Category Archives: McMansions

When the South’s top-ranked community for quality of life is full of McMansions

Posted on by

I think there is some annoyance in this article that On Numbers named West University Place that top suburb in the South for quality of life. How do I know? The reference to McMansions is a hint…

What makes a suburb an awesome suburb? If you said McMansions, refreshing homogeneity and a proximity to a Chili’s restaurant, then have we got a suburb for you.

Houston’s ritziest city-within-a-city, West University Place, was named the ‘burb with the best quality of life in the South by On Numbers.

On Numbers, a Business Journals publication, looked at more than 1,100 cities, towns, villages, municipalities and otherwise census-designated places with populations greater than 10,000 from Maryland to Texas, and graded them on 20 criteria, including household income, poverty rate, length of commute, percentage of professional workers, the percentage of homes that were built after 1990, and the rate of adults that have advanced degrees.

I don’t know if West University Place has a lot of McMansions but this comment seems fairly pointed. The McMansions are tied to bland suburbia, full of homogeneity (race? social class? attitudes and beliefs?) and chain restaurants.

For the record, On Numbers argues that they chose this community because of its high education levels:

Many streets in the Houston suburb are named after colleges, authors or poets. Rice University is located nearby. And 85 percent of West University Place’s adults hold bachelor’s degrees, the highest percentage in any Southern community.

This strong educational background is a key reason why West University Place ranks No. 1 in On Numbers’ quality-of-life standings for the Southern United States.

This is a wealthy community – a median household income of just over $180k and a median house value of over $660k – so it makes sense that it has a high quality-of-life.

The negative comment does raise some questions about quality-of-life measures. Should it include something like community atmosphere or history? Should a community be knocked down the list if it full of mass culture? Can you pick up on something like this from 20 statistics? Without a visit to the community, it would be hard. Additionally, the ratings privilege a more recent housing stock (homes built since 1990) and big houses (percent with 9+ rooms). New does not necessarily equal quality.

In order to put rankings like these together, you have to have a certain idea about what Americans want in their communities.

Keep McMansions out by adding cemeteries

Posted on by

I have not heard of this strategy before: zone for cemeteries in order to limit the spread of McMansions.

Looking toward a time when cemetery space is likely to be in short supply, the Diocese of Trenton is seeking approval to eventually turn acres of farmland in the Crosswicks section of the township into a final resting place for local Catholics…

In Hamilton, the situation is not as dire as in North Jersey, where, Dressel said, high-rise mausoleums have been suggested as a solution for overcrowding…

Councilman Dave Kenny said a cemetery is preferable to other types of development. And since the land is already owned by the tax-exempt diocese, it’s not as if the township can wring more tax money out of it.

“It protects the hamlet to have cemeteries there to prevent it from more intense development, like McMansions, that would certainly be out of character there,” Kenny said.

Historic districts in order to keep McMansions away? A common strategy. Cemeteries? Interesting. I wonder if there are every NIMBY concerns about cemeteries. And if the diocese could have sold the land to developers who might then build McMansions, why can’t the land be sold and developed in such a way that local governments could get new tax revenues?

The suggestion in this article is that some municipalities don’t plan ahead enough so that there is adequate cemetery space when growth occurs. How often do local zoning boards consider proposals for cemeteries? Is it primarily the responsibility of dioceses or religious organizations to bring proposals forward?

This reminds me that Simcity made little provision for cemeteries (it may only have been a reward in Simcity 4). There has to be some place for people to be buried…

A bear asks for an apology for McMansions

Posted on by

A New Jersey bear explains his point of view which includes asking for an apology about the McMansions that have been built:

You see, there are an awful lot of us these days – thousands when their used to be a handful. Twenty years ago I was something special, a character out of a storybook. I was mean or cuddly, depending on your personality. Today I am a nuisance, and I completely understand this. There’s not a whole lot of room anymore, thanks to our large and growing population combined with your government’s collusion with developers over the past few decades. As I write this they are taking down more land near me for what you folks call “affordable housing,” but of course it’s just a front for a massive shopping complex. You folks are pretty gullible, if you don’t mind me saying.

Occasionally, we get the urban sophisticate coming our way and he/she treats me like the old days. They look at me with wonder and awe, and I’m guessing it’s because they don’t have much wildlife around the outskirts of Trenton, Newark, or Hoboken. Usually the people are on their way to the Mount Airy Lodge or some other oasis and I give them what they want – an authentic outdoor experience (even if that experience is realized along a highway). Anyway, those same city dwellers are trying to protect me now and I appreciate it. I do. I don’t want to be hunted just as the woodchuck doesn’t want to fall under my claws. But it’s not reality. We are a safety hazard to you (and you to us), and while it’s not our fault, there are too many of us and too many of you. Someone has to be minimized. Both of us can’t pull up fake wicker chairs on a back deck and debate the healthcare bill. It is the natural order of things. A cat is territorial and will fight off any other cat that invades that space (and kill any mouse), so too are humans. I am only thankful that you are sensitive enough to minimize and not eradicate.

So there it is. I am sorry for the destruction around town and the occasional fright.   I am sorry for the debate we spawn between rural residents that have to deal with us on a constant basis and city residents that don’t. And I hope one day you apologize to us for taking so much of the woodland for your McMansions and strip malls. It made things difficult, to say the least.

I assume there is a (good?) reason for this piece. Regardless, it illustrates the sprawl argument that is often made about McMansions. Even more so than the particular features of McMansion homes, McMansion neighborhoods, or people who buy McMansions, a number of people consider McMansions to be the primary exemplar of suburban sprawl that brings highways, strip malls, and single-family homes. This doesn’t just ruin the landscape for humans but has other ecological consequences including flooding issues, a loss of open space, and a negative effect on animal habitats.

And perhaps sometimes you just need to hear it from a bear.

Connecting Arrested Development’s George Bluth and McMansions

Posted on by

Amidst news that the television show Arrested Development will return via Netflix, I saw recently a connection between the patriarch of the show, George Bluth, and McMansions in an opinion piece dealing with a New York Times op-ed on sprawl from earlier in the week:

Rarely is a discouraging word ever spoken against government spending millions to widen roads, install sewerage mains, and build schools so George Bluth Bill Pulte can build yet another exurban mcmansion development.

The reference to Bill Pulte refers to Pulte Homes, self-described as “one of the nation’s largest homebuilders.” (From personal experience, I can safely say Pulte did not build only McMansions.) This is not the first time I’ve seen this connection. Indeed, a quick Google search of “George Bluth” AND McMansion turns up 708 results. One poster in a discussion of McMansions at DemocraticUnderground.com even went so far as to ask ” WWGBD? What would George Bluth do?” Probably not the best question to guide one’s life.  An Entertainment Weekly review after the pilot emphasized McMansions as part of the setting for the show:

Shot in digital video and freed from the enhanced indulgence of a studio audience, the show romps in McMansionland and finds plenty to laugh at: grad students practicing Native American drum rituals, maids on public transportation carting racks full of furs for storage, and housing developments with names like Sudden Valley.

I don’t know if this is an authoritative site including all AD scripts but this search for “McMansions” turns up no matches. And having seen all of the episodes, I do remember the show poking fun at these neighborhoods (giant homes built in what looked like partially completed neighborhoods in a desert) but can’t recall the main characters really ruing the fact that the family business involved building McMansions. While the irony was surely intended to draw attention to the absurdity of such homes, are they ever specifically denounced on the show?

This isn’t the only television show connected to McMansions. The Sopranos also invited comparisons as they lived in a well-appointed New Jersey home and certain reality shows, like The Bachelor/Bachelorette have prompted critics to say the contestants live in McMansions.

Fighting over McMansions in Mission Hills

Posted on by

In the wealth Kansas City suburb of Mission Hills (named earlier this year one of “America’s Most Affluent Neighborhoods“), residents have been fighting over whether McMansions should be allowed:

“There’s a group that wants to build whatever the hell they want,” says lawyer Ann Alexander, a Mission Hills resident who in 2009 sued a neighbor over lot setbacks, “and there’s a group that wants renovation and vibrancy, but who want to do that in the context of the community.”

Think of it as the property-rights set versus the Mission Hills traditionalists…

But what is Mission Hills? After failing to define that with regulations and zoning laws, the city last spring hired a Los Angeles planning consultant named David Sargent to define it.

The hope is that Sargent could help end the squabbling by coming up with a set of design guidelines that would allow for housing upgrades — both teardowns and add-ons — but preserve, as he puts it, “the pastoral, garden character of the community.”

Sargent’s first draft came out this month, and now some are waiting to see whether the recommendations, when they’re in final form next year, will bring peace and understanding in the extraordinary city.

Sounds like a typical standoff: residents who want to protect the historical character of the community versus those who want to live in a well-known location but in a new big house with all the modern amenities.

This planning consultant has his work cut out for him. However, many other communities have adopted guidelines or planbooks that at least offer some guidance to what new houses might look like. Without declaring neighborhoods historic districts (which are often the strictest option – see an example here), guidelines can help opponents and proponents of teardowns work with a common set of expectations as they try to decide what their neighborhood should look like in the future.

Thinking further about this, I wonder if anyone has done research on what suburban residents expect their neighborhood to be like in the future. I don’t think I’d be alone in expecting that many residents would want the neighborhood to stay about the same as when they moved in. I recently heard someone cite Mark Twain saying, “Everyone likes progress, but no one likes change.” Are things that could be changed in a neighborhood that a majority of residents would see as positive?

Buried McMansions as art in New York City

Posted on by

A new art installation in New York City buries McMansions:

McMansions are being buried in Midtown! (People never really like Suburbia anyway.) The Art Production Fund and artist David Brooks are currently installing “Desert Rooftops” at The Last Lot project space, on 46th Street and 8th Avenue. The 5,000-square-foot sculpture is meant to recall suburban developments, and it’s further explained by APF:

“The piece examines issues of the natural and built landscape by comparing the monoculture that arises from unchecked suburban and urban sprawl with that of an over-cultivated landscape—creating a work that is “picturesque, familiar and simultaneously foreboding.” Brooks’ sculptural approach gives a nod to Robert Smithson’s earthworks and Gordon Matta-Clark’s building cuts while offering a much needed sense of humor to help digest today’s somber environmental issues. As housing communities devour more and more land and resources each year the outcome is equivalent to the very process of desertification.”We were just sent this latest shot of the project going up, and you can expect the installation to be finished up sometime today; after that, it will be on view through February 5th. Photos of the entire construction process can be seen here.

While the pictures are quite interesting, here are some more details about the project:

Desert Rooftops is a 5,000-square-foot sculpture that is an undulating configuration of multiple asphalt-shingled rooftops similar to those on suburban developments, McMansions and strip malls conjoined to resemble a rolling, dune-like landscape.

This sounds like much of the commentary about McMansions and puts it into literal form: bury the McMansions! I don’t know how humorous it looks but it is a pretty interesting juxtaposition with the New York City streetscape. Also, is the title, “Desert Rooftops,” a reference to particular locations for McMansions (like Las Vegas or Phoenix) or a shot at the cultural desert McMansions contribute to? Could the display also work with the title “New Jersey rooftops”?

Note: I’ve tracked several instances of McMansion art in this blog space. See examples here, here, and here from earlier this year.

An argument for historic districts: repel McMansions!

Posted on by

A common argument for historic districts is that they limit the destruction of older homes and the construction of McMansions. Here is an example of this argument in Fort Lauderdale:

However, if communities wait around for that history to age, new development might wipe it out before it has a chance to be saved.

That fear has residents of Fort Lauderdale’s Colee Hammock neighborhood thinking about seeking historic district designation for their community.

“We’re constantly inundated with development issues, people wanting to come in and build too much, too high, too big,” said Jackie Scott, president of Colee Hammock’s neighborhood association. “It gets to a point where you’re sick and tired of always having to come out and fight for your neighborhood. It’s not an enjoyable way to live.”…

“We have some beautiful homes that have been built and are new construction. They fit perfectly with the neighborhood,” Scott said. [A historic district] prevents people that want to come into an area like this to start ripping things down and creating McMansions.”

While McMansions are often tied to sprawl and new subdivisions, teardowns are also a common scene for debates over the merits of McMansions. In this particular example, a McMansion is contrasted with new homes that “fit perfectly with the neighborhood.” Many American communities have created some guidelines so that teardowns can’t be anything a homeowner might desire but there is a spectrum between more permissive and less permissive communities. The advantage of declaring a historic district is that the community has more control over what can be demolished and built within the district. At the same time, some consider historic districts to be quite restrictive.

I would be interested to hear what resources those pushing for the historic district have utilized from outside groups. For example, the National Trust for Historic Preservation even has a page titled “Teardowns and McMansions.” Here is the lead paragraph:

Across the nation a teardown epidemic is wiping out historic neighborhoods one house at a time. As older homes are demolished and replaced with dramatically larger, out-of-scale new structures, the historic character of the existing neighborhood is changed forever. Neighborhood livability is diminished as trees are removed, backyards are eliminated, and sunlight is blocked by towering new structures built up to the property lines. Community economic and social diversity is reduced as new mansions replace affordable homes. House by house, neighborhoods are losing a part of their historic fabric and much of their character.

With such resources available, I wonder if local groups are now more effective in adopting historic districts.

“Big-Box Houses” the successors to McMansions?

Posted on by

Builder has an article about a new kind of home: “big-box houses.”

Even as average new-home sizes have fallen slightly across the country, builders in some markets are finding a profitable and underserved niche of buyers who need or want a house as big as a mansion with the price tag of a cottage. While some buyers are in true need of the space, others, awed by the per-square-foot value of so much elbow room that cheap land and efficient box-like floor plans make possible, can’t resist the buy…

Lennar, for example, recently rolled out its 4,054-square-foot Himalayan model in the Tampa, Fla., market for $270,990. D.R. Horton has The Surrey, a 4,600-square-foot home in Lakeland, Fla., starting at $223,990. M/I Homes is selling the 5,249-square-foot Gran Vista in Orlando starting at $336,460. And KB Home has a 5,211-square-foot model it is selling in Austin, Texas, for $422,950…

Another housing executive says the big-box home trend was born as a way to compete with resales because it is rare to find large homes among resales and foreclosures, making their plus-size a product differentiator. Also, the larger homes can often pass muster with appraisers more easily, because the bigger the house, the smaller the square-foot price, and the higher-priced portions of the home, kitchens and bathrooms, are amortized over a larger number of square feet. The lower price per square foot helps the homes compete with the lower per-square-foot cost of distressed home sales.

Still, the formula of building such homes at a profit is tricky. It requires that land in the right neighborhoods be bought at fire-sale prices and that the home itself be value-engineered for cost efficiencies as well. The box on top of a box model is a less expensive way to build than a single-level house or one with more complicated shapes and roof pitches.

Quick summary: there is still a part of the housing market for big, cheap homes, particularly among those with larger families.

My question would be how these homes differ from McMansions. It seems to be that the big-box homes are budget big homes with no frills. McMansions came to be known for their luxuriousness, whether this was reflected in the large windows in the front, the stone mailbox or wrought iron fence, the stainless steel appliances and granite countertops, or the voluminous great room. These big-box homes are big because their owners want to use all the space, not because they want to impress people. I wonder what this means for the quality of the construction: McMansions were often regarded as being shoddy and the builders quoted in this story admit that these homes have thin profit margins.

Also: the name is intriguing. McMansion came to be a generally negative term. “Big box” is usually used derisively to refer to retailers like Walmart or Home Depot who have huge stores and low prices. Additionally, there are a lot of connotations about big parking lots, environmental concerns, and sprawl. If I were a builder, I wouldn’t want my homes to be known by this term. If this term sticks, will these homes become reviled in the same way as McMansions?

Nice guy political leaders don’t live in McMansions?

Posted on by

As a New Zealand journalist paints a nice guy image of the leader of the opposition party, there is an interesting bit about the leader’s home:

The Goffs’ home is spacious and comfortable – it’s not a McMansion, those sorts of architect-designed, three-level monuments to money that have sprung up in the more fashionable rural suburbs of Auckland, although there is a small kidney-shaped swimming pool. You can tell a family has been raised here and that the family will always be welcome home.

This description contains some of the common complaints about McMansions: they are excessive homes built by social strivers in the suburbs. At the same time, there is a contrast to typical complaints: these are designed by architects? Also, are McMansions not capable of being welcoming places or having the traits that show kids were raised there?

But one does have to wonder whether this particular home might just be labeled a McMansion if the leader wasn’t such a nice guy or the journalist didn’t have a positive experience. By saying his home is not a McMansion, the journalist is painting a down-to-earth, positive image.

College students rent cheap but luxurious McMansions

Posted on by

Here is another use for McMansions (and much better than one California option from last week): rent them to college students.

While students at other colleges cram into shoebox-size dorm rooms, Ms. Alarab, a management major, and Ms. Foster, who is studying applied math, come home from midterms to chill out under the stars in a curvaceous swimming pool and an adjoining Jacuzzi behind the rapidly depreciating McMansion that they have rented for a song.

Here in Merced, a city in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley and one of the country’s hardest hit by home foreclosures, the downturn in the real estate market has presented an unusual housing opportunity for thousands of college students. Facing a shortage of dorm space, they are moving into hundreds of luxurious homes in overbuilt planned communities.

Forget the off-to-college checklist of yesteryear (bedside lamp, laundry bag, under-the-bed storage trays). This is “Animal House” 2011.

Double-height Great Room? Check.

Five bedrooms? Check.

Chandeliers? Check.

Then there are the three-car garages, wall-to-wall carpeting, whirlpool baths, granite kitchen countertops, walk-in closets and inviting gas fireplaces.

This article provides an overview of an interesting situation but asking a few more questions would reveal a lot more:

1. If students live in such nice homes during college, what does this do to their expectations when they return home or after they graduate? If you are used to living in a nice McMansion, how do you move up after that?

2. In what condition do these students leave these McMansions?

3. The story paints these students as helping desperate homeowners. At the same time, homeowners in nice suburban subdivisions may not always look favorably at college students who can tend to be loud and unruly. Are all the town and gown relationships here all good as the story suggests?

4. Might some of these students stick around in these neighborhoods after college? If so, how would this change the neighborhoods?

To sum up, is this a long-term solution or a temporary solution to issues in one of the foreclosure capitals of the United States?