Emergence
It's a word that means it grows organically out of what's happening.
If you default to passive solar design and vernacular architecture, passive solar is site specific. Over time, the design of buildings in cold northern places, rainy southern places and deserts will become distinct and recognizable as from a particular place without anyone trying to "brand" it .
It's like if you plant a seed, the plant that emerges from the ground depends on the seed you planted. If you plant the right seeds in terms of policy, a city emerges that functions well in that place
It means vernacular architecture GREW out of conditions on the ground. No one planned it. Locals built walls with local stones and some fell down and some stood. The ones that stood became what you copied and then it became "the standard" or typical for the area without any laws saying you must build it this way.
But if you learn from the past you can foster more of that intentionally.
Since passive solar design techniques are specific to climatic conditions, use of passive solar design leads to different building styles in different places.
Zeer pots work in hot, dry places. They don't work in hot, humid places. Similarly, you find swamp coolers in hot, dry places but not hot, humid places because they don't work in hot, humid places.
FYI I'm not really advocating for the use of swamp coolers. It's a health risk because mold can grow in the water supply and it's also not passive solar. It's an alternative to AC but still uses electricity.
I much more strongly advocate for the kind of venting found in Iran and Mexico that uses air flow to cool the building without electricity. It's passive solar design and it's lower maintenance and generally will provide an overall better quality of life, in part because you don't need to worry about it growing mold.
Very hot and very cold places can both benefit from use of thermal mass (thick walls, etc.) and underground or partly underground structures. This tends to be less common, less useful and more problematic in other areas.
Florida has few basements because it's got a lot of karst and a high water table. It's prone to developing sudden large sink holes, plus places with a high water table are places where basements get inundated with water regularly, making them not very useful as storage or living space.
These are not conditions conducive to borrowing this partly underground design technique that may work well in different circumstances.
Where I grew up, it's hilly, hot and humid. A somewhat common design was a walk-out basement that could be used as recreational space for the kids. The hilly terrain helped foster this because many lots have a steep slope. It's easy to build a house that's one story from the street side, two stories on the backside.
It was cooler in summer than the main floor without AC because the front portion of it was against dirt and it gave ready access to the backyard which was typically fenced and may have had a pool. You could furnish it to be tolerant of wet clothes because even if you didn't have a pool, the kids tended to play in the sprinklers in hot weather, and make it kind of like a mud room, with concrete floors, indoor-outdoor furnishings and your washer and dryer may have been down there, which helps keep the main floor cooler when running them in the summer months.
You are more likely to see basements in cold climates because it helps keep the house warmer. When I owned a house in Kansas with a slab foundation and no basement, my toddler wore his snow suit indoors in winter to lay on the cold kitchen floor and draw and paint so he would stay warm enough.
Where I lived in Kansas was colder than where I lived in Germany in my twenties. Kansas is fairly flat and extremely cold.
Building houses and other infrastructure appropriate for local conditions using locally available resources helps keep costs low and fosters a locally identifiable distinctive building style without trying to be distinct or different or identifiably (this place).
Simply deciding "We shall use passive solar design and vernacular architecture because it's cheaper and more sustainable." will cause a local building style to emerge over time.
No matter how much book learning you do, you don't actually know what will hold up best under local conditions until you try a few things and see what stands the test of time. Your mistakes will generally be smaller and cheaper if you read enough before building anything but you still will learn over time what works by building it and seeing what serves the people well, survives the local weather and isn't an excess maintenance headache.
And that will become your emergent local style that grew out of what works best locally using local resources as much as possible simply because it's readily available and has generally lower costs because you aren't paying to transport it long distances.
