John Brown is a registered architect, a real estate broker and a professor of architecture at the University of Calgary. He is also the founder of what he calls the Slow Home Movement. The idea is a shelter based version of the Slow Food Movement. While slow food aims to increase our awareness of the foods we eat and the way in in which their growth, preparation and consumption affects us, the Slow home Movement encourages home owners to focus on where and how they live. It argues that the predominant housing developments produced today are cookie cutter houses that are, like fast food, "standardized, homogenous and wasteful".

The three principles this philosophy rests on are Close, Simple and Light.

Close means living in walkable neighborhoods near the workplace. This enables you to reduce your carbon footprint by eliminating or greatly reducing commuting which also creates more time to spend with family or doing other activities that matter to you. This principle also includes creating communities in which shopping, parks, schools and other amenities are easily accessible by foot or by bike.

• Simple means not adding stress to your life by living in a house you cannot afford; this does not include just the price of the home but the time, money and effort in maintenance and upkeep of the property. It includes well organized open space with ample day lighting and a connection to the outdoors. It means a home that accommodates your life and lifestyle without a lot of wasted time and space.
• Light means an energy efficient home with a reduced carbon footprint that does not emit noxious chemicals from the materials used to construct it into the indoor air and poison its occupants.

Perhaps the most powerful idea of this movement is contained in these two thoughts from Professor Brown.

"IMAGINE WHAT YOUR WORLD WOULD BE LIKE IF IT COULD BE DIFFERENT"

This is not a way many people are used to thinking. Most people are at least a little familiar with Einstein's quote that "Imagination is more important than Knowledge". This statement was the answer to a question posed to him in an October 1929 interview for the SATURDAY EVENING POST.The question was "Do you trust more to your imagination than to your knowledge?" Einstein's answer was "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world"In that context the other important thought Professor Brown  puts forth about the Slow Home Movement that I think is equally if not more important is

EVERY CHOICE YOU MAKE NO MATTER HOW SMALL OR SEEMINGLY INSIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTES TO THE DESIGN OF THE FUTURE

I don't think that one needs any elaboration!