Planners Move to Close the Window on American McMansions
LOS ANGELES - For many they are a blight on the American landscape. For others, they are an expression of freedom and success. Now legislators in cities across the US, alarmed at the spread of “McMansions”, are trying to contain the size of American homes.
Inspired by concerns that communities are disappearing and alarmed by the environmental costs, planners have drawn up measures to ensure new homes stay within a footprint that is proportionate to the plot size. 
Since 1973 the median size of a new home in the US has grown from 1,525 sq ft (142 sq metres) to 2,248 sq ft. At the same time, the number of people per household has fallen from 3.1 to 2.6. Huge mansions are a common site across the US, dotting the landscape alongside motorways in Colorado, or squeezed into tiny plots in urban areas. Wherever they are found, they share common features: large atrium-style hallways, showpiece kitchens, multiple bathrooms, walk-in wardrobes, built-in garage and garden statuary; a style familiar to viewers of the Sopranos. While McMansion is the most frequently used pejorative term, “plywood palazzo” is another.
But the trend has alarmed planners and conservationists. In Boulder County, Colorado, which has recently adopted measures to cap the size of new homes, houses have grown from an average of 3,900 sq ft in 1990 to 6,300 sq ft last year. Last month in Los Angeles, the city’s planning commission passed a motion to restrict the size of new homes. If the city council adopts the measure it could affect 300,000 properties in the city. Similar measures have been adopted in Minneapolis and in Florida.
“I think people are suspicious of development in the US right now,” says John Chase, architecture critic and urban designer for the city of West Hollywood. “People have an unconscious cultural association with a place. Mansion-building takes away from a person’s sense of the identity of a place.”
But environmental pressures are also being felt. “According to scientists, if we don’t learn to contain our use of fossil fuels we are in serious trouble,” says John Nolon, a law professor at New York’s Pace University. “One of the most egregious examples is a large house. A 6,000 sq ft-8,000 sq ft house is a climate change disaster. If the country doesn’t rein in the construction of these mansions the message to individuals is that they’re encouraged to follow their urges. The phenomenon with McMansions is similar to that with SUVs [sport utility vehicles or 4×4s]: they express a certain sort of success, they’re available and they’re fun. If legislative folks don’t take some kind of position on mansionisation, it will go unchecked.”
But some discern signs that Americans are tiring of the architectural bling of the McMansion . “My sense is that in the luxury market people are less interested in size than they were a decade ago,” says Kermit Baker, chief economist with the American Institute of Architects, which has recorded a levelling off in the size of new houses.
Small may be beautiful, but new home owners may not want to go as far as the 250 sq ft micro-apartments proposed for central Los Angeles. That would be just enough space for a Humvee and a Prius to snuggle together.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
A small, cozy home that will hold just enough stuff, allow you to run into the other people you live with, and is not a nightmare to heat, clean and maintain is where its at.
McMansions are for idiots.
I agree chlorocardium. My six kids, my wife, and myself live in a 2100 sq ft house. It is plenty big. Fuck the jones’s.
ps Someone might want to tell John Edwards.
McMansions are the perfect expression of what the United States has turned into since Ronald Reagan became president in 1980. From the moment of his inauguration at lavish Gatsby-style parties in DC, it became acceptable again for the rich to show off their wealth. The phenomenon burgeoned during the eighties, continued under George H W Bush, under Clinton as well, and especially under George W Bush who rewarded his super-rich friends with huge tax cuts. The McMansions show no respect for the land on which they are located. One which was built behind where I live looks like the sort of estate mansion which used to sit on fifteen or twenty acres of land away from the public eye, but this one sits on one acre of land, two thirds of which has been cleared and turned into a sterile expanse of flat lawn. McMansions and SUV’s ought to be banned, but they never will as long as this country is ruled by its current corrupt oligarchy of demorepugs.
I can’t believe that this primate species that we are can’t get past the problem of meaningless consumption. I can’t believe that people still consume to impress, and that there are other people that are impressed with that consumption and wish they could join in.
I totally agree with all of you. Once (not long ago at all) we had nice shady streets with small quaint houses all respectfully and peacefully sitting in their perfect spot in the neighborhood. But now, inbetween these quaint warm homes are grotesque “tumors” spreading, as cancer often does. These hives-for-the-rich block sunlight and views and imprison their neighbors. It’s ARROGANCE. The same ARROGANCE that makes us think we can go and bomb any country we choose if we have the whim. I’m really glad to read some places are reigning these people in. If they have so much money, let them buy a decent piece of land in proportion to their Tyvek Caves.
You are right and we will never get past the problem of meaningless consumption, it is endemic to our very nature.
The only solution to gas guzzling cars is higher gas taxes and rediculous home sizes is higher real estate taxes, if they are stupid enough to want it let them pay
In the vein of the little box houses of the fifties, I have taken to calling the macmansions, “refrigerator boxes”. They are nothing to look at, just big boxy things littering the landscape.
One has to wonder if anyone ever gets lost in them. I suppose there is more room for the stuff from the big box stores.
Just remember the immortal words of Gordon Gekko (played by Micheal Douglas) in the movie Wall Street (1987): “Greed is good!” That scene from the movie epitomizes what we are seeing today in the United Corporations of America. The wars, the poverty, the rampant narcissism, the skyrocketing corporate profits, the alarming widening gap between the ultra rich and the rest of us, etc. They are all a logical extension of the trends reinvigorated and honed in the 1980s. He/she who dies with the most biggest toys wins, right? Isn’t that written somewhere in the neo-con bible?
Maybe the marketplace is already punishing the home-bingers. How many people want to pay $5.4 million for a single-family home?
One subtext to this story is that rich people hate children so much they’d rather have a gigantic home that almost no one lives in than a smaller but still roomy home with three or four children.
I live in northwest Montana, far, far away from such meaningless consumption and this trend towards filling the landscape with supersized trophey homes. NOT! They’re here too, and they’re popping up everywhere! It’s crazy what we’ve seen in the past 15 years. Every available piece of private land here in Big Sky Country is being developed, not just with vacation cabins, but huge ticky-tacky, cookie-cutter McMansions. Yes, I’m afraid that Big Sky Country is quickly and irrreversibly becoming big house country.
Just yeaterday we went out to the fields where the hay for our horses was being cut. The farmer leases the land from a developer who say’s he can continue to cut hay until the property sells. It’s in an area the locals know as Lower Valley and the topsoil is some of the deepest in Montana. But the views of the surrounding Rocky Mountains are “to die for” as the realtors like to say. So in a place where a few years ago was nothing but farm fields and woods, is now being divided into lots of 1 acre or less. I asked the farmer, “Where the hell are we?” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well look around. What happened to Lower Valley? I don’t even recognize it any more.” He replied, “It’s becoming Boulder.”
McMansions in my neighborhood have evolved into million dollar, 4000 sq. ft. stone castles representative of our new feudal society. Fortunately, there’s no room for a moat on the 1/4-acre lots. He he!
Funnier still, each has a 3-car garage set sideways on the lot so as not to have the garage doors as the prominent architectural feature. So the double-width driveways make tight 90° turns at the entrance to the garage. These turns, however, are too tight for their over-sized SUV’s to navigate, so they remain parked in the driveway, exposed to the weather. He he he!
sigma: eight people in a 2100 sq ft house? Get the hell outta here! How could that be ‘plenty big’? Is yours a family of pixies? Do you live in a climate that enables you to spend a lot of time outside, year ’round? If you moved to a 2100 sq ft home with your family of eight here in Minnesota, I’m betting you’d witness a fratricide by February.
I don’t believe this article for a second. I own a home in St. Paul MN - a 1,260 sq ft house with a 2.5 car garage and a HUGE yard (1.5 city lots deep) that children would love to run in and gardeners would love to grow their own organic food in. The house, built in 1915 has loads of charm and, as a friend says, “is cute as hell.”
I live and work overseas (as an unpaid volunteer) and am trying to rent the house for what everyone assures me is a VERY reasonable rent (most say that it’s on the low side!) My house has been vacant for five months. Why? Not enough space!!! The very small progressive community who try to live simply so that others can simply live, is just that - SMALL. The house cries out for a member of this community, but there aren’t enough of us to go around.
The insatiable American appetite for more and bigger is as strong as ever. And unfortunately, I don’t see it changing any time soon.
I live very comfortably in an earth-sheltered home of just over 900 sq ft. Granted, it’s just me and the cat, but this space, with its super-efficient layout, could easily accommodate a family of 4 (at least while the 2 kids were very young and/or of the same sex). There’s even room to add a 3rd bedroom if needed. You’d just have to fight for the one bath.
The mansions are also sprouting like toadstools in and around Knoxville, TN, taking some of the best and most picturesque land to be found anywhere and turning it into the ghettos of tommorow. When the revolution comes…and it will…and wealth is redistributed as it should be, these “McMansions” will be turned into muli-family housing. If it’s not too harsh a transition, the owners might even be allowed to retain the Master Suite, though they might have to share the bath.
I wonder who all these folks who can afford, or pretend to, these huge and, for the most part, grotesque, homes?
If you own your land and can afford a castle then you are lucky! This article leans to a communistic point of view. The issues today are still war, Constitutional restoration and impeaching criminal members of government. If you are able to create a fortune and choose to build or buy a large home and you can afford the taxes and maintenance then good for you! So, now people are going to dictate how other people can spend their money or how they can use their land?
I worked for a lighting company a number of years ago and some of our accounts were the developers of these McMansions. What this article doesn’t point out is that *most* of the homes I visited were still without alot of furniture even a year or two after the owners moved in. Oh, sure, they would make sure the formal dining room was fully finished (the dining room window always, always, always faces the street), as well as the formal living room (again, the windows always face the street).
When you get to the *back* of the house, however, or the rooms upstairs, it’s a different story. Lots of crappy, old leftover hand-me-downs or junk remaining from their college days, I kid you not. Now, of course, there’s nothing wrong with that, but when you’re mortgaged to the hilt and pretending to have more money than you actually have, it’s ridiculous.
It was funny. I’d see in these homes junk my husband and I had thrown out long ago, but then we could afford to, we live in a bungalow downtown.
I love my 1100 sq. ft. apartment for my family of three (and a rat)!
(and an apt is generally much more eco-efficent than a house)
jld_overseas: sigma’s got 8 people in his 2100 sq ft house. Since your St. Paul abode is 1260 sq ft, that would work out to about 5 people, given the sigma calculation of 262.5 sq ft per person. Would you be so bold as to tell me that 5 people (American people, that is) can live comfortably in that house?
I get so tired of people who think *they* know what’s right and want to enforce it on other people. My wife and I live in a 1,700 square foot home. Know what?? It’s too small. The guest bedroom and office are 10×10 and barely have enough room for furniture. The master bedroom, where we spend most of our personal time, barely holds a queen bed and two computer desks. The living room is barely big enough to put in a projector TV with a screen for movie night. I’d like to get a 4×8 pool table and some chairs in the great room and it isn’t big enough. No dining room at all, just a place in the kitchen for a 4 chair table.
You don’t want those things in your house?? Fine, live in your 1,200 sq. ft. home. But stop whining when I want them in mine. I’d rather have more indoor space than outdoor space.
Consumerism?? Or just enjoying life the way I want to. I don’t live in front of the TV, but when I watch a movie I want big sound and a big picture. I can shoot pool for hours by myself, and that’s as much exercise as walking. Maybe you like to hike and ride your bike for all of your entertainment, I don’t.
Go take your elitist attitude elsewhere.
MetalDog: My husband and I have two kids that we reared in our 1,200 SF house. sigma has double the number of people in a house almost double the size of our house. If we can easily do it, I’m sure sigma can, as well. We live in a small house with nice things, but without the accumulation of junk that people with more space feel they can’t live without. (They can, of course.)
signmaker, I think the point is over-consumption is killing the planet. That’s why people are complaining, or in your words, “whining”.
I just returned from visiting Colorado and the newspapers are filled with these massive, monster, multi-million-dollar homes “ready to move in–ski in, ski out!” Meanwhile, the workers who keep these resort towns running live in barrack-style mobile homes if they’re lucky.
Something is gravely wrong with this picture.
I know what this is like. I live next to one. One entire side of my house no longer has any privacy because their McWindows are situated in such a way that they can look inside our house very easily.
You want to let fresh air in the bathroom. Just make sure you close it before you shower otherwise the McNeighbors get a peep show too.
You want to sit in the backyard. They can see everything you do from their spacious second story and also their outdoor McBalcony that is conveniently located and overlooks our entire backyard. Isn’t it also convenient that they have their “McPlayroom” type area also right next to our property so they are always congregating on that side as well.
You think I’m exaggerating but I’m not. In a way, we have become prisoners in our own house becuase all the blinds, shutters, etc have to be closed in order to ensure privacy…..on that side of the house anyway. We don’t sit outside as much either unless we want him to join our conversations.
Nothing has been the same since that eyesore was built!
(BTW, I’m in L.A. Things are much worse out here.)
Frosty bunny July 31st, 2007 5:31 pm
Is that how it is? Your so sure? Have a look at this clip on YT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw
I am vaguely remembering a scene in “Dr. Zhivago” where the soldiers come to the door, have a look around, and then say they could house fourteen families in the space…
Those of you who have learned how to live in small spaces, good for you. My husband, cat and I live in a 660 sq ft apt. We are very happy, and often have as many as 10 guests over for snacks and conversation.
What global warming is teaching us is that we in the “developed world” are all going to have to learn to live with less, so signmaker, maybe you can afford your big house (for now) but the earth can’t; and the fact that you’re such a space hog is nothing to be proud of.
If a person makes (or inherits) enough money to buy and do anything they want with the land, water, air, factories, stores, etc.that they own, then what do we do when they start to take breathable air, drinkable water, usable topsoil, the wonders of nature (aesthetics), safe driving conditions, low cost energy, non-toxic/non-engineered food, decent paying jobs, a working system of public services, and a democratic government from the rest of us?
sh@dow, I have several posts here, am I so sure of what?
balakirev July 31st, 2007 5:38 pm
They can’t do that. The size of your house or your family are dependent on your ability to pay for such things. Global warming is another matter. As it stands you are headed to communism or to remaining in fascism that we have now.
Frosty bunny July 31st, 2007 5:31 pm
signmaker, I think the point is over-consumption is killing the planet. That’s why people are complaining, or in your words, “whining”.
I envision many of the huge houses to be split as townhouses and condos. When looking at floorplans, I look for ease in doing just that. VJ
On the Niagara peninsula in Canada (west of Buffalo NY and between the great lakes of Ontario and Erie) the province of Ontario has made the decision to encourage people to live in clusters in cities and villages and protect farm land with zoning ordinances. The farms can not be bought and divided up and resold.
It looks to me like what has happened in europe where the people live mostly in cities.
The Canadian gov’t is preparing for using mass transit imo by keeping people in suburban lots with less land than in American suburbs.
But I might be wrong. This is just an observation and an opinion.
jld_overseas
The problem is you probably don’t have enough closet space. People today have more clothes than people in 1915. Maybe buy some antique looking wardrobes… and see if that helps rent your house.
signmaker is the one with the elitist attitude. He/she is part of the problem, not the solution.
Almost all of society’s woes are due to overpopulation and overconsumption; global warming, war, famine, greed.
Having said that, my wife and I are very cozy in our quality-built, well-designed 980 sq ft home with 5 dogs. Easy to clean, cheap to heat/cool, and always gets more compliments than the surrounding soul-less and poorly designed McMansions.
The idea of government mandating the size of my house offends my libertarian streak as much as the mcmansions offends my green streak.
Perhaps government should just stop subsidizing them. First figure out what the average number of square feet per resident in American homes. Then begin phasing out the mortgage interest deduction for those with more than twice that, taking it to zero for homes with more than 4X the national average square feet per resident. It would at least put a brake on things.
There is lots of wonderful stuff about New Urbanism, etc. The central principles are mixed-use areas, higher-density living areas (surrounded by open space: think of a doughnut), public transit.
I lived in a wonderful bungalow in Boulder for many years (it was built in 1918). We certainly could have used more closet space and another bathroom, but apart from that it was a wonderful house for a small family (which included a good-sized dog). We went back to visit friends a couple of years ago. Our bungalow has been replaced by a mini prairie palace almost three times the size of our bungalow. (They left one wall so that the project could be classified as a renovation.)
What a heart-breaker.
daBear July 31st, 2007 5:55 pm
So then you want the same demand destruction the wealthy want to use with carbon taxation?
High prices and taxation and inflation are all DEMAND DESTRUCTION.
If you all believe in global warming and energy depletion than you want STRICT CONSERVATION. Fair distribution of energy resources through rationing. So if you own a large home you will have to heat it with the same amount of fuel as someone in a cardboard box! If the VW owner gets 10 gallons a week so does the H2 owner. Rationing is the only way that does not create a class war!
Big houses are not sustainable, there aren’t enough resources on the planet to build 500 (or more) square feet of heated and cooled space per person. I’ve built a few small cabins about 12 x 16′ (192 square feet)and have found that they’re plenty for one person. I live in a 240 sq ft travel trailer and am a firm believer that small is better! The smaller your place is, the less junk you’re likely to bring home. Less to heat, cool, & clean is better. Simplicity rules! To hell with the big wasteful houses!
Their should be some big fat luxury taxes for big homes and automobiles.
“So, now people are going to dictate how other people can spend their money or how they can use their land?”
Yes, hopefully, they are going to…
The people, through their democratic govenments can, and do, dictate such things you are allowed to do through zoning regulations and and environmental regulations. Considering what we now know about the lavish and wasteful living styles and potentially catastrophic climate change, the laws should go further.
You do NOT have a right to spend your money as you please if it affects the ability of humans other living things to live on this planey. You certainly should not have a right to burn as much gasoline or use as much electricity as you please whether you can afford it or not.
This house size stuff is nonsense. Why is the CD readership so bourgeois? I grew up with ten siblings, two parents and a dog in a 5 BR house no bigger than about 2000 square feet. My folks considered it a palace. I currently live wit hmy wife and just two cats in a 1150 sq foot house and it serves us just fine. If we were middle-class Japanese, we would be living in half the space, but by almost all measures enjoying a better quality of life than here.
The biggest plus about small houses is their affordability - I am fortunate to live in an area with plenty of older, solidly built 1200 sq foot houses costing only $85,000 in fine, move-in condition. If we still lived in the DC area we would still be living in an apartment with home ownership not a viable option.
The poorly designed structures are bound to be blights on communities. Quality architectural designs, interior design layouts with good storage spaces, well laid out kitchens and baths, proper orientation to the sun for passive solar gain and minimal heat loss in winter and minimal heat gain in summer, correct window and door placements as well as greater consideration for the use of active renewable energy resources from solar collector panels to geo-thermal heating and cooling could make all the difference. In open areas where the water sources are wells and septic systems must be installed there better be adequate-sized lots. Harkening back to the comment about this all beginning during the Reagan administration, that might not be far from the truth. It was President Carter who put solar collectors on the roof of the White House. It was Reagan who tore them down immediately after he took office.
Sh@dow you make a better wall than a window, you don’t say much and you don’t let people see a thing, are you trying to make a point? You sound like your just a joiner/non-thinker!
PJD, I’m not Japanese, but I like the rest of what you wrote.
I’m a builder and you all are right about the plywood palazzos. I live in Seattle working on the rich and childless owners of zero lot line homes all on an eighth of an acre plot with at least 4000sqf min homes, sometimes we work on homes with twice that footage and a sixth acre plot. Yes, some have kids, some cook on gas(if they cook at home). All are single family homes solidly run on electricity all with a/c, after the fact a/c. You might only use it for a few days here so no one installs it with the furnace. In the past few years on the hottest days that are predictable, in the mornings we loose power due to all the new f#$^%$ window box style, inefficient, a/c units that these folk would rather put in, in a hole in the wall rather than in their furnace that would accept a more efficient model. Some in windows, o.k. And just to save money. Home Despot has sales just as the weather gets warmer. (Mostly they cant drive either, good thing they can always afford a new car) Less than ten minutes from downtown and without power, for blocks. I think it broke a hundred like once or twice in my life here!
Meanwhile, I live in a 600sqf house with my wood shop underneath, I work on reclaimed wood products on the side for fun, on a sixth acre plot with all the collards, kale, chard, strawberries and squash I can eat with tomatoes and peppers on the way, my lady and I have easy ten plus pets in the house with us. Thanksgiving is on us this year like usual, we can dine about 8 folk with out grabbing more chairs, we have done about fourteen and that is most of the family and close friends. Some folk don’t know what real fun is!
This society WE have made is a morality free wasteland of greed. With kings of their own castles on every block. Its ok though, the bubble will burst like the stock market has and will again on Bushco and their BJ buddies. Hold on, we are going for a ride!
I figured as much. Everyone wants to tell me how to live. This isn’t about democracy, it’s about a bunch of people who think they are the only ones that know what is best and want to enforce their wills on everyone else. I get arguments like ‘no, I’m not elitist, you are’. Wow … got me there. I just don’t know how to respond except ‘no .. you are’.
I used to love my little 1,100 sq. ft. home where I raised two kids. I felt it was inexpensive, easy to maintain, and lots of other things. Said the same thing when all I could afford was a used Ford Escort. Funny, I could find all kinds of reasons why it was perfect for me and didn’t understand why everyone else didn’t have one. It’s easy to find reason for the things you have and to find a little comfort in the decisions you’ve made, isn’t it.
Funny now that I can afford to have a bigger house and nicer car, all those reasons have gone away. Now I’m not supposed to have one because of why?? Because some people don’t think I should be allowed to??
I live in Phoenix and have visited some of the high dollar homes during tours. Do I want one?? No, couldn’t afford it. But I’ll be damned if I’ll tell someone who does want one they can’t have it. It’s one thing to put in zoning ordinances about minimum lot size, minimum footage to make sure homes are livable. I can also agree with height restrictions. Now buzz off and let me live my life the way I want to. If I buy a big house, all the costs with running it also go up. I have to strike a balance between what I would like to have and what I can afford.
I have the house I have instead of the house I want because I chose not to spend another $100,000 and have all of those things. People can make those decisions.
It’s easy to tear down the wealthy when you aren’t one of them. I know, I used to be poor, then middle class, now upper middle class. I can’t wait until I’m wealthy.
I’ve worked hard all my life to make something, made sacrifices to support a family and can now enjoy my leisure time just drives you crazy. I think if you went into some of those 2,000 and 4,000 square foot homes, there would be a lot of people just like me who for once in their lives have the kids out of their homes and can enjoy their leisure time before their bodies start to decay. I figure I’ve got about 10-20 years to enjoy my life before nature starts to restrict what I can do.
And I’m going to love every god damn minute of it. Go enjoy your life the way you want, and leave me alone.
I live in a 1040 sq. ft. home with three cats and a nice sized yard with a garden. I neither need nor want one of those chicken wire and stucco starter castles AKA McMansions. Most of them are way too big for real families. I always have figured that people who live in them probably don’t like each other and need room to hide from each other. Poor souls. I think that if they can afford it and really want to speed up global warming, then they should all be put in some single place and not tarnish our landscapes with them.
Signmaker, you will never be wealthy. You will always be middle class, or with that attitude, classless. Do something, don’t be a self serving selfish panderer ok princess? No one said you cant be comfortable, we all say you shouldn’t destroy the world. You are twisted and very forgetful of all the morals you (hopefully) taught your kids. Just think about all the heaven you could find with just thinking things through! If you got money, Honey, you could help more than your selfish self. Your momma ever teach you about what your other hand is for? Its for helping others, not like the first one, which is for helping yourself. You can still grow up.
Hey Sigma, be nice. I am a Jones and it is hard keeping up with self. Just moved from 2200 sf to 850 sf which is enough for wife and self and makes a smaller footprint on earth.
It’s not all bad, some of these mansions can house some of the millions of illegal aliens that take the jobs Americans don’t want. About 50 illegal aliens with 4 jobs each may be able to pay for one.
Check out the site:
http://www.inequality.org/
and click on “By the Numbers”. Down in the pie charts you will find the distribution of wealth in this country. The wealthiest 1% have over 30% of the wealth, the next 9% ditto. The bottom 90% of people have less than 30% of the wealth. The figures are from 2005. Things are probably worse now.
That 10% sets the standard for what is considered important. They can well afford luxury houses. There is a waiting list for multi-million dollar yachts.
Until (or if) the distribution of wealth can be make more equal, the rest of us must ignore their example of destructive over-consumption and set a different standard of conservation and simpler live styles.
The first twelve years of our married life was spent in a homestead shack without running water and lump coal for heat. We built a new 1320′ home in 1972 and have lived in it happly ever since. Wouldn’t trade it for any house on the market!!!!!
jungleboy July 31st, 2007 7:20 pm
Wow, Signmaker was just talking about communists like you and then you go and prove his claim. You seek to “tell people what is good for them” and that is idiotic on your part. You preach COMMUNISM and most people are waking up to your ilk. Later on you will make one of your communistic comments and for that you will get your head handed to you!
PAX
Semi off topic: But here is Nancy Pelosi extending the olive branch to 9-11 truthers!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDy6n7bRKiE
I suspect Signmaker is trolling for argument. What progressive is such a selfish and arrogant prick?
Shane July 31st, 2007 8:59 pm
No, I agree with Signmaker and it is jungleboy who seems to support communism.
I have a bigger issue at hand. How about looking at how home mortgages are a system of slavery, and that anyone in suburbia is doomed to failure trying to network a village or a community sufficiency design that is eco settlement living when everyone around you is tied to that slavery of a mortgage.. Intact communities, hmm, how about building a dome made of straw bale and cob mud that cost under 2000 to build and will keep you cool and warm during seasons and doesnt require a mortgage to live in. Where are we going to be able to do that in this corporate country of festering arrogance and egos of imperialism? But never fear, Im hear to tell you that we are going to do this in the Baja ca coast.
Well, my dream is to build an international model project down on the Baja beach somewhere with 4000 people on 20 thousand acres using all the eco settlement ingredients I have researched, like sea water green houses, the ecosphere, solar desalination, Solar thermal hydrogen production, Algae bio fuel.. If you spend 600 to 800 a month on a loan for 50 grand you will pay that off like a car loan. and then multiply that by 4000 and thats 200 million to work with in a trust to build all the energy integrated systems to profit off of, and then install permaculture science around that just using the interest alone and the diesel fuel and the hydrogen production and its transportation fuel called Urea. We will produce in abundance, and never touching that principle, we can get er done. I even have a Mexican national permaculture instructor who we will put the land in his name. He is highly respected in the Permaculture leadership in Oregon and California.
Using the neighboring desert area of the Baja is where we can build the sexy sustainable model to showcase the planet on how we can live now with these new applications. We have the land and sea, so lets do something pioneering and use the technologies to showcase while we green the deserts. Be on the Baja Ca. coast too. Whats so hard of a sell on that?
Oh if you are someone who cant aquire the funds to enter the eco settlement. you can still get in if you have a PDC design certificate.
I am going to do what ever I have to do to get this mission going.
So far I made a movie. Almost finished. Later and good luck to you all.
www.ecosutra.com
Old American Indian saying:
White man build big fire and stand back.
Indian build small fire and sit close.
Ecosutra July 31st, 2007 9:11 pm
Everyone can’t live like a king and the kings have no intention of living like the rest of us so the plutocrats have decided to kill of the majority of the worlds population!
I just signed up for the Community Solution Peak Oil Conference in Yellow Springs OHIO
Theme: Planning for Hard Times
http://www.communitysolution.org/conference.html
It is an excellent conference. I highly recommend it.
Some of the talks …
8:15–9:00 Plan C–Survival Strategies for Food and Housing, Pat Murphy
9:00–9:45 Low-Tech Home Energy Retrofit, Larry Halpern
9:45–10:15 Break
10:15–11:00 Whole House Energy Retrofit, Linda Wigington, director, Afforable Comfort Institute
11:00–11:45 Panel Discussion on Home Retrofit with Murphy, Wigington, Halpern
8:15–9:00 Plan C–Survival Strategies for Food and Housing, Pat Murphy
1:30–2:15 Curtailment in Practice, Sharon Astyk
2:30–4:30 Personal Preparation Workshop Session
A. The New Food Paradigm, Sharon Astyk and Andrew Manieri
B. Low-Tech Home Energy Retrofit, Larry Halpern, Gail Keen, and Chris Glaser
C. National Home Retrofitting Movement, Linda Wigington and Pat Murphy
5:00–6:30 Dinner, Antioch Inn
7:00–8:30 Sufficiency–A New Economic Principle, Thomas Princen, author of The Logic of Sufficiency
I hope you will join me….
I am glad someone is finally writing about these ostantateous displays of wealth.
Anyone think it’s funny that people on this thread have five dogs… three cats… two cats…
Anyone ever think about the resources it uses to feed them (I assume they’re not vegetarians), dispose of their wastes, give them their prescription medicines, etc….?
I’ll have a pet when everyone on this planet has 2000 calories of food a day.
I always find it interesting that certain people feel that they have a “right” to unlimited consumption of limited planetary resources that are our commons, a “right” to produce as much waste as they please to be dumped into our common air, water and land, and that this “right” is bestowed upon them in accordance with the amount of money they accumulate. When I was a little girl, my mommy and daddy taught me that taking more than my fair share of something to be shared was “selfish”.
I think it all comes down to this: if we have any obligation to each other and future generations, we have to think about what and how we consume, the resultant waste and how it impacts us all. I drive a Prius because it was very important to me to pollute as little as possible (I would prefer an all electric..)and use only re-usable containers in my kids lunches, never buy water in bottles if I can at all help it, use re-usable grocery bags, etc. Our environmental problems are the results of billions of choices made by billions of people every day. Every day we have choices about how we live and consume - and those choices have an impact on every other person on this planet, not just now, but for generations to come. When I pull up next to a Hummer in my Prius, I don’t wish to tell them what to do or how to live, but I would like to ask them why they think they have a right to more than their fair share…
So, signmaker and sh@dow, since you seem to have the “communism is evil” mentality, just where do you think unbridled capitalism is going to lead us? Or better yet, your grandchildren?
We are so brainwashed, rewarded and encouraged by our corporate society to consume, consume, consume, that the idea that maybe it is not in our best interests to do so comes as a great shock to most Americans. After all, that is the American dream we’re talking about…
How many of your grew up in a one bath, small home with siblings and you don’t remember being deprived by waiting your turn for whatever? Probably a lot. Even those who had more had nice houses but they were relatively small by todays standards. Why in the world would anyone want three or four more toilets than people? I once invited a German couple who were vacationing in our area to my home which was 1,330 sq. ft. and they wanted to know where the other people who lived with us were. A house that size in their neighborhood housed more than one family. They are used to sharing and living in smaller spaces, whereas we are definitely space hogs.
I remember when I was young and lived in a 350 sf apartment in Paris (on the 6th floor, no elevator) with my family of 3 (sometimes 4 when my stepson was over. I was always so shocked when friends would come over and say “oh, it’s so big”. I grew up in a 6,000+ sf home and swore I would never, ever have a big house and be a slave to it like my mother was. Today, we live in a 1500 sf home in the US with one bathroom - no problem.
ecosutra - interesting point about the mortgage as a way to enslave people. I am feeling that tremendously and just wanting out so badly. I got the education, the house, the family, the job — everything I was supposed to want and I am really seeing what a big-ass lie I swallowed. I keep thinking about what Thoreau said - something like “what’s the point of a nice house if you haven’t a decent planet to put it on”. While I was so busy chasing the American dream, our politicians and corporate oligarchs were driving our planet into the ground. And now I and everyone I know is in so deep we *wish* we could hit the streets, protest, strike — but we can’t miss a beat lest we lose everything.
Most of the world is used to living with a whole lot less than us North Americans. I’m tired of hearing how entitled we think we are to
everything we can get our hands on. Greed and irresponsible wastefulness is what it is but anyone who calls it that is a “communist”.
What horseshit.
No one needs a McMansion. I wouldn’t live in one if someone gave it to me. The best thing about learning to live with less is that you
learn to give more and when you do that, you begin to learn what life is really about.
funeocons July 31st, 2007 9:29 pm
Capitalism is not a governmental system and communism is not a way to shop! A democratic republic we live in does not practice capitalism since that was derailed by plutocracy. We use worthless sheets of paper that lost all value when the silver and gold standards were given away.
Since none of us has ever experienced true capitalism or even anything like it it is time to end the Federal Reserve and its private collection agency called the IRS.
Now dingoboy is another to talk about another mans greed, etc. He knows nothing about freedom and also promotes communism as salvation and then reports to know what life is “really all about” yet is simply mortal!
I believe in all my heart that an expedition to the Baja Ca coast for an alternative energy production eco settlement model with permaculture science is the solution exodus for the enlightened progressives looking to evolve. There will be a nature readjustment to things concerning natural patterns in ecology once the timeline of peak oil comes looming in around us. I was press at ASPO Boston Univesity peak oil conference. We really are living in an international state of emergency right now. We have to start now and install the systems I have listed at www.ecosutra.com , we have the time to get ready. The fossil fuel party is over but we have another party beginning that is beautiful and positive. Lets direct our focus on a migration. Lets empower ecosutra with common dreams resources in networking and creating the logistics for change. Lets build a model to kill the world with kindness. This is what Woody Harrelson wants www.voiceyourself.com, as do many others in the alternative energy industry looking at co op power investments using the Baja region, I really want this to be the focal point for change.
If a family spends 600 to 800 a month on a loan for 50 grand and sends a family member along with the investment to build the setttlement, we can start bringing in the rest of the families within 5 years easy. Multiply that by 4000 and thats 200 million to work with in a trust to build all the energy integrated systems to profit off of, and then install permaculture science around that just using the interest alone. Add the diesel fuel and the hydrogen production and its transportation fuel called Urea and the Baja hopefully can be the new energy production line for the 18 million people above.
We will produce in abundance even our water and food, and never touching that principle, we can get er done. I even have a Mexican national permaculture instructor who we will put the land in his name. He is highly respected in the Permaculture leadership in Oregon and California.
Using the neighboring desert area of the Baja is where we can build the sexy sustainable model to showcase the planet on how we can live now with these new applications. We have the land and sea, so lets do something pioneering and use the technologies to showcase while we green the deserts. Be on the Baja Ca. coast too. Whats so hard of a sell on that?
I personally want to divorce myself form the entity which is America, its to far gone, a totally unsustainable monster crashing the world into oblivion. Come join the new world design.
Here is a BIG PROBLEM
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/rams/document_20070723.ram
Have real player or real alternative to listen
I live in what was once a small community on the shores of Lake Michigan. What used to be a beautiful and pristine shoreline is now covered with ugly, three-story McMansions and enormous condominium complexes, complete with “No Trespassing” and “Private Drive” signs and gated entries to keep out the riffraff (that would be the rest of us). The vast majority of these expansive buildings are merely “summer homes” that stand empty for most of the year. The clearing of the natural landscape and the addition of miles of pavement accelorate the deterioration of the Lake Michigan shoreline and contribute to the pollution of the water table, while providing nothing but an eyesore for those of us who actually live here year round. Apparently, it isn’t enough to simply visit a lovely place like this and enjoy the water, woods, wildlife, etc. Folks with money feel a compulsion to “own” a piece of it. The irony is that by feeding this compulsion, they ruin the very things that made it so appealing in the first place.
I have no problem with people acquiring wealth, if that’s what’s important to them. I have no problem with them spending their money any way they want to. But I also feel that communities have not only a right but a responsibility to protect the natural resources that belong to all of us. Not everything is for sale, regardless of how much money you have to offer, and having wealth does not entitle you to be as wasteful as you want to be at everyone else’s expense.
So, you’re rich enough to build a 5000 square foot house for just the two of you on an acre of astro-turfed land, drive a Hummer five miles to work every day and chug around on your yacht every weekend? Congratulations! Good for you!
You just can’t do it here. Sorry. We reserve the right to protect our beautiful forests, gorgeous sunsets, amazing wildlife, clean water, peace and quiet, and breathable air for EVERYONE to enjoy. That’s not Communism. It’s just common sense.
We have four adults and one five-year-old living in 1140 square feet home (cluttered at that)! We are comfortable and there is plenty of space. We entertain 25 for Thanksgiving every year and have a great time.
My in-laws lived with two parents, two grandparents, and four children in a one (tiny) room brick shanty with no bathroom and a lean-to kitchen (and they are a very loving and close family). People manage–we can’t always have everyTHING we desire, maybe we should try to enjoy the blessings of what (and who) we do have!
PJD, where do you live where 1200 sq. ft. houses are still available? That size is usually associated with areas of high crime and drugs these days. Better watch out, someone might figure out they can build a mall and declare your area blighted so the government can collect more taxes.
sh@dow July 31st, 2007 4:54 pm
“If you are able to create a fortune and choose to build or buy a large home and you can afford the taxes and maintenance then good for you!”
You’re part of the capitalist killing machine if that’s really how you feel. I wonder why you frequent a site like this one?
I wish I had been able to join this earlier, as I suspect this discussion is about done. Architecture. I have in-laws in what is here being described as a McMansion. Never struck me as being anything like a mansion. It is 6,000 square feet, but it doesn’t have the intelligent use of space that makes the house equivalent to its size, if that makes sense. All this generic, open architecture is wasteful. Having a living room that is open to the second floor is devastating for heating bills and a huge waste of living space. I’ve been in old Victorian and Georgian style houses that are much smaller, but FUNCTION much larger. The new housing offends (and I mean this from a personal perspective) my sense of space and aesthetics. Going into the rich suburbs in our town, I am struck, not by opulence, but by the generic nature of the architecture. The lack of personality. I remember walking into a much smaller house, but built on the same architectural principles (or, lack of principles) my last year as an undergraduate and being overwhelmed by how large the house felt. We rented it. It took a couple of months of settling in for us to realize that the grandeur of the visual did not translate into the usefulness or spaciousness it implied. They are made to sell on viewing, but not to support living. Like most things in our modern economy, it is about the hype and not about the function.
What I don’t get is how there can be so many of them, they spring up everywhere! Who the heck can afford a home starting from the low $1,000,000.00’s ? Even low end new homes in most areas start between $200K - $300K. Who is buying these? So many of them. It just does not jive with what we read about average income. A family earning $80K a year can not afford the mortgage on $200K house, and insurance, and 2 car payments and more insurance, cell phone bills, electric power, etc. not to mention food and clothing. Just who is buying these McMansions? And sooo many of them???? And the quality of the construction is piss poor, these greedy developers are making a killing, but how can there be so many people with that much money to buy them all?
I see, now that I have had time to read more of the comments that we are back to the tired old capitalism vs. communism argument. As if these two systems are the only two possible alternatives for scoio-political and economic systems. What nonsense. Neither true capitalism or true comunisim has ever been implemented, and neither fully addresses the full range of socio-political problems.
The system everyone on this site calls capitalism is not capitalism. It is corporatism, consumerism, protectionist mercantilism, feudalism.
Go back and read Adam Smith before you talk about the evils to capitalism.
Go back and read Marx before you talk about the evils of communism.
And while you are at it, go read up on Henry George http://www.henrygeorge.org/ to learn why both systems get it wrong!
Annabelle writes:
“Why in the world would anyone want three or four more toilets than other people?”
The clue Annabelle is maybe in the following witticism:
Question: “What’s the difference between a baby’s bulging diaper and very rich people?
Answer: -”Nothing, they’re both full of ….”
Mahatma Ghandi:
“The world has enough for everyone’s NEED, not everyone’s GREED.”
And I think that’s where the majority of posters here are coming from: an innate realisation that *we need enough to get by*, -but a preposterous excess is ugly, whilst an *ostentatious* excess (to show off how just empty we actually are!) is really obscene.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[Respect to the craftsman Jungleboy. I come from a family of craftsmen / women, so can easily relate…]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As to the dreaded bogeyman word ‘Communism’:
This was actually and originally a DIVINELY inspired idea. And yes, unfortunately mankind managed to mangle it somewhat when trying to put it into operation, but at *root* it is all about trying to live cooperatively and in harmony, -a functioning society of people working *together*, (not all pulling in different directions with rampant egotism, *competition* and selfishness to the fore…)
Animals still have to compete to survive, but as we homosapiens evolve out of that lower state, we need to learn how to *co-operate* instead, -coz this results in fewer battles, and brings a greater measure of harmony and happiness.
Of course any form of totalitarianism is utterly abhorrent, but *true* COMMUNE-ism has nothing at all to do with oppressive oligarchies and dictators, -it’s simply about living commune-ally, - groups of people trying to live and work peaceably and creatively together.
But then, any society with the tragic ethos of “Work, Buy, Consume, Die!” at it’s helm is not likely to take readily to a way of life wherein they might [- OMG! -] have to SHARE things!
Nor will people possessing ‘half pint brains in ten gallon hats’ readily accede to the lack of supposed ‘STATUS’ which a more humble communal life brings.
To live according to the corrupt morals of a corrupt society can only ever bring eventual sorrow, -one way or the other. Why else would all of the greatest Teachers of mankind, throughout history, have gone out of their way to point out that an obsession with material things is the royal path to sorrow?
Is it any coincidence that the main Teachers of humankind had little or no possessions? -I think not! They had values and principles higher than that of the cul-de-sac of materialism.
It amuses me somewhat to espy the parsimonious rich and selfish folk who call themselves ‘Christian’, who somehow assiduously avoid reckoning with that quote from Christ who (very pointedly) says, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” -whilst they themselves might own several mansions, but wouldn’t dream of helping to share their wealth with those who have nothing…
I can’t recall any RICH saints, but a hundred-and-one very rich devils easily spring to mind!
____________________
As some here have pointed out, the small family units, (maybe just getting by on meagre incomes), often live more happily than those in over-large mansions, -maybe coz those less well-off folk base their lives on a different set of *values*?
I’ve worked with and alongside the hardworking but penniless, and have worked with / for lounging millionaires, and it was patently obvious that the former group, (-albeit often struggling with money issues) did, (overall) live happier lives than the very affluent.
“When you got nothin’ you got nothin’ to lose,” said B. Dylan.
Very many Sages have pointed out that poverty of SPIRIT is a much worse fate than poverty in material things.
Yes, we do need shelters, but we don’t need the rampant SELFISHNESS, consumerism, arrogance and egomania that is eating up Planet Earth at such a ferocious rate, -leaving only poisoned, garbage filled wastelands for future generations…
Goddamn Richers.
fatfreddyscat August 1st, 2007 5:36 am
The people buying these things have stopped paying for them. The default rate in mortgages has soared %800 (!) in the last six months and the stock market, which deals in bundled mortgages as a “financial instrument”, is about to get the shit kicked out of it.
You want to talk McMansions, what about one that I was told cost 13 million dollar to build, stuck right in middle of some small cozy cottages on the coast of Maine.
When it was built about 10 years ago some of the locals tried to stop it, but to no avail.
There it is like a castle among the homes of the serfs.. So, out of place.
I am told it is one the most pricey pieces of private property on the east coast.
Besides, it upsets my view.
Maybe they’ll be turned into community centers some day in the future - to look on the bright side…
I’d like to offer 3 observations that I believe are noncontroversial:
1) Americans–more than other nationalities–equate (and confuse)standard of living with quality of life.
2)In a world of increasingly scarce resources, the resources you consume occurs at the expense of others.
3)Resource use (hence consumption)is a heavily subsidized activity in the US. Consumers enjoy artificially low prices and consequently over-consume.
Hey Fat Freddy’s Cat:
I just read Wealth of Nations six months or so ago (what a slog-fest). And, actually, Adam pretty much hits the nail on the head with what’s wrong with our version of capitalism. He is, in fact, about as harsh a critic of our brand of capitalism as anyone I’ve read lately. He says, in essence, that businessmen are a bunch of roaches who, unrestrained, will consume everything within their reach. He says that businessmen (people, on supposes, in our context) should NEVER be allowed any control or influence over legislation, because they will always decide for themselves and against the good of society. Can we talk Adam Smith? When I bring him up amongst my capitalist friends, they grooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. In the best religious tradition, they all worship him, but really don’t want to be troubled with what it was he actually had to say
www.unknown-arts.org/politics
“if we have any obligation to each other and future generations, we have to think about what and how we consume, the resultant waste and how it impacts us all. I drive a Prius because it was very important to me to pollute as little as possible (I would prefer an all electric..)and use only re-usable containers in my kids lunches, never buy water in bottles if I can at all help it, use re-usable grocery bags, etc. Our environmental problems are the results of billions of choices made by billions of people every day. Every day we have choices about how we live and consume - and those choices have an impact on every other person on this planet, not just now, but for generations to come. When I pull up next to a Hummer in my Prius, I don’t wish to tell them what to do or how to live, but I would like to ask them why they think they have a right to more than their fair share…”
Well said, Funeocons.
Sorry for the “screw the jones’s” comment Jones, I didn’t mean you. The 2100 sq ft house I live in with my six kids is an old farmhouse built in the 20’s. It has a little property with it (4 acres) and I do kick the kids out to play every day. I have relatives that live in Mcmansions, they all wonder how I can be happy in such a small place.Some of them actually have sitting areas in their bathrooms! But you know what? On family functions they all want to come to my small working farm, because there is lots of things for the kids to do OUTSIDE. My kids know how to build and fix things,how to grow things, how to care for animals, how to ride a horse,ect. Theirs do not. Some of their kids are now into drinking drugs and sex at 13 or 14. A large house apparently doesn’t buy happiness or peace of mind.
I wouldn’t trade my place for a 6000sq/ft box on 1/8 acres.
Oh, and I know my neighbors. The Mcmansion crowd have all put up privacy fences so no one will encroach on their postage stamp lots.
Excuse me, signmaker– it is your ‘let them eat cake’ attitude that is elitist. Freedom doesn’t mean freedom to trash the environment and ignore the common good. And the desire to preserve the planet is not ‘communistic’, it’s just plain, repsonsible common sense. Self-absorbed, self-congratulatory conspicuous consumption is morally and spiritually bankrupt.
Me again…
UN-common-dreams, thanks for claifying ‘communism’–I was about to suggest sh@dow re-read her Marx and Engels.
clan_keith, I am so with you! As a Michiganian with a deep love for the Lake Michigan shoreline in general, and Charlevoix/Petoskey in particular, my heart breaks as I watch the destruction of that beloved landscape for “2nd home McMansions” and the over-development that comes with it!
hey, old goat, you know what’s sad? They won’t be turned into community centres because they’re so poorly built that they’re doomed
to fall apart before they can be used much at all. I know an expert drywaller who worked on some of the mansions in my area, (stone facade,
big gates, the works…) and he told me that the windows weren’t level, the plumbing was faulty and the quality of the building materials
was so poor that he was afraid to move around in there - things kept breaking.
shadow: your arguments are laughable. I’m not a communist; I just know witch-hunting when I see it.
“PJD, where do you live where 1200 sq. ft. houses are still available?”
Brentwood Borough, PA - A nice suburb, cozy, solidly built 1950’s houses, just 5 miles from downtown Pittsburgh. frequent bus or trolley service downtown. Unfortunately, it is a little a little too white, conservative and white-bread-boring for me. A bubba or bohunk-bar on every corner of Main St. but the nearest microbrew, or decent non-USAn food is 4 miles away into the city. Houses in the rough parts (but many are starting the yuppify-gentrify), many of them big old fixer-upper Victorians go for $25,000 - $55,000 but many definitely need a lot of work.
Sorry, but while there are some rough neighborhoods out there, but I generally find this sweeping white-suburban attitudes about the city to be just so much 6 o’clock news-generated paranoid-racism. While on Cindy Sheehan’s DC march the other day, I even had some NOVA suburbanite on the march tell me he would never live in the Eastern Market/Capitol Hill neighborhood of DC because of a fear of mugging (by a black man of course). This is an ultra-gentrified neighborhood that nowadays is far more affluent and opluent than anything, anywhere in Pittsburgh.
My attitude is: To each his own. If someone wants to live in a 10,000 square foot house, and they can afford to do so, and they are not hurting anyone else in doing so, then why not? As a matter of aesthetics, the size of the house should be appropriate for the lot, but I regard that as a personal decision, not one that should be enforced by the government. I believe a huge house on a tiny lot would be a rather ugly sight, but hey, it’s not my house or lot, so I have no say in the matter.
I doubt McMansions represent a large percentage of the market for homes, so all this concern seems misguided. Most of the comments suggest envy masquerading as environmental correctness. I feel sympathy for those people unfortunate enough to have a garish McMansion built right next to them, blocking their light or view, or eliminating the privacy. However, that’s one of the risks of living in a free society, one that supposedly values the concept of property rights. If you choose to live in the vicinity of others, there is the possibility that they might use their property in ways you find offensive. If you want to avoid such a possibility, you have the freedom to move to the boondocks, or to a neighborhood with a totalitarian homeowners association that can legally impose its standards on everyone.
Dave
McMansions have cropped up on my rural road too. But I foresee a new use for these as people tighten their belts. I think they will be turned into multiple family apartments - or even multi-generational family homes. It’s just nuts for a couple or small family to be rattling around in these huge spaces, paying to heat and cool them as the season requires. People will figure this out - the simple economics of it all will drive the solution.
“If someone wants to live in a 10,000 square foot house, and they can afford to do so, and they are not hurting anyone else in doing so, then why not?”
Because it’s not just someone it is many thousands doing it, and they are collectively impacting the planet far more than their share. In other words, robbing us. We are not Ayn Randian atomistic individuals without obligations to others, we are a society. The capitalist’s success in programming the me-me-me perspective in the US populace is a cultural catastrophe that could very well lead to our extinction.
I don’t think you don’t understand what we mean by “McMansion”; we mean all those 6000-8000 sq ft houses sprawling over the outer exurban fringes of the city. When all the excess single-occupant car usage, heating and (here in PA usually unnecessary) AC usage is factored in, they represent a stupendous impact on the rights of a billion or more on this planet to live at all. THINK! Virtual genocide is being inflicted the poeple of Iraq to support the decadent USAn “lifestyle”. Stop it. Just Stop it.
Dave Eriqat still doesn’t get it. The McMansion club is hurting the people, plants and animals affected by the ongoing war for oil.
Many more Iraqis and people from many nations will die as BushCo continues to secure the world’s remaining fossil fuels for exploitation by the oil companies. Iraq is the satellite commerce capital from which the US will make forays in to other Asian nations to “get” oil.
Not only do McMansions have large floor plans. They also have high ceilings…20′ or more is not uncommon. Very few McMansion dwellers are 20′ tall, so in addition to the energy required to heat and cool that space, additional energy is required for the fans that blow the conditioned air down to where it is needed.
Big houses were meant for huge families. That included aunts and uncles, grandma and grandpa, etc. In these huge homes, what you usually see is two people, with maybe a couple of teenagers. And the house is “lonely”. We have shipped grandma off to a retirement home, and the teens are away in college, and the rest of the family like cousins, etc. have disappeared from the scene. Here we have decadent lifestyles with monstrous homes that destroy a neighborhood by their encroaching. Riches just seem to make one more selfish. Such beautiful homes with hardly anyone living in them, yet think of all the poor folks living in ghettoes. If only all of our children could enjoy a nice and comfortable home in a nice neighborhood where there are flowers and trees, not dilapidated buildings and homeless lining the (once was) boulevard. Republican greed.
We all live in our own bubble. That’s obvious from reading all these posts. Everybody has their own unique perspective on things. Everyone seems to have a point to prove.
I’m not going to pick on anyone by name, but one reader said, “My attitude is: To each his own. If someone wants to live in a 10,000 square foot house, and they can afford to do so, and they are not hurting anyone else in doing so, then why not?”
Well, actually in many way’s it is hurting many someones. And not just homo sapiens. Probably least of all, us. I’ll give you an example from my bubble of perspective.
As I mentioned yesterday, I live in northwest Montana. I live in a valley that is heavily forested with tall mountain ranges on both sides. Yeah, as you can imagine, it’s really beautiful here. But it’s being raped. This is one of those sparsely populated places rich in natural resources. Consequently the natural beauty that brought us here a quarter century ago is being hauled to the mill at the speed of sound.
A picture is worth a thousand words. If I could show you all an areal photo of this place 25 years ago you would think it was paradise, and it was. If you could see an areal photo taken today you would see an “industrial forest”. Most of these trees are being converted into McMansions, phone books, computer paper and junk mail.
Our modest family of 4 live in a 900 square foot log cabin made from hand-peeled locally grown logs by local craftsmen. We heat our interior space and water from wood that falls to the forest floor and scrap wood salvaged from the timber thivery on ajacent public lands.
This little log cabin is our primary home. Our other home is a tipi. We grow an enormous organic fruit and vegetable garden just out our door. We not only suppliment our diet from this garden, we feed about 10 other families and supply 2 restaurants.
It’s a far cry from the lives of the McRich, but guess what… We’re happy! On the other-hand, we’re dissappointed and grieved at seeing this valley being comodified to supply the raw materials to build those butt-ugly McMansions that won’t last half as long as our hand-hewn log cabin.
So the ecological footprint of those 2nd and 3rd home McMansions goes far beyond the views that can be seen outside their windows and their guard-gated “communities”.
Did I mentiion all the wildlife that call these forests home that have to give up their homes to make way for our homes?
“The good times are killing me” - Modest Mouse
Envy?? Those poor souls who buy these things are so lost, they spend enormous amounts of money on cheap crap, and the developers are laughing all the way to the bank. The people who buy these monstrosities actually believe in the lie that is the “American Dream” You know bigger, more expensive, must be better. Do so many people in the USA really think it’s our right to gobble up the majority of the earths resources for a minority of the population, or are they just blinded by the lies?
Now here is something to envy in a home:
http://www.earthship.org/imagegallery/
http://www.hfoesch.com/
I mean if you can “afford” to buy whatever you like, aren’t you cheating yourself by purchasing one of these crappy, cheap, cookie cutter monstrosities? Then again perhaps these are the same people who actually think their hummer looks cool.
This is what looks like the guilt trip/join the communist party thread. “Wow I live in a small can in a city and I’m grouchy enough to tell other people how to live and my name is Oscar” Spare me the BS, the problem we all have is PLUTOCRACY. It turns out that your home is not even your’s and it is easy to find that out, simply stop paying your taxes. Large corporations use the lion share of energy and pollute the environment along with mass production of all kinds.
Stop purchasing things made of plastic. Stop purchasing things that are mass produced. Drop out of the system too since that is also part of the problem. Then stop paying taxes since you will be self sufficient. Then you will loose your house and spend time in jail.
Your problem is the GOVERNMENT and frankly you need the people to get together to defeat the dictatorship. Telling folks how to live or how to behave or how to eat or how to drive is COMMUNISM!!
Here is another really brilliant statement of ignorance “doubt McMansions represent a large percentage of the market for homes, so all this concern seems misguided.”
Sorry Dave old boy, but you are the one who is misguided. The average home size for new homes in the USA is nearly twice what it was 30 years ago, the average cost is 5 to 10 times what it was 30 years ago, yet incomes of the working class have not increased significantly, and have actualy decreased if you consider inflation. The developers prefer to build these things, they make more profit, real estate broker like to sell ‘em, cause 6% of $600k is a whole lot better than 6% of $60k. The part that baffles me, see my earlier post, is how the mortgage companies can justify overextending the credit of some schmuck who brings in $120k per year, spends his/her life savings for a down payment, and winds up with a $500k mortgage. The numbers just don’t addd up. Yet the majority of what I see being built in my rural, southern community is…. McMansions. Huge ugly houses on tinny little lots.
So “planners” are “drawing up measures?” Why all the euphemisms? If this is such a great idea, just come out and say it: bureaucrats are writing laws to tell you how big your house can be, and to put you in prison if you don’t obey and kill you if you resist.
Wow sh@dow your ignorance is really showing through in your last post. Where did you get your definition of communism, from a cracker jack box? My problem is too many ignorant loud mouths like you, who have been allowed to run amok for far too long. This has nothing to do with freedom or democracy. It has to do with manipulation of the masses for the sake of profits. Spending the next 30 years of your life paying 60% or more of your income to a mortgage company so you can live in an over sized piece of crap is not freedom, it is slavery Wake up!
DaveS - You are missing the point. It’s not about the “bureaucrats are writing laws to tell you how big your house can be” it is about local government, as a representation of the the people, insuring that greedy developers are properly regulated. If your local government is not properly representing the people of your area, then the people of your area are not properly participating in their government. But then that is the problem with most government in the USA.
Extinction - Most species understand that if they consume everything there will be nothing left for future generations. Those future generations will have nothing to sustain themselves and they will perish.
While extinction of SUV driving McMansion owning subspecies is an attractive notion, I fear they will take everyone down with them.
Humanity lacks the maturity to understand our place in our world. Most people can not see beyond their own day to day needs. Here we are at a time of global warming and climate change and people continue their consumption. Mother nature is the equalizing force in our world and she is just getting warmed up.
In the next few years it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Live a simple, mobile life.
I still submit that even though I may disagree with what others do, I don’t have the right to tell them how to live their lives or utilize their property. People who choose to live modestly and then believe that they can demand that others do the same exhibit the same intolerance and tyranny as conservatives who are often the target of scorn on this website.
We all impose a large impact on our environment – many of us don’t even recognize the extent of our impact. So singling out one particular aspect of one’s existence – their choice of house – seems kind of nitpicky. How many of you who are criticizing McMansions drive to work each day? How far? How many of you leave electrical devices plugged in, perhaps unaware that they are drawing power all day long? How many of you take long showers, perhaps multiple showers each day? How many of you eat meat? Or throw away food? Or use paper towels? Or buy bottled water? Or use disposable plastic bags? Or print reams of paper with your laser printer?
For the record, I try to minimize my impact on the environment at every turn. I work at home, and drive my 30+ MPG car once or twice a week. And even that I regard as too much. I often use my bicycle to grocery shop. I have all my TVs and computers on switches that I turn off when I’m not using the devices. Modern electronic devices consume anywhere from 5-50 watts of power even when “turned off.” I don’t shower every day; only when I feel dirty. And my showers are very brief. I eat little meat. It pains me to throw away food. I don’t use paper towels; I use cloth towels only. I don’t use plastic bags or plastic wrap for food; I have an assortment of reusable containers. I print perhaps 10 pages of paper a year, preferring to keep everything in electronic form, including the invoices I send out. I rarely have more than one light fixture on at a time. I seldom use my house’s air conditioner – even in the summer – unless it’s utterly unbearable.
So I’m hardly an apologist for conspicuous consumption. And I’m certainly not a right winger. I just happen to believe in individual freedom and I think we could all afford to be less judgmental and a little more circumspect.
Dave
I’d rather die than live in the suburbs anyway.
Back to economics, debt runs the economy.
Bankers are falling all over themselves looking to loan you money. Borrow money for a McMansion and the collateral is tangible property. Banks can’t go wrong!
I know an accountant, and she tells me that most of these people are so far in debt that they will never get out. So are they rich? They are just players in a system, and are allowed to live like a rich person as long as they play the game.
The debt economy is driving the McMansions, stop that and things will equalize. If all of us working people lived using common sense, I do believe the “rich” would want to at least imitate the way we live, especially if we ARE happy.
We are talking 1% who are rich and then there are the super rich. The rich will fall into the category above; the super rich are the ones controlling our government. Right now I want to get our government to be open and honest to the people! Quit using public airwaves to promote corporate agendas and serve the people in the long run.
I bought 5 acres in 1980, paid it off in ’84 then started a saving to open a business in ’87. I survived because I lived on $5-10 dollars a day and invested the rest happily back into my business.
In 1999, our local paper had a blog, and I argued the same points then as I do now. After 9-11, I had the police claim the alarm in the business above went off so they came in my business pointing guns and flashlights in my face. Planning and Zoning started harassing my landlord. Tax and Revenue emptied my bank account of $600 when I owed about $200.
What I couldn’t sell at garage sales I threw away. All my stuff fit in a 5×8 storage unit and I went to camp on my land. I now live in a over the cab truck camper that sits up on concrete with storage underneath.
That was my backup plan all along; if my business fails I will always be able to live on my land. As I see it I am retired. I owe nobody and only need about $5,000/year for food, insurance and taxes.
My land is for wildlife and I leave it in its natural state by taking up as little room as possible. Little house and a big yard!
As I said before, developers are bulldozing all around me and the McMansions are coming. All the surrounding ranches have sold to developers.
This problem is the world money supply is increasing because of DEBT, and the remaining land is seen as valuable as collateral and cheap as an expense.
On behalf of Mother Earth…
…and future generations, I’d just like to say a big *THANKYOU* to those lovely people here at Common Dreams who are voluntarily taking the time and trouble to live as simply, respectfully and caringly as possible. Bless you.
~ You feel like friends of mine.
xxx
Where are Americans gonna stash all their Walmart crap if they haven’t got a McMansion?
#
vinlander August 1st, 2007 1:13 pm
I’d rather die than live in the suburbs anyway.
——
LOL. My sentiment exactly. Actually I regard “living” in the burbs as a form of slow death. Back in ‘69 when we first moved to the city from a small town and I saw my first burb I nearly puked. Literally. Since that time I’ve regarded the burbs as some in-between place, neither rural nor urban, but more a sterile, homogenized limbo (a punishing place). I’ve never understood the appeal of those places, and none of my relatives who live there can explain the allure to me either.
In fact, several of them, still mortgaged (enslaved) up to their wazoos, have over the years admitted to regretting their choices. And often state how inefficient (wasteful) their square footage really is, how damned costly it all is (to heat or air condition), and they bemoan their postage-stamp yards, as well as how much damn time they spend/waste keeping their monstrosities clean. Along with the fact that they’re seldom home to enjoy their once-dream houses, what with all the commuting to and fro work, activities, etc.
We (family of 3 adults) live much more modestly in the city, we rent near downtown an older 2-storey walk-up, with 1 bathroom. Not sure of the sq. footage, but were I to guess, it’s probably the size of a 50s bungalow, minus the basement. No air conditioning, we resort to fans only on the hottest/humid summer days. Our heating bills are really low in winter. Also because we sometimes use our working fireplace (our relatives in the burbs all have fireplaces, but they’re for aesthetics only! none of them actually work).
We 3 live within walking distance of work. Quick access to highway routes when we venture outside the city (rent a car). Walking distance to superb public transit. And quick, easy access to the best of city entertainment and community events, etc. Best of all, we have 5-minute walking access (less by bikes
to the city’s vast, miles-long and interconnected network of green valley, river, parks hiking trails! We’ve also been living sustainably (green) since long before global warming came into fashion! Decades in fact. Unlike our suburban relatives, we have no debt, don’t have to waste hours each day with long commutes to work, etc. etc. Also, we have a small veg and flower garden on a patio, just off our kitchen. mmmm…. while their obsessively manicured little postage stamp looks like astro-turf 
Quality of life? Bar none we’re way less stressed than they, have much more free/leisure time, and more disposable income/s.
A few of them remarked that their big-box, cookie-cutter suburban purchases were now referred to as “starter castles”. pfft! I think of them instead as “starter coffins”!
btw, All of us grew up in much smaller houses, with one bathroom, no a/c, and everyone living quite comfortably. And it is now them who say that they regret many of their lifestyle choices, while I can unequivocally say that we never have.
Dave - You make some good points, and I applaud your efforts to minimize your personal impact, but I think you are confusing freedom of choice for individuals with gullibility. It’s kind of like the SUV, the auto industry figured out how they could bypass safety and efficiency regulations on passenger cars by marketing unsafe gas guzzling vehicles in an less regulated category, then they began a marketing campaign to convince people that SUV’s were cool, and necessary. The demand was created using marketing techniques, for the benefit of the auto makers more so than the consumer. The same is the case with McMansions, the developers want to build them, so they have worked with real estate professionals and lenders to make them appealing, again befitting the developers, real estate brokers and lenders much more than the consumer.
The fact is that local municipalities have been regulating land use for the benefit of business, developers and other wealthy interests for many decades. Heck if I want to build a house with a composting toilet, and an artificial wet land for gray water, I have to jump through all sorts of hoops and still may have to put in a sand mound septic. Try composting your human waste in the city and see what the authorities have to say to you, no matter how much scientific evidence you give them. Having local planning commissions telling developers what they can build where is normal, having them do it with the best interest of the common people rather than the wealthy elite is un-common.
All this generic, open architecture is wasteful. Having a living room that is open to the second floor is devastating for heating bills and a huge waste of living space.
but that is just the point. consciously or not, these buildings are designed to express and flaunt wastefulness. remember the bit in Dune (the book, youngsters, not the various movie/TV versions) where the ruling family of a parched desert planet spills water on the floor as part of their dinner ritual, to demonstrate their wealth, power, and immunity from commensalist obligation? deliberate flaunting of wastefulness, dysfunctional design and pointless/self-obsessed activity are markers of elite/ruling class membership throughout “civilised” human history.
time to re-read T Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class — the prose may seem a bit creaky, but his insights into conspicuous consumption and its relation to bad design, inefficiency, and deliberate wastefulness are as fresh and relevant as today’s news. and this is not about Communism or Capitalism; as totalising State ideologies, both are guilty of the same grandiose and insane displays of wastefulness and inefficiency to demonstrate State power — pyramid-building, the perpetual vice of ruling classes.
it is pointless to rail and rant that these trophy homes are inefficient. their whole purpose, like SUVs and the foot-long fingernails of Mandarins or the bound feet of trophy wives in Imperial China, is to display inefficiency as a sigil of power and wealth, to say “this is how dysfunctional I can afford to be.” the size, weight, and ugly brick shape of an H2 display the same arrogance of waste. to own a home that is ridiculously expensive to heat or cool, that is so large you need servants to clean it, with garage space for 3 or more cars, miles from any services or employment, is one way that human roosters crow “Cock A Doodle, look how much money I have!” — as they perch proudly on top of the stinking midden that we are turning the entire planet into as we convert biosystems into money.
and the lesser roosters crow on their own dunghills, feeling pride at being able to waste living space on rooms dedicated to frivolous activities, to pay for heating and cooling rooms dedicated only to tv watching or pool playing or working out on an exercise bicycle (god forbid they should actually use a bicycle functionally for transport, that would be lower-class and therefore embarrassing). and that hunger for conspicuous consumption keeps the lesser roosters docile and obedient to the greater roosters, and The System Works… until it falls apart (and here Veblen will not do, we need Hornborg to discuss the thermodynamic implications of “growth” ideology).
in the meantime, just remember that aristocracies (and in global terms even the “middle class” of N America is a resource aristocracy, consuming on average 5x its share of annual global raw materials and energy) tend to embrace dysfunction to display wealth, and that this embrace of dysfunction tends to produce unfitness, delusion, and incompetence, and thus to lead — over time — to the collapse of said aristocracies. nuff said.
In my neighborhood in Minneapolis there is a brand new MacMansion surrounded by smaller houses displaying lawn signs that read “Monster Houses Make Bad Neighbors”. The next door neighbor put up a large banner for awhile that read “I hope you enjoy your million-dollar view of our bathroom”. The mansion sits empty. The developer may not be able to sell it. The majority has been heard and the city council passed an ordinance limiting the size of new houses in existing neighborhoods.
It seems that one of the main arguments of the few defenders of MacMansions in these posts is that no one should be able to tell them what to do. Well, the way things are going, it’s only a matter of time before we may be told, for example, that we can only have 5 gallons of gasoline a week. Or that you can’t have a car at all. Or to take public transportation. Or to bike or walk to work. Or that you can’t have any meat in your diet. Or that you can only have one child. Or that electricity will be on only 4 hours a day. Or that you have to move to the country. Might as well get used to it. Renewable energy so far doesn’t even come close to replacing our enormous consumption of oil. We will have to severely cut back our lifestyle, hopefully voluntarily. Otherwise, someone will for sure be telling you what to do.
I think, regrettably, we have confused the pursuit of happiness as stated in the Declaration of Independence, as the pursuit of material wealth, and freedom as license to do what ever the hell we want to do. As far as material wealth, a recent study found that the people of Bangladesh were the happiest, and Bangladesh is hardly a bastion of wealth. Obviously happiness is independent of material wealth. What was that old saying, “the best things is life are free”?
I never really looked at this concept before, even I would occasionally dream to for a spacious house and I consider myself socially conscious. Hmmm. I 100% reconsider that now except for why does it have to be me that cut