory such of Max Weber cannot apply since its framework of rules and procedures are to ensure stability, predictability, and reliability of performance; yet, with no stability or predictability in the environment these theories only fall short of their expectations. Rational panning has already been pointed out a century ago by Herbert Simon (1976) to be â€Å"bounded† by many factors such as: â€Å"skills, habits, and reflexes, values, etc, which makes it impossible to achieve rational planning that is suited for the situation†¦Moreover, rational planning does not have primary value in Israel’s cultural heritage. Survival in the Diaspora often depended on an ability to act quickly, with limited resources, under harsh, changi ng, and uncertain conditions.†(Sharkansky and Zalmanovitch, 2) With endless terrorism, continuous war, and a population growth that shifts from month to month there is the perpetual challenge to respond to each situation expediently and ingeniously. Even with the scientific management organizational theory, the formal structure and rules, the highly centralized top management levels, and especially the standardizing procedures would make policy-making decisions disastrous for Israel. This mode of organization is to increase productivity, thus profits. Yet, Israel’s leadership has to consistently â€Å"accomplish a wide variety of expensive goals with limited means. These goals included creating the infrastructure of a modem, industrial society in an undeveloped setting; creating a welfare state which could house, educate, and provide employment and healthcare for successive waves of immigrants and their children; and provide its citizens with a decent standard of livin g.† (Sharkansky and Zalmanovitch, 3) With all of these pressures to be done on an economy of scarcity, the profit idea fits nowhere. Improvisation began in Israel since 1967, the day the city was united under total Israeli control. It involved deviating Israel’s formal policy to keep the peace. With the Arabs fighting for their land back and Israel’s strong willed notion to maintain all of the land under Israeli rule, it proved to be quite a task. Not only did the government had to improvise to ease the tension between the Arabs and the Israelis, they also had to settle the demands of the Religious and the Secular people. To maintain a harmonious environment the public decision makers had to improvise a way to keep the religious and secular Jews on the same level, whereby initiating one approach to appease on group and lowering the standard to appease the other. This could only be done with an open system in which the organization constantly interacts with their environment to give grounds to their decisions. This systems theory- â€Å"which holds that organizations are like biological organisms in which they behave according to the inputs from their environment is the modern organization theory.The modern organization theory imbibes the notion of improvisation since it is open to feedback and is not closed to the public and is vulnerable to the forces in the external environment.† (Class notes) Improvisation is integral to Israel’s public administration.As stated before, with all the pressures to fulfill expectations of its people and the lack of funding it has provided the administrators creative ways of handling the situation. Instead of following protocols and strict chains of command, leaders are encouraged to fend for themselves in the creative war to obtain funds. â€Å"Some have persuaded commercial banks to lend money to their municipalities against the formal regulations on the argument that the national government would step in to pay up if the locality seemed on the verge of bankruptcy. Local leaders have also used crises, like terrorists attacks or a spurt in unemployment, to demand special grants.†(Sharkansky and Zalmanovitch, 5) Another public administrative job in which improvisation proved more effective is that of sudden immigration of Russian Jews after the collapse of the Soviet Union. If Israel had used the older version of public administrative organization it would take months to set up budgeting, land grants, building contractors, and begin construction to integrate the Russian Jews. By following the chain of command and following the protocols there would not have been any housing for any of the tens of thousands immigrants pouring in monthly. Quick action and thinking was needed with strong leadership and control. â€Å"According to one scholar, the Russian immigration constituted a â€Å"crisis,† defined as a major, unanticipated change which urgently requires so lutions â€Å"with high risks,† and for which the existing resources, laws, and procedures are inadequate. The improvisations adopted to deal with the crisis cut constructing time in half, increased by a magnitude of four the rate of housing construction, and produced an adequate supply of housing for immigrants.† This is yet another success story by using improvisation as the method of organization and decision-making process. .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15 , .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15 .postImageUrl , .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15 , .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15:hover , .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15:visited , .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15:active { border:0!important; } .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15:active , .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15 .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u32c02cecab6ea5d30cca67e6fe3b7e15:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Personal Statement : Nonverbal Communication Essay Improvisation maximizes the discretion of decision makers, it enables them to respond directly to problems or situations at hand, and it â€Å"provides the opportunity for inspired evasions of the limits imposed by formal organization and the rigors of rational policy making.†(Sharkansky and Zalmanovitch, 7) It can be used in vastly different ways and to different ends-to blur and delay insoluble conflicts, or with force and determination when quick action seems appropriate. It can merge pro force from the inability to implement policy, or itself be the policy, as in the case of building housing quickly for immigrants. It can be guided by an overriding vision.† (Sharkansky and Zalmanovitch, 7) Improvisation has the ability to arrive to conclusions or actions in an expedient and ingenious way when there are no other alternatives available.It is a means of avoiding stagnation. It is useful when there is uncertainty, few precedents, reliable resources or protocols, few fact s and suitable routines; â€Å"when there is little way of evaluating the relative efficacy of the various alternatives; and when there is pressure to act in a short time or with resources that appear to be sufficient. Modern organizational theory can only go so far to solve public administrative problems, but with creative thinking such as improvising more can be done for the community. Bibliography: