Living large in a shipping container

It's a familiar chain of events in the global retail economy: create an international trade deficit that leads to an overabundance of empty shipping containers. So many of the giant boxes are piling up in some places, such as communities near the Port of Los Angeles, that they have become a political liability.

The container glut has resurrected the idea that they be converted to urban dwellings, theoretically addressing two problems at once--land pollution and the perennial housing shortage in California. Now, according to this post on BLDGBLOG, a company is trying to bring this concept to reality for the masses with a "prefab, do-it-yourself assembly unit" that "combines multiple shipping containers to build modern, intelligent and affordable homes."

We wonder how Home Depot salespeople will handle their advice on this one.