Tiny houses tend to inspire a very particular kind of fervour. It’s in their storybook neatness, their diminutive dimensions and the suggestion that – if they come with wheels – you can literally up sticks on a whim and park wherever you’d like. As sociologist Alice Elizabeth Wilson puts it, the tiny house sits at the intersection of social aspiration, financial pragmatism and counter-cultural free thinking.

The recent example of a 28-year-old London artist called Harrison Marshall who, as of March 2023, now lives in a skip, ticks all these boxes. It also shows up the limitations inherent to tiny homes being proferred as some kind of solution to the housing crisis. Without running water and only a portaloo as necessary, Marshall’s is urban living of the rudest kind. And yet, it cost the man £4,000, and a not-insignificant amount of social clout, to set up. As tiny as tiny homes might be, they are run through with the same medley of privilege and precarity that makes house-hunting an ever-fraughter business.

Further afield, in botanical news, an entomologist enjoins us to show dandelions the same amount of love our beleaguered bees do. And a political scientist unpicks the benefits that climate protestors recently found in eschewing disruptive action for something altogether calmer and more cathartic.

Dale Berning Sawa

Commissioning Editor, Cities + Society

Ronny Rose / Alamy

House in a skip: even tiny homes can’t address the privilege and insecurity of the housing market

Alice Elizabeth Wilson, University of York

The tiny house movement embodies a complex mixture of counter-cultural ideals, financial pragmatism and socio-economic privilege.

Elvira Tursynbayeva/Shutterstock

Dandelions are a lifeline for bees on the brink – we should learn to love them

Philip Donkersley, Lancaster University

Before you reach for the weed killer, spare a thought for struggling pollinators.

Robert Evans/Alamy Stock Photo

Extinction Rebellion gave it ‘the Big One’ with a four-day peaceful protest – now what?

Marc Hudson, University of Sussex

The group has eschewed disruptive protest in the pursuit of ‘building relationships’.

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