Reconstructing the American Dream

‘Reconstructing the American Dream is a rare blend of deep ethnography, sharp cultural critique, and striking visual storytelling. Traveling through Austin and its surrounding counties, the authors uncover the wildly varied world of tiny housing—from curated communities to off-grid experiments and charitable villages for formerly unhoused residents. Through rich interviews and immersive fieldwork, they show how “going tiny” is both an act of freedom and a symptom of shrinking opportunity that simultaneously challenges and reproduces the mythology of the American Dream.’

– Jessie Speer, The London School of Economics and Political Science

‘This book invites you into the intriguing and growing phenomena of tiny housing in Texas. The homes have alluring aesthetics, but it is the characters - shared so wonderfully through Oba-Smith’s photography and the enlivening text - that radiates beautifully through the stories of journeys, places, lives, contradictions, and triumphs over adversity, and makes this book feel so rich and lively. Much more than a celebration of tiny living, it is, as the authors’; note a ‘disrupted coffee table book’, as keen to share with the reader the complexities and challenges of tiny housing as its hopeful possibilities - brilliantly using a board game to capture these varied journeys. Rarely has robust academic work been shared so creatively and beautifully. I invite you all in to explore the tiny house nation’

– Professor Jenny Pickerill (University of Sheffield), author of Eco-Homes: People, Place and Politics

‘Are tiny homes an outcome of expanded housing possibilities or a consequence of constrained options? Reconstructing the American Dream documents life inside tiny home communities in Texas to explore the different pathways, aspirations, challenges, and freedoms associated with tiny home living. Through vivid text and photographs, the book complicates the popular image of tiny homes and examines the possibilities and limits of new community forms.’

– Dr Esther Sullivan (University of Colorado), author of Manufactured Insecurity: Mobile Home Parks and Americans’ Tenuous Right to Place

Ella Harris is an independent creative researcher who specializes in ‘crisis cultures’ and creative methods. Her previous publications include Rebranding Precarity (2020) and Encountering the World with i-Docs (2025).

Mel Nowicki is associate professor in urban geography at Oxford Brookes University, UK. She is the author of several books, including Debt Trap Nation: Family Homelessness in a Failing State.

Tim White is a researcher and writer interested in housing, cities and inequality. He is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Free University of Berlin, and a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Cian Oba-Smith is an Irish Nigerian photographer born and raised in London. His work focuses on communities and subcultures around the world with a particular interest in approaching subjects that are often misrepresented with a view to presenting them in an alternate light. The relationship between human experience and environment is at the core of his projects.