Bad Manors: The McMansion as Harbinger

https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/bad-manors-wagner

by samclemens • 3 years ago

69 207 3 years ago

thebaffler.com

Turing_Machine5• 3 years ago

What was once a mix of modest, low-slung ranch-style houses

And when those ranch-style houses were new, architecture snobs were decrying them as as soulless cookie-cutter crap.

Here's a novel idea: if you don't want to live in a "McMansion", don't buy one.

User234• 3 years ago

As always, we must consider the actual alternatives and not just our imaginary ideal scenario.

What is the alternative for the relatively large population looking to start families in a neighborhood with a good school district and child care on 1-2 working to middle class salaries while building some equity?

Can you point us to someplace where there is quality, affordable, and aesthetically pleasing new home construction happening at scale?

steveBK1234• 3 years ago

One consideration is that "new homes" have historically been something of a "luxury good" but somehow become so normalized in the last couple decades, that people argue "middle class salary" should be able to buy one.

Growing up, no one in my family lived in a new construction home, nor did any of my friends.

New construction needs to happen to increase aggregate supply to deal with incremental increases of demand. That supply though, may be more high end than median. Even this works fine because it means someone will buy a pricey new construction home rather than a cheap home and gut renovate it. The lack of new construction causes high income buyers to move further and further down market to buy-to-reno.

WillPostForFood• 3 years ago

McMansions are aesthetically pleasing to the average taste, which is out of alignment with coastal elite modernism. If your taste is out of the mainstream, then it is harder to find houses, and they will be more expensive. There are the occasional attempts at the non-standard suburban subdivision style. I liked these:

https://starlightvillagehomes.com/

MSFT_Edging13• 3 years ago

I'll regularly go to estate sales in McMansions. It's really amazing to see.

Master Bedrooms the size of my apartment that are mostly empty.

Huge tall ceilings with poorly assembled trim to break up the monotony. Two extra large AC units needed to cool all that air.

Basement bars that have gone unused for years, expansive basements with old kids toys laying about, so roomy that it feels almost commercial.

So many extra sitting rooms just there as a place to put things. Its amazing how wasteful they are, how they basically just exist to say "look, big house". Nothing in them is practical, they're difficult to navigate because you need to make room for the massive foyer staircase and inexplicable loft/bridge to overlook your leather couches with USB ports in them, sitting across from a tv mounted 3 feet too high to ever have a comfortable viewing angle.

I've seen the ugliest ceiling mural, attempting to emulate an Italian fresco with all the skill of a high school drug PSA mural.

These homes just reek of desperation, like they've accrued all this wealth and have found themselves sitting at the back of the bus in "The Graduate", without any purpose and unsure why they fought so hard.

Its really interesting seeing a bathroom with enough open space to store an old beetle, with 30 drawers under the acreage of counter top. Mostly empty but dispersed with normal human items, like they're trying so hard to make it seem like any of this was necessary.

All of these places are devoid of any kind of design, it all feels like a simulacra of old wealth, like its what they "should" be buying and decorating with, but then you see personal items and realize they're no better than the average person, they have the same interests and hobbies, only now they're buried deep inside this dryrock dungeon, hidden away so they can appear high class and fancy.

The worst thing about them? How cheap it all feels, and how much it feels like a normal house scaled up beyond any purpose. Sure the first floor may have some kind of granite tile, but every other floor seems to bow and give under your feet like you're on a rubber running track. Noises reverberate if there's no carpet, but if there is, it most likely came with the home and has not been taken care of.

McMansions are an amazing symbol of the hollowness of seeking wealth. You could have a much nicer, bespoke and practical home if you wanted. For the money you could hire a real designer, real craftsmen to build your hardwood features or master plaster craftsman to make real ceiling moldings.

Instead of ordering a steak from a fine restaurant, the McMansion is spending the equivalent money at a McDonalds.

ryandrake• 3 years ago

I once rented a basement bedroom from a couple when I had to do an internship. The house was a ginormous McMansion just like you described. I would occasionally go up to the main part of the house and it dawned on me that the couple had no furniture. Just this giant 5000 square foot house with seemingly dozens of empty rooms. They had two patio lounge chairs in the family room and a cheap (for the time) TV, and that was pretty much all I saw. Imagine leveraging yourself to the hilt, getting a mortgage that two people had to work to pay (and still having to rent rooms to others)... simply to get a huge box made of cheap lumber and drywall, and not even being able to live in it like civilized people.

jollyllama2• 3 years ago

Ever see a nice floor globe, or just the fake ones for storing booze in?

gonehome2• 3 years ago

I doubt it’s the equivalent money, the stuff you’re talking about (hiring master craftsmen) probably costs 5x-10x what a large house built the way you’re describing does.

mattgreenrocks• 3 years ago

Arguably worse than the house itself: owners who stay in precarious financial situations to pay off too much house. Yeah, it's their decision and they're probably learning a lesson, but...for what? Signaling to a select few people that they've made it? How is it worth the stress? Do they realize how time and effort they put into what is empty posturing?

Little wonder why some people's midlife crisis is explosive.

kitsunesoba• 3 years ago

I would argue that the problem with McMansions has less to do with their sheer size (though on the larger end, their size truly is ridiculous) and more to do with how badly utilized it all is.

One of these days I hope to be fortunate enough to design and build my own house, and so it's a subject I think about frequently. I'd like it to be a bit larger than average, but the allocation of space is determined almost entirely on practicality. So for example, rather than having a cavernous reception/living room and a dining room that's rarely used, the ground floor would have a small living room with the extra space instead going towards a kitchen with ample counterspace to do serious cooking in (something that's oddly skimped on not only in McMansions, but also more traditional houses) and a mudroom at the entrance so guests have a place to put their bags, coats, etc and have room to take their shoes off without stumbling over each other.

I suspect that there's demand for sizable, yet practically-designed houses like that but nobody's building them so people instead buy what is being built.

oh_sigh• 3 years ago

Estate sales are commonly held by the estates of the recently deceased. So, there may be some bias in your sampling, since you're walking around the house of someone who was at the end of their life, not right in the heart of it.

And, I'm not sure large houses are as wasteful as you let on. After all, the floor area of a room grows quicker than the perimeter does. A 100 sq ft room could have 40' of walls, but a room with 4x the area could only have 2x the length of walls.

And it might just be my area, but there is no way you can get a bespoke home of equivalent square footage as you could a pre-built mcmansion.

inconceivable• 3 years ago

if only you could decide on what other people could spend their money on, then the world would be such a better place, right? and, you seem to have no problem enjoying the downstream effects of their "estate".

btw, that thing you're undoubtedly alluding to, the 1-story craftsman bungalow with custom woodwork and detached garage/shed, gravel driveway and on half an acre with a perfectly manicured herb garden and tomato beds is more expensive and probably located in a jurisdiction with much higher taxes.

i live in a concrete loft which is basically the polar opposite of a mcmansion but can you enlighten me how i'm doing my entire life wrong also?

different types of housing exist because people have different tastes.

pookha2• 3 years ago

I understand the allure...I need a McMansion to store all of my kids toys.

yamtaddle10• 3 years ago

the massive foyer staircase and inexplicable loft/bridge to overlook your leather couches with USB ports in them, sitting across from a tv mounted 3 feet too high to ever have a comfortable viewing angle

I'm rolling, LOL. Nailed it.

My main problem with living in houses built post-McMansion-influence (so, a great deal of what's been built for the last 25 years or so) is how terrible the layouts are. You'll have 3,500 sqft but it feels about as usable and spacious when you're actually living in it as a well-laid-out 2,200.

danaris3• 3 years ago

And to contrast that, I've been friends with someone who made significantly more money than I do (or likely ever will), and while their house was in a nice, upscale neighbourhood and was somewhat bigger than mine, overall it was a pretty normal suburban design.

What they had was taste, and good priorities.

Rather than put money into lots of space, or showy exterior features, they put it into the kitchen, and the bathroom. I was lucky enough to be able to stay at their house a few times (visiting the area for reenacting purposes—that's how I met them), and use their absolutely palatial shower. They are also foodies, and love to cook good food and cook it well, so they made their kitchen both beautiful and functional. (They also make stained glass as a hobby; I have no idea how expensive that is, nor how it would compare to buying a similar piece, but they had installed some of their work in their own windows, which added to the class of the place.)

I believe the difference between someone with a McMansion and people who own houses like that one is a sense of security in their own position in the world. McMansions are entirely about conspicuous consumption—about showing off your wealth, so that you can brag about it and rub the noses of lesser beings in it.

leviathant• 3 years ago

For a while, every place I moved to was slightly larger than the last. This is culturally what we're directed to: have a guest room. Build a man cave. Two ovens in your kitchen, why not? An office with a library. A room for the piano. There's always a way to put that money into stuff.

My first house was modest. About 700sqft semi-detached, built in 1905 as housing for mill workers, in the Philly exurbs. Good bones but a total gut job. The appeal was mostly that I could walk to the train station in three minutes. Cute backyard, but barely one parking spot per house.

Next place we got was 1300sqft (not including the full basement) - three bedrooms! My wife and I each had a space. Two car driveway a mile from city hall in what's barely north Philadelphia. Mid-1990s construction, weirdly suburban - I think it had more of a lawn than we had in the exurbs. So much room for stuff! Especially in the basement with its ceilings!

By a quirk, we came across a building in the historic district. It needed a ton of work, but the price was too good to pass up. We had been renting our first house out, but the tenant had broke her lease, so we moved back to the exurbs, sold our Philly house, and bought this weird property... 16'x100' venue space on the first floor, with a 16'x30' apartment on the second floor. We added a third floor (approx 1200sqft, single bedroom), rent out the second floor as an airbnb, and will be making the first floor a venue again.

Moving from 1300sqft back down to 700sqft, then up to 1200sqft (but with no basement) was a master course in space optimization and mindfulness about consumerism. When I see these McMansions, I think: that's a lot of air to heat & cool. Those are a lot of rooms to fill with junk. That's a lot to dust and vacuum. And let's not even talk about design and architectural choices, or how everything interesting is a fifteen minute drive - at least.

I didn't think I'd have a custom home built in my 30s, let alone adaptive reuse of what turned out to be an 18th century building, but I feel like I accidentally stumbled out of a consumerism trap and into a kind of Goldilocks zone. When someone from NYC visits, they think our place is huge. When someone from central PA visits, they think it's kind of cramped. McMansions baffle me. There are so many more interesting things you can do with money, and so many more interesting places you can live - but I get how it's hard to break the spell of "get a bigger house, buy more stuff." And I'm not saying I made a better choice... I also think about how much money I spent to live in the spacial equivalent of a trailer home.

As much as I couldn't go back to the suburbs, suburban people often have trouble adapting to this kind of space. We had Airbnb guests a couple of years ago, who were gifted a weekend stay by their daughter. On the first night, they used Ubereats to order McDonalds, stayed inside and watched TV. In the morning, they told us they were checking out early, and that it was no fault of ours. I don't know if I can properly express to you how absurd it is to order McDonalds in a town with world class food options, or to stay inside watching TV in one of the most walkable, historic, and street-level active cities in the country. But hey, "Country Mouse & Town Mouse" is a fable that's at least 2000 years old. To each their own, I suppose.

bombcar15• 3 years ago

Fun fact: the term "Victorian" for that type of house (IIRC) was intended to disparage them, as they were considered tacky and cheap.

gonehome2• 3 years ago

Yeah, this is my takeaway whenever someone uses “McMansion” in a disparaging way - it’s mostly to sneer at some “lower class”.

trgn• 3 years ago

It really is not. That's a made up defense.

The people who devalue mcmansions largely do so because these houses are the material legacy this country is leaving, and it's objectively shit. They are an irresponsible way to build and organize neighborhoods.

nluken2• 3 years ago

I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. McMansions are defined by their attempts to outwardly demonstrate wealth, which makes deriding them easy but justifiable. Many of the kinds of homes the author discusses here are multimillion dollar properties. Yes, there's a little snobbery involved, but I don't find it classist to point out the irony in wealthy folks appearing cheap by yelling "LOOK HOW WEALTHY I AM!"

yamtaddle10• 3 years ago

The lower classes don't live in McMansions. Unless it's one in an older neighborhood without an HOA that's been carved up into six rental units.

Turing_Machine5• 3 years ago

Yep. Not everyone wants to pay $5,000/month to live in a jumped-up coat closet in a "trendy" part of Manhattan.

Me, I live in a late '50s tract house and it suits me fine. I don't actually care what kinds of housing other people want to live in -- because it's none of my business. Manhattan coat closet or suburban "McMansion" -- whatever floats your boat.

micromacrofoot2• 3 years ago

A huge part of the point here is that McMansions create unattractive, difficult to use, and costly to maintain infrastructure. And the residents who live in the McMansions aren't really the people who are bearing the full brunt of these costs.

MSFT_Edging13• 3 years ago

My favorite thing was a culdesac of McMansions that had a gravel entrance road.

You could almost hear the arguments of "who will pay for it?" echoing the halls like a ghost.

dfxm12• 3 years ago

Here's a novel idea: if you don't want to live in a "McMansion", don't buy one.

Shopping for houses isn't like shopping on Amazon. You can't just pick what you want and have it ready on a lot of your choice in two days. If the only housing stock available/being built is houses you don't want to live in, whether they're too big, too poorly built, too ugly, not oriented on the lot right, not exactly where you want it, you're going to have to buy one anyway.

Turing_Machine5• 3 years ago

You can't just pick what you want and have it ready on a lot of your choice in two days

No kidding. And?

If the only housing stock available/being built is houses you don't want to live in

These houses are exactly what their owners want to live in. Exactly. If the market demand weren't there, the contractors would be building something else.

nluken2• 3 years ago

I was excited to see that Kate Wagner was contributing to this most recent issue of the Baffler. A related article from the same issue discusses the cheapness of the construction in modern housing: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/construction-time-again-sisson

ethbr02• 3 years ago

The custom vs mass-produced perspective is more interesting to me, bcause generally everything in recent architecture has distilled down to -- can it be mass-produced?

Plaster and lath? Can't be mass produced/installed. Out of style.

Crown moulding? Can't be mass produced/installed. Out of style.

Solid wood flooring? Can't be mass produced/installed. Out of style.

Brick? Can't be mass produced/installed. Out of style.

One begins to see a pattern and wonder if "style" is actually "what makes more profit for builders."

bombcar15• 3 years ago

It's less builder profit and more "how can we maximize the things people compare". Builders hate finicky stupid shit [1], and charge accordingly, but big empty rooms are easy. People ask "how much house can I buy" and get $400k, say, and choose the largest sq ft with the amenities they want, instead of smaller with more design/amenities.

And that's not even to say they're always entirely wrong; you should spend on the things that are expensive to change later (location, foundation, etc) perhaps; like a church that is built with plain windows because you can always add stained glass later.

[1] an example my friend hated as a roofer were the little decorative things on the corners of a roof (corner gables? no idea) - he charged something like $2k per because of the absolute huge amount of absolutely fiddly labor required to build and roof them, and hated every minute of it.

hahamrfunnyguy• 3 years ago

This article has a lot of words but it doesn't say much and the title is misleading.

tldr;

Americans are building large, ugly homes out of cheap materials that have environmental impacts due to heating/cooling costs and distances required to drive.

the_cat_kittles2• 3 years ago

moby dick is the story of a guy on a boat who tries to hunt a whale

nielsbot• 3 years ago

I get the joke but sometimes writing is bad

ElfinTrousers• 3 years ago

How's that work out for him?

coldcode• 3 years ago

In my city a couple of miles from me is a new housing community with $1M houses; only a few different models are available, featuring minimal paint color options, all on zero lot line spaces, any closer together they would be one giant condo. A friend toured the model and reported how cheaply it was built. Yet they sold out. The average price of a house nearby is closer to $400k. I bet the developer made a fortune.

carapace6• 3 years ago

Check out this "Summit Park" development: https://goo.gl/maps/Eherg24AUS4V1aX67?coh=178571&entry=tt

Someone finagled permission to build on Brotherhood Way and this is what they made. The houses themselves seem nice, but the neighborhood (if you can call it that) has a horror movie vibe to it.

r00fus2• 3 years ago

These are mega-townhomes, right?

HEmanZ3• 3 years ago

Throw in a small cafe, local pub, and corner store, and that looks like a really nice little spot. Give it 30-50 years and people will have painted them different colors, and it won’t look like a retirement home

supportengineer2• 3 years ago

Those are not mansions by any means - I see some multi-story homes typical of San Francisco. This is a peaceful little corner of the city, I'm not sure how you get "horror movie vibe".

tqi2• 3 years ago

The Summit Park development (https://www.fletcher.studio/summit-park) is actually pretty thoughtfully planned out imo. There are definitely compromises that have been made, and the developers are obviously not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, but they have spent time to address community concerns and seem to have tried to balance their bottom line against livability, sustainability, and affordability considerations. There are maybe 100 units in this entire phase of the project, and aside from a few apartment towers a quarter mile or more up a steep hillside, there's nothing else in the area. What kind of businesses could this realistically support, a 7-11? They threw in a dog park and a playground, probably because that is what a family oriented neighborhood is most likely to need/want.

But then people like Kate Wagner come along and see the lack of a coffee shop and houses that don't look like they belong in the Mission, and immediately pooh pooh it (and implicitly the people who choose to live there). All while ignoring the fact that this used to be a ditch next to what is essentially a 4 lane highway...

Despite Wagner's claims to the contrary, I can't help but conclude that all of this "thoughtful urbanism" is just thin veneer over a core of elitism.

jprd• 3 years ago

This is eerily similar from Street View images to the Mueller neighborhood in Austin. I imagine a South Park episode about all of this is not far behind.

nostromo• 3 years ago

It's odd how the complaints are never about actual mansions. No, it's only when the middle-class gets bigger houses do we have journalists handwringing endlessly about gauche they are.

onlyrealcuzzo2• 3 years ago

Isn't the typical McMansion people complain about $1M+?

That's definitely not text-book middle class - which would be closer to the median house - which is less than half that price.

There's not many places you're getting a 4 bedroom clown-house with a clown pool and 5 clown-y bathrooms and a 3-car clown garage for your 3 clown cars for $450k. And if you are, there's very few places this is a new-ish build.

Most of the places you're getting something like this - it's like a 20+ year-old home in Montgomery Alabama or Akron Ohio or something... And usually this was once a nice house that someone renovated in the style of a clown for the McMansion buyer...

You're either considering the average suburban home a McMansion or you think the top 10% is middle class.

In fairness, both of these are common conceptions - but I think they're both worth critiquing.

cjohnson3183• 3 years ago

You're either considering the average suburban home a McMansion or you think the top 10% is middle class.

If wealth were normally distributed, then the top 10% definitely wouldn't be the middle class. However, the way wealth is distributed, the average earner in the top 10% makes about $173K in 2020 dollars. Which is a lot in Louisiana, but not so much in SF or New York.

https://www.epi.org/blog/wage-inequality-continued-to-increa...

yamtaddle10• 3 years ago

Isn't the typical McMansion people complain about $1M+?

The same style problems are heavily present in houses down to the high-$300k range around here. Straight-up visual gibberish, and not in the name of some kind of practical improvements as a trade-off—the contrary, if anything.

Best I can tell, this has happened because complex façades and rooflines make a house look bigger. I've done a lot of house shopping over the years, and find that if I apply a McMansion-style-tuned eye to classically-styled houses, my guesstimate of square footage is consistently something like 30-40% low. Houses with a balanced and regular appearance and without a bunch of shit jutting out everywhere for no reason look smaller—by a lot—than a same-size McMansion.

steveBK1234• 3 years ago

I do think it is very much a classism thing. Plant of "McMansion style" homes that Architectural Digest type snobs punch down on that are not $1M. Remember vast areas of this country have very cheap land.

The demographics of people who enjoy writings like McMansion Hell skew much richer than the people living in that style of home. A McMansion style home in the burbs can cost about the same as a mediocre 1-2 bed / 1.5 bath in NYC.

micromacrofoot2• 3 years ago

Actual mansions are several orders of magnitude less common.

pookha2• 3 years ago

This has gone on for over a hundred years in the US. Victorian homes were greatly shit upon by the upper classes in the late 1800's.

drewcoo• 3 years ago

Citation? Anything other than moaning about the emergence of a middle class?

yamtaddle10• 3 years ago

Being extremely concerned about appearing rich but having absolutely no idea how to do it is basically the defining outwardly-visible characteristic of the middle class (in a Fussellian sense of "middle class").

McMansions are a perfect expression of this: trying to look bigger and fancier than they are while being extremely cheap in every way that matters, and getting every "fanciness" signal all wrong. They're a common target because plainly-inept pretentiousness is very funny—it's a staple trope in comedy for a reason.

It's not the size of the house per se that draws comment on McMansions. It's the intense and desperate but hopelessly misguided social signaling in their styling.

cjohnson3183• 3 years ago

Sure, they're gauche, but when you're looking for a place to raise a family that's near good schools, near a grocery, doesn't require a remodel or update, has room for you to work remotely, and you can't afford to just "buy land and build something that fancy magazine editors would approve of", then you're limited to "gauche McMansions". Could we live in a 2,000 sqft house that was built in 1940? Sure! Would it cost us our savings and sanity to bring it up to code? Probably!

dmtroyer• 3 years ago

Never? Really? There’s plenty of complaints of the 1% and their excess.

onetimeusename• 3 years ago

There is a valid criticism of mcmansions but this article turned this into more criticism of the homeowners. I am sure that if suburban houses used a classical style they would be writing about the fascists who live in them or if the homes were brutalist how the style had sold out.

But that said I think there is a valid critique of modern builders and homeowners in 2023. A family member's old home in a neighborhood they have lived in forever had a bunch of new people move in during 2021 and 2022 when interest rates were low. They brought giant lifted trucks that block sidewalks, put trailers and RVs and giant boats all over, tore down old trees to make way for chicken shacks and trampolines and plastic sheds. All of this violated the HOA contract but they know the HOA has a few hundred dollars to its name so they gave it the middle finger. Builders built new houses on odd empty lots that tore up landscape to add long driveways to get behind houses and now giant out-of-place houses overlook the backyards of old 100 year old houses.

Builders don't care. That's why mcmansions exist in the first place. The homeowners don't care either. It's all perfectly legal but something still isn't right.

bearjaws• 3 years ago

The hilarious thing to me about these new neighborhoods, is you can easily find their 'end game' state by just going to one that was built 12-15 years ago.

You will find the same story, brand new -> rusted out fences, broken lights, old pavement, irrigation problems.

The maintenance of these communities is outrageously expensive. Without an HOA fee of $400-$600 a month, they rapidly fall apart (~10 years). Yet you typically see figures closer to $200 a month.

Here in Central Florida, the second wealthiest "McMansion" neighborhood had to increase HOA dues and have a special assessment to finally pave its pot hole ridden roads. Mind you the dues are typically near $800 per month.

avidphantasm• 3 years ago

BUT THE PROPERTY TAXES ARE CHEAP!!!

snickerbockers• 3 years ago

Why do you care if other people buy mcmansions? The sorts of neighborhoods where they tend to crop up already have a million identical cookie cutter houses anyways.

JKCalhoun2• 3 years ago

I don't care myself — I'm living in one right now. Sadly the older homes in the city had only a single-car garage and I do woodworking.

It does seem though like we're heading toward either trailer park or mansion.

Seventy year ago they built real starter homes for newlyweds that did not yet have 2.4 kids. I'm not sure where those people go now. I have three daughters that are in their 20s now though so I guess I can watch and see.

bombcar15• 3 years ago

It's not economical to build small houses; price them out sometime and the cost to "make it a 3 bedroom" is not much at all.

The closest I've seen is "modern manufactured" and you still have lot/utilities, and they still cost close to stickbuilt.

DoreenMichele3• 3 years ago

The vernacular is the mass-produced architecture of the everyday.

This is not remotely what vernacular architecture means. (And trailer parks are not vernacular architecture.)

https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Vernacular_archite...

walthamstow• 3 years ago

It is a type of architecture which is indigenous to a specific time and place and not replicated from elsewhere

As a British outsider, it kind of does sound like trailer parks are American vernacular architecture. Why aren't they?

DoreenMichele3• 3 years ago

The benefits of vernacular architecture include:

Capitalising on local knowledge and traditions.

Taking advantage of local materials and resources, meaning that they are relatively energy efficient and sustainable.

Providing a vital connection between humans and the environment in which they live.

They can be designed specifically with the local climatic conditions in mind, and often perform well.

Vernacular architecture is associated with regional styles using local materials to build homes for ordinary people. Trailers are not any of the above.

glompers3• 3 years ago

I generally like the comments posted here by DoreenMichelle. I would cite the historic cobblestone or quarried Belgian Block pavements in American port cities like Philadelphia and Savannah as examples of locally available materials that were not local materials (many arrived as ballasts unloaded from the hulls of ships that were departing town heavier and more stable than they had arrived) but economic afterthoughts. Is it still a vernacular practice of local knowledge and local conditions that prevail in the built environment, if instead the citizens had simply used them as earthfill rubble to create new land out of wetlands? I would say no; practices that have left a trace only in being cheaper than other methods of earthfill don't meet my criteria for a vernacular practice, although they may have still been performed by some of the same families who would be continuing to pass down that pattern of form in that same tradition.

On the other hand, if forestry and agriculture oriented areas of the USA find their local furniture and textile manufacturing tooling falling out of demand as furniture production goes offshore, is it possible to call it local knowhow if they repurpose those manufacturing plants to produce wood-framed, furnished turnkey mobile home trailers? It is still vernacular practice but at one remove, its nature changed by one layer (at least) of abstraction from a vernacular /tradition/, and its patterns denatured by that change as much as they were denatured by mass financing of managed mass production.

yamtaddle10• 3 years ago

The author probably wanted vulgar, not vernacular.

DoreenMichele3• 3 years ago

Not likely:

I disagree with Hubka’s rejection of the McMansion as a topic of vernacular study, but I agree that it is not quite vernacular, either. However, I think there are some things about the McMansion that can only be understood through a more vernacular framework, such as their ubiquity and the means by which they are built. McMansions are not usually designed by architects but by builders, most of them massive corporations like Toll Brothers, Pulte Homes, and Ryan Homes that traffic exclusively in master-planned tract communities. Like most vernacular architecture, the McMansion might best be considered a typology—an architectural configuration that adapts over time but remains generally stable.

noodlesUK• 3 years ago

My personal worry about so called McMansions is that people are buying the largest houses they can possibly afford, and the quality of the building is sacrificed for size. The costs of maintaining these enormous houses can sometimes be absolutely staggering. I worry that in years to come, entire neighbourhoods of these houses will simply fall into disrepair, as nobody will be able to afford the costs of fixing them as they age.

UncleOxidant• 3 years ago

In the 30's lots of large houses were divided into apartments. I'm thinking we're headed there again in some places. This time with McMansions being being divided into smaller units.

etempleton• 3 years ago

The problem is modern homes are for the most part hard to divide. Homes in the 30s often had very defined rooms connected with hallways. Modern homes include mostly open spaces with a few discrete rooms.

nemo44x4• 3 years ago

A big reason why is because of the depression. We constructed very few houses in the 1930s and 1940s. What we started building in the 1950s is a completely different thing and why homes pre-war that are well maintained are so prized.

seemaze• 3 years ago

That argument scales to any market segment. And it's not always the absolute cost of maintenance, but the decreasing value of performing it. Welcome to American West.

ethbr02• 3 years ago

... entire neighbourhoods of these houses will simply fall into disrepair, as nobody will be able to afford the costs of fixing them as they age.

Cleveland has this. Atlanta has this. I'm sure most other cities do too.

But there's always a buyer. They may not be able to afford to repaint custom Victorian woodwork every other year, and just let it rot, but someone will live there.

lo_zamoyski• 3 years ago

Approximately the same is true of sprawling suburbs. Sprawling suburbs are uneconomical; tax revenue is unable to cover the costs of maintenance. The result is that state and even federal money is needed to subsidize the costs[0]. Not sustainable.

Urban planning is not in good shape and hasn't been since about the 1950s. Worse, the postwar American model has been exported around the world which means these bad practices have been copied elsewhere. Still worse, urban planning decisions are effectively permanent. This is very apparent when you look at old European cities where buildings might have changed, but the layout of roads is either the same or agrees with the contours of previous structures, boundaries of what used to be parcels of farm land, etc.

[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/28/the-growth-pon...

frickinadorable• 3 years ago

Strong Towns makes a compelling case but until (unless?) suburbs truly start bankrupting in the way they describe, and in a way that hurts residents, I kind of think they are preaching to the choir.

Like if they are right but central state / city governments just increase subsidization, maybe that’s just what people want. Despite the fact that I don’t like it myself.

robocat4• 3 years ago

Sprawling suburbs are uneconomical

That is not what your linked article says. The article says is that US cities have not charged, and are not charging, enough property taxes: because of $reasons. If cities were to charge costs correctly, which must happen eventually, then suburbs are economical.

It is really difficult to compare like with like when it comes to property taxes in different countries. Costs, percentages, house valuations, plus other confounding factors mean we need to take all numbers as indicators only. But let’s compare Kansas City with Christchurch, New Zealand.

KANSAS CITY

[2021] The median property tax in Kansas is $1,625.00 per year for a home worth the median value of $125,500.00. Counties in Kansas collect an average of 1.29% of a property's assesed fair market value as property tax per year. Kansas is ranked number twenty six out of the fifty states, in order of the average amount of property taxes collected.

1625 / 76000 = 2.1% of median household gross income on property taxes[1].

Kansas City, MO's Taxpayer debt is -$8,700[2]. That doesn’t seem outrageous compared with household values and household mortgages.

CHRISTCHURCH

Suburbs pay for themselves in Christchurch, when they are built, and for their ongoing maintenance upkeep.

In 2021 average residential rates (property tax) nationwide [NZD]2,572. That’s about USD1750.

Christchurch is a city with significant and increasing urban sprawl. “Christchurch City Council continues to have the highest liabilities (debt) per household compared to any other council ([NZD]30,096)” with median property price in 2021 of [NZD]650,000 (I am guessing - rose significantly during the year). All new suburban developments in Christchurch have front loaded costs to pay for the extra infrastructure - the city does not subsidise infrastructure. Property taxes in Christchurch are about 5% of household gross income.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSKSA646N

[2] https://www.data-z.org/state_data_and_comparisons/city/kansa...

PS: Strong Towns is epically biased against suburbs - using them as a reference is taking a ridiculously partisan position.

Xorakios2• 3 years ago

I generally like strongtowns attitude and articles, but a lot of their detailed calculations about the cost of suburbs being unsustainable focus on sidewalk maintenance costs. One example:

https://actionlab.strongtowns.org/hc/en-us/articles/13529213...

spc476• 3 years ago

Back in 1999, an acquaintance of mine became a paper millionaire of a dot-com and bought a 2.3M home in Boca Raton, Fl, and put in a further half million renovating it. As he was driving me and a few friends through the neighborhood, he indicated that if you don't like the style of house, it could be demolished and a new home built, and pointed out a few homes that were new, the old having been demolished.

He also said that it cost him something like $10,000/month to live here, what with the mortgage and huge electric bill (he had three multi-ton A/C units to cool the almost 10,000 square foot (900 square meters) home.

It was ... something.

whartung• 3 years ago

Well anecdotally, here in SoCal, McMansion capitol of the planet, I’m not seeing it.

Myself and my circle of friends have had assorted houses of assorted sizes and ages, and save for my 1960 ranch built on truly horrible soil, nobody has encountered any gross problems.

One is over 20 years old with nothing of note. Another is push 35 with nothing of note. My then new and lived in townhouse for 6 years had no issues. My friends in the Inland Empire (where housing was “cheap”) have had no complaints.

Partly I credit the building codes in CA and the communities. A friend recently explored building a house and was required to do an updated soil study, for example.

The expanding clay soil that they dropped my house on 40 years before we bought it converted the slab to gravel. All sorts of movement in that house. At one point you could tell the season based on the size of the crack in the bathroom wall, it moved visibly over time.

The entire neighborhood was like this. And, yea, they were expensive to fix. But the contractor gutting my rooms commented on how well the house itself was built. Today, I think what happened there could (should) not happen.

I had to re-pour foundations, re-line sewers, replace HVAC on that house.

Mind I certainly wouldn’t want to redo the flooring of a 4000 sq ft house. But the bones, core features and fundamentals seem to last.

And, for sure, there are different grades of builders. Homes at different price points. But much of that is fit and finish cosmetics vs fundamentals of the house.

I can’t speak to other neighborhoods. But I imagine it’s more than basic maintenance that’s driving folks away.

Make no mistake, larger houses cost more. More flooring to buy. More walls to paint. Larger HVAC to service. More cu ft to heat and cool.

But I’ll bet the sewer line for the cheap house and expensive house are fundamentally identical.

But I think the baseline, for the big parts, those dictated by codes and inspections, at least, anecdotally, in SoCal, seems pretty solid.

syntheweave• 3 years ago

I think there can be some self-selection bias involved in this assessment. Maintenance is something that some people are disinclined to attempt at all: they "consume" their housing, vehicles, furniture etc. instead. In essence what they demand is an IKEA house. The market will meet that demand to the extent that regulation allows it.

As well, each generation of housing stock has a share of survivors that often were invested in more heavily early on, preventing small maintenance issues from developing into bigger ones. Foundation settlement is a common issue, as you point out. But for one example of what can go wrong with a whole generation, the move towards greater insulation ran into a widespread problem of toxic mold in the 2000's, caused by trapped water vapor in the structural materials. Those houses, McMansions among them, were lost, and made their owners sick. Building standards account for this now, but that kind of thing crops up with each change in practices, so I always see the first 5-10 years as a kind of proving ground: if it gets through that without turning into a nightmare it can usually go for many more decades.

intrasight• 3 years ago

houses will simply fall into disrepair, as nobody will be able to afford the costs of fixing them as they age

That has been true of mansions for hundreds if not thousands of years ;)

My opinion is that the author is totally off the mark due to conflating two separate aspects of modern home building.

I’ll use these definitions in order to decouple the two aspects.

McMansions are custom homes built by the nouveau rich. They can be in greenfield developments or as teardowns in established neighborhoods.

Spec ("speculative") homes are houses built as a collection by a developer and then sold to their owners. There is usually an HOA.

A McMansion can be built poorly for sure. But more frequently it is built with a "most home for the least cost" mentality. The materials and quality are high but there's something missing. I think what's missing is craftsmanship and architectural finesse.

Spec houses can be built well and may are. But like McMansions - the dominant philosophy is "most home for the least cost". Those that are not built well - and that's is likely the majority - will result in large, unexpected repair costs for future owners.

McMansions and spec houses usually occupy mutually exclusive developments - which make sense since someone building a custom home doesn't want to be next door to a spec house.

A McMansion is only slightly more likely to avoid the "something is missing" aspect of large modern spec houses. And it's from the same root cause - a lack of craftsmanship and architectural finesse. Where I lived until recently and for over twenty years, there were several houses torn down and replace with McMansions. The one beside me was originally a small (~1200 sq ft) brick ranch like mine. It was replaced by a McMansion. The owner/builder told me directly that she builds "the most home for the least cost". She lives in them for three years and then moves and repeats. The one across the street replaced a very charming stone house in the Tutor style. I was sad to see it go. Its replacement was a house that occupies most of the lot - a 3/4 acre lot - but I do include all the ugly "hard" landscaping as occupying the lot. The lot had looked so large and beautiful with the small stone house. Both McMansion were built by the same builder. Neither had an architect (structure or landscape) involved - and it shows.

Another example on my street was truly a head-scratcher. The owners tore down a really nice 3000 sq ft brick house, and replace it with a really ugly 4000 sq ft house of much lower quality design and materials.

I get that the standard use of "McMansion" does encompass both types of building, but I have long distinguished McMansions as those that are custom-built. If someone else builds and then sell you a house, It’s no kind of mansion – it just a large spec house.

I have little experience with spec developments. I've no reason to venture into such exurb wastelands and thankfully all of my friends share that opinion and don't buy them. I assume they exist here - but they are dozens of miles from the city.

I live in a charming and affordable neighborhood that is a 15 minute drive to downtown (with light rail connections too). The houses were built in several generations from the 1920s to the 1970s. The schools consistently rate among the best in the state. McMansions are exceedingly rare here. Houses are rarely cheap and are of high quality. Lots are small and zoning doesn't allow for much of an increase in footprint. Even if it did, it would make no economic or aesthetic sense to tear one down. It does make sense to fix one up.

mikebrave• 3 years ago

I've always considered McMansions to be more of style than an actual building type, usually it has to do with a mismatching of architectural styles, almost within the vein of "what a poor person thinks a rich persons house would have". Some of the diagram like posts on McMansion hell are a good example here is one, https://mcmansionhell.com/post/699110995935805440/a-fine-sel...

Also I think many of what is considered a mcmansion to be mass produced, that is if wikipedia is to be believed.

jmclnx• 3 years ago

The only thing I did not like about these is how close they were built to each other on a small plot of land. Plus all the trees were removed.

MSFT_Edging13• 3 years ago

I know of a family who lives in a neighborhood like what you describe.

They complain they never see any birds or wildlife when the nearest batch of trees is at least a half mile away.

karaterobot2• 3 years ago

Architecturally speaking, the reason for the McMansion’s persistence is that it is the path of least resistance for building a house of a certain size. It’s hard to be efficient when forcing four thousand-plus square feet under one roof. Tailor-made architectural creations remain out of reach (or undesirable) for many people. The McMansion is a structurally stable, if visually clunky, formula. Contrary to almost four decades of urbanistic thought highlighting the need for walkability, density, and transit-oriented development, companies like Pulte Homes continue to construct McMansion neighborhoods near highway off-ramps and high-traffic arterial roads. They do this because people buy these houses and drive to work...

Yeah, screw them for ignoring decades of urbanistic thought and continuing to buy houses they want and can afford. It's like they're not even considering what decades of academics and ideologues have been telling them to do with their lives. Does urbanistic thought not count for anything anymore?!

Fauntleroy• 3 years ago

Ah, the good ol' "freedom trumps a well-functioning society" argument

karaterobot2• 3 years ago

Describe some of the specific, concrete ways people buying a house with a particular architectural style damages society.

ramesh31• 3 years ago

The solutions to these problems are equally obvious: more density; preserving existing green space to allow for stormwater runoff; better public transportation to decrease reliance on cars; the decommissioning of urban highways; comprehensively transforming the energy sector in pursuit of a post-oil world; and, most of all, building affordable, livable, and—dare I say it—rent-controlled or even government-funded housing.

All of these urbanist types always come to the exact same collectivist conclusions. It treats human culture as a mathematical optimization problem, which it isn't. Everything would just be so much better if we all lived in 20 story 800sqft apartments and took the bus everywhere.

I don't want to live like that. I want a car, maybe two for my family so that we can go where we want when we want. I want a home large enough to entertain friends, host holidays, and house my children. I want a yard with grass, and I want to spend my saturday mornings mowing it. And I think that's exactly what most other Americans want.

There has to be a solution that doesn't involve the loss of individual autonomy, privacy, and freedom that we value in the US. I will not eat the bugs. I will not get into the pod.

norir• 3 years ago

The American lifestyle you describe is going to end and probably sooner rather than later.

robbyking• 3 years ago

I think what gets lost in this debate is the fact that in most major US cities you can have two cars, a yard with a lawn you can mow and a guest room without sacrificing walkability and public transportation.

I live in a working class neighborhood in a major coastal city and still have everything I listed above: I bike or ride the bus to work but a lot of my coworkers drive; I have front and backyards (with lawns!) but I can walk a few blocks to a commercial district with dozens of shops and restaurants. Not every city looks like Manhattan. Not even all of NYC looks like Manhattan.

yamtaddle10• 3 years ago

I think what gets lost in this debate is the fact that in most major US cities you can have two cars, a yard with a lawn you can mow and a guest room without sacrificing walkability and public transportation.

My city qualifies! The house might even be pretty damn cheap and surprisingly big!

But the schools will suck. You have to move somewhere with terrible walkability to get decent public schools.

r00fus2• 3 years ago

I want a car, maybe two for my family so that we can go where we want when we want.

You want a car because it's not possible to live in the US without them. So that's rational.

I want a yard with grass, and I want to spend my saturday mornings mowing it. And I think that's exactly what most other Americans want.

Nope. I skipped out on "grass" a long time ago. Water costs, time expenditure, grubs in your lawn causing local wildlife to dig it up - yeah, I don't want that. And actually lots of people around me don't either.

I will not eat the bugs. I will not get into the pod.

Ok pal. Nothing you say is going to be forced on you.

Turing_Machine5• 3 years ago

I don't want that.

Maybe you should give the same consideration to the tastes of other people?

HEmanZ3• 3 years ago

I think you’re strawmaning, and extrapolating the worst possible argument from the broad statement. I’ve not seen western urbanists who are extreme. I think every one would say “ya, that sounds nice”.

For example, it’s usually the conservatives that want to zone a town so that it’s literally impossible, even with massive free market demand, to build anything but large houses on large plots. A hell of a lot of urbanists just want the government to stop telling them that they can’t build a 4-plex or open a coffee shop on their property because it’s not zoned for it, or doesn’t have the government-approved-totally-well-thought-out number of parking spaces.

Instead of spending 2 billion building a bigger highway, how about 1 billion to get people off of the highway in the first place?

None of these restrict personal liberty.

Only the ever terrifying Straw Man is about restricting liberties. Especially when it comes to land use, (most) actual modern urbanists are individual autonomy and freedom oriented.

crooked-v7• 3 years ago

See, for example, the Japanese zoning plans that a lot of progressives in the US are in love with, which amount to setting a maximum density/nuisance level for a fairly large area and letting people just build whatever as long as it falls within that bound.

crooked-v7• 3 years ago

I don't want to live like that. I want a car, maybe two for my family so that we can go where we want when we want. I want a home large enough to entertain friends, host holidays, and house my children. I want a yard with grass, and I want to spend my saturday mornings mowing it. And I think that's exactly what most other Americans want.

Cool, whatever, but people trying to enforce that on everyone else is exactly what's landed us in the current hellscape of wildly overpriced homes everywhere people want to actually live, because everything is zoned to only allow single family homes and as it turns you can't actually physically fit enough of those to cover the demand for everyone who wants to live in most big cities.

quantumwannabe• 3 years ago

Remember that a 4000 sq ft house without a basement (common in the South) has around the same interior square footage as a 2000 sq ft house with a basement (common in the North). The Southerner's house looks a lot larger from the street, but it's actually around the same size inside as the "modest" house and is therefore not a "mansion".

Most of the "McMansion" photos I've seen criticized on architecture blogs are either middle-class houses from areas where basements are uncommon or cherry-picked examples of unusually bad design (many of which are actually custom builds!).

true_religion• 3 years ago

it's actually around the same size inside as the "modest" house and is therefore not a "mansion".

I think there's an issue with this premise. McMansions are not 'mansions' and the criticism stems from that fact. They are too small for the architectural features they try to cram into their facades (balustrades, numerous columns, far too many windows of awkward sizes). Also because they are small, they try to maximize the use of space leading to the exterior looking very weird due to overlapping roofs so individual rooms can be as large and tall as possible.

crooked-v7• 3 years ago

The article makes an interesting argument that the typical McMansion design, internally, can be distinguished by being more-or-less the same as a suburban home floor plan but inflated beyond all sense: an entry hallway turned into a grand foyer with a huge staircase (which, obviously, never actually gets used for anything, because it's still too small for actual parties), chains of special-purpose rooms stapled on to the same core set of rooms from the original nuclear family concept, access to the bedrooms stretched and stretched out as all the other spaces get bigger, etc.

It strikes me as, conceptually, a distinct contrast to an 'average' Victorian home floor plan (which is probably the other closest thing to 'mansion' that an average person might think of living in), where even a very large home is going to have pretty tight and efficient layouts meant to maximize collective practical use of the space (especially with a large family or guests), rather than just giving a ton of square footage to each individual inhabitant.

nemo44x4• 3 years ago

far too many windows of awkward sizes

Hmmm, actually it’s usually the case they have too few windows because windows (carpentry to house them and the actual window) is far more expensive than just having a wall.

But you’re right, they’ll often have a window that is incoherent with the rest of the house and/or in a weird spot when viewing the home from outside.

danaris3• 3 years ago

Wouldn't that be if it's a one-story house?

If it's got a 2000 sq ft footprint, with one story above ground and one below, that fits your description, but I don't think most McMansions tend to be one story—if they're 4000 sq ft, I would guess that many are likely to have about a 2-3000 sq foot footprint, with part or all of it having a second story (actually, rarely all, because a full-height foyer is a fairly common feature, from what I've seen).

I obviously can't comment on what you've seen derided as "McMansions", but I've seen a bunch of the stuff on McMansion Hell specifically (the blog the author of TFA maintains), and in general I wouldn't say they fit what you describe. Or, at least, some of them may not have a much larger livable square footage than a rural/suburban middle-class house, but they certainly cost appreciably more, because that middle-class house is built in a more or less standard manner, and the McMansion has a three-stall garage, four separate sets of pillared porches on the front, and three bay windows (in three completely different styles).

bombcar15• 3 years ago

McMansions are a very specific thing that "you know when you see" - and they are in no way "all houses currently being built".

Go here: https://www.wausauhomes.com/search?& and play around, you don't really start seeing things I'd definitely call "McMansion" until you're in the 4+ bedroom category, and many of the 3+ are quite nice looking.

(I personally get much more annoyed by "attached/built in garage" because I know what that can do to the mechanical envelope of a house.)

m0llusk• 3 years ago

There are a bunch of issues bunched up together here. Large houses are not only possible with good land use patterns, but as older cities grow the average unit size also increases. When I was young we moved from a trailer into a huge old house. It was difficult to keep up properly and seemed to always need to be repainted, but having plenty of space and more rooms than we actually needed on a regular basis was hugely liberating. With careful planning, construction, and use of materials it should be possible for most of the population to live in relatively large residences. This might be beneficial enough to specifically aim for as we make social and technological progress.

HEmanZ3• 3 years ago

I disagree that the McMansion is back. Leave it in the 1990-2008-ish time frame. The “new ones” I’ve seen going up are genuinely better, have much more sensible layouts, and don’t try the same goofy throw-design-out-the-window stuff the McMansions did.

lastofthemojito• 3 years ago

They're the Microsoft Word of houses. Famously, people only use 20% of Word's features, but that subset varies depending on whether the user is a legal secretary or elementary school teacher or whatever.

McMansions have all the features - the 3-car garage, the almost commercial kitchen, the vast gathering spaces, the rec room, the home office, etc. Not everyone needs it all - but some car guy will demand that third garage spot or some foodie will demand the oversized Viking appliances or some family with multiple kids will demand the big play area, etc. This way these houses meet the needs (and way beyond) of 90%+ of the upper-middle to upper-class homebuyers, so they retain their value and are way more easy to sell than the weird custom 1800sqft home with 4-car-garage, or 1-bedroom condo with commercial kitchen, or whatever.

nunez• 3 years ago

Kate is an amazing writer.

I loved how seamlessly she floated between academic architectural review to "McMansion bad" comedy, with almost no effort.

That said, I 100% agree. Mansions are beautiful and powerful in presence. McMansions are a blight and, in my opinion, incredibly cheap-looking cancerous blobs.

I live in Houston, which has an example of both.

River Oaks is our friendly "rich person" neighborhood. There, you'll see some _really_ nice looking custom big houses. Proper mansions, as it were.

We recently moved from Richmond, an exurb about 45 minutes south towards the abyss between Houston and Mexico. Like Kate illustrated here, a McMansion neighborhood was right off of our exit. The houses are gigantic, but look incredibly, incredibly cheap.

Funny enough, a large apartment complex is being built right by one of them. I wonder what that will do to their value.

Spivak• 3 years ago

incredibly cheap-looking cancerous blobs.

Oh I assure you, they're cheap all the way through. Take the mass-produced bottom of the barrel construction practices of modern developers, the architectural sense of gluing pre-made block of house together, and then just keep gluing until you hit the target square footage.

It's all limestone concrete, softwood, asphalt shingles, hollow doors, plastic floors, drywall, spray painted hardware, a single layer of brick if you're feeling adventurous, a chimney that doesn't actually work, a fireplace that's electric.

It's unbelievably depressing that for how expensive they are you can't actually pay for quality only for more house.

And I don't really think it's anyone's fault per se but more the reality of mass-produced junk getting cheaper and human labor getting so much more expensive relative to it.

flippinburgers• 3 years ago

I would classify anything that tries to butt up against the edge of a lot to be the first sign of grotesqueness. I will never understand the American obsession with quantity over quality.

cyberax9• 3 years ago

Ah, a rag totally dedicated to harping the virtues of "urbanism" is unloading on actually liveable houses. Shocking. News at 11.

Reality: McMansions are popular because they are comfortable and provide living space for an actual family. While being NOT more expensive on a per-unit basis than tiny condos in major urban centers.

I get it, millenials got screwed by the unfortunate confluence of 2008 and by the economy finally transforming from manufacturing economy into a service-based one. They can't afford large houses, so the psychological defense mechanism kicks in: "Hey, these McMansions are bad anyway. It's good to downsize into a shoebox".

But at this point we perhaps should start answering the question: do we want cities to continue being densified into Manhattan-style concrete canyons, or should we make sure that our children can live in nice houses that our generation was not able to afford?

lmm6• 3 years ago

Reality: McMansions are popular because they are comfortable and provide living space for an actual family. While being NOT more expensive on a per-unit basis than tiny condos in major urban centers.
I get it, millenials got screwed by the unfortunate confluence of 2008 and by the economy finally transforming from manufacturing economy into a service-based one. They can't afford large houses, so the psychological defense mechanism kicks in: "Hey, these McMansions are bad anyway. It's good to downsize into a shoebox".

So they're popular because they're affordable, but they're hated because they're expensive? Which is it?

But at this point we perhaps should start answering the question: do we want cities to continue being densified into Manhattan-style concrete canyons, or should we make sure that our children can live in nice houses that our generation was not able to afford?

Manhattan is popular, aspirational even, for a reason. Every generation before the 1950s was built by gradual densification. The wrongheaded decision to try to pickle cities in aspic via zoning laws is what creates housing unaffordability. A "nice" lifestyle is far more about being able to live somewhere you can work and socialize than about having zillions of sterile square feet to yourself.

mikecoles• 3 years ago

Having acres of fertile square feet to yourself is indeed a nice lifestyle.

cyberax9• 3 years ago

So they're popular because they're affordable, but they're hated because they're expensive? Which is it?

Millenials can't afford to buy either a McMansion, or a condo in a city. They can afford to rent an apartment.

Manhattan is popular, aspirational even, for a reason. Every generation before the 1950s was built by gradual densification.

Yup. And there's a reason why the US became the world leading power with unparalleled quality of life after 1950-s.

thebradbain3• 3 years ago

Sorry, but you’re creating a false dichotomy.

The _vast majority_ of land in the US, urban centers included, including NYC, is zoned for low density single family homes. Manhattan is only 1 of 5 boroughs in NYC, remember.

There is NO shortage of single family homes.

There IS a shortage of absolute number of units in urbanized areas.

This is because, contrary to what you claim, the only thing allowed to be built in many areas is exclusively single family homes.

Should we make sure that our children can live in nice houses that our generation was not able to afford

I say this as a relatively fortunate homeowner in Los Angeles who is part of “this generation”: if we do not allow more homes to be built, the next generation will not be able to live in the city at all.

I myself would not have been able to afford my home in the city and neighborhood I love had the recent state zoning changes (sb9) which allowed me to convert my single family home into to a duplex not occurred.

dqv• 3 years ago

I think people are even indifferent to single-family homes. Many people would be happy living in a duplex or any of the various structures of the missing middle. You can raise a family under those conditions. What difference does it make if your child plays soccer with their friends in the shared courtyard or your own private backyard?

chiffre01• 3 years ago

I think what the article is trying to say is more affordable/modest new construction is needed to improve current housing issues in many areas. Cheaply built giants, made to maximize contractor profits, only serve a small income demographic at the end of the day.

jknoepfler• 3 years ago

Even embracing for a second the notion that spreading municipalities out over vast tracts of land connected by cars is ethical and sustainable (which I don't)... the stereotypical midwestern suburb I grew up in had a lot of modest single family homes. The developers kept large stands of original trees. Homes backed up into forests, parks, and (natural) ponds.

The houses were generously proportioned for four people.

Then the wave of McMansions hit. The contrast was night and day. Same families, but the houses were twice as large, adorned with like... Fake columns and endless unnecessary fake architectural flourishes and ugly facade exteriors. The houses were jammed into tiny lots with no trees and no yards. The developers cut down all of the natural landscape and installed ridiculous fountain jets in drainage ponds. Side by side with the rest of the neighbourhood it was (and remains) ugly, excessive and soulless.

That's what a McMansion means to me. It's the white collar commuter's Ford F150 of a house.

And to be clear people have hated McMansions since long before the "millenials," what a weird "fuck you, got mine" take.

cyberax9• 3 years ago

endless unnecessary fake flourishes

So... Like pretty much all art?

paconbork2• 3 years ago

With you until the last sentence. The high prices for small condos in urban centers are an indication that there are fewer of them in supply relative to what the market demands. There's nothing wrong with letting urban centers densify and serve as a containment zone for childless 20-somethings (in fact, this would mean more affordable single family homes for those that need them). And who knows, if there's enough dense urban housing to meet demand, then those residents could have an easier saving up money themselves, with which to later purchase some more space in which to raise a family

robocat4• 3 years ago

The high prices for small condos in urban centers are an indication that there are fewer of them in supply relative to what the market demands.

Be careful trying to apply ECON101 micro principles when looking at property markets: property markets are neither efficient, nor rational.

those residents could have an easier saving up money themselves

In desirable property markets, people bid against each other as much as they can afford to pay for a mortgage - so your cause and effect is wrong - most people don’t get to save. Same analyses if renting, because landlords and renters do much the same behaviour. You get to save if (a) you are an undesirable market or time, or (b) your wages are enough to beat the majority, or (c) you stay in a lower status home compared to your peers.

cyberax9• 3 years ago

The high prices for small condos in urban centers are an indication that there are fewer of them in supply relative to what the market demands.

Here's a simple fact. Densification never leads to lower prices. As you build more housing, it _always_ becomes more expensive faster than you can build it.

I analyzed the database of all real estate sales in the US for the last 25 years, and I have not found a single example where densification led to price drops. Other scholarly literature found similar results, at most you can expect single-digit percentage drops on rents from new construction.

There's nothing wrong with letting urban centers densify

Yes, there is. Densification forces jobs to migrate to urban centers, because companies in dense cores have a competitive advantage in the access to a larger pool of talent.

So your choices are:

1. Densify to hell and then in a couple of generations your children will live in apartments where you can shit into your toilet, while cooking food at the same time. See: microapartments in Tokyo.

2. Limit density and promote suburban lifestyle.

That's it. It's not a false dilemma, there are really no in-between choices that are stable long-term.

akomtu• 3 years ago

Urbanism is unnatural, i.e. it's an anti-nature lifestyle. Rather than squashing people into concrete hives, the gov should be promoting small minimum-footprint houses on large lots. Brutalistic master-trucks as personal commute vehicles should go away for the same reason.

crooked-v7• 3 years ago

Everything modern humans do is "unnatural", but I'd sure prefer most of it over being a hunter-gatherer with hookworms.

_v7gu• 3 years ago

That is a lot of words to just say “cope+seethe”. Are macMansion suburbs even sustainable (i.e can cover infrastructure cost via taxes)? Do children who have no freedom and have to be driven everywhere turn out to be better adults? How does this additional work affect women and their place in the work force? Low density suburbs have quite a lot to prove in order to justify their existence.

nemo44x4• 3 years ago

Meh, people were saying this in the late 19th century as power tools made intricate carving and woodwork available to wealthy people and nit just the ultra wealthy. The types of homes they built were thought to be gauche and without pure style by those ultra wealthy and the usual critiques of “new money” (success envy by failures) being uncultured rang through.

But a funny thing happened - those homes are now praised and lauded over by people like the “McMansion Rheee” lady.

I agree a large home made of cheap materials with no landscaping and in a shit location is pretentious. But most people on Earth would trade their homes for one. I don’t want one but I get why people would rather have a huge house and a big car than a small apartment and public transit - it’s a better way to live for many people.

Xorakios2• 3 years ago

speaking from direct experience coming from a family that builds homes in suburban southern california, it's sorta self-reinforcing and circular people expect familiar floorplans,

planning departments approve them faster if the same elements are repeated,

HVAC, plumbing and fire mitigation regulations generally require a hub and spoke architecture

appraisers (and more importantly bank loan approvals) are based primarily on square feet, not quality (and also bathrooms)

so we add a bonus room that is likely never to be used, to bump up valuation to spend on better plumbing (developers are liable for 20 years of defects on new homes). we also build a minimum of 4 car garages, usually 6, because it's a cheap way to add square footage without added plumbing and mainly going to be used for storage anyway...

Bad Manors: The McMansion as Harbinger

Related Stories