Tag Archives: consumption

McMansions are symbols of “the excess of greed”

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An interesting way the term McMansion is sometimes used is to see such houses as symbols for some larger issue in our culture. This usage is illustrated in a documentary to be shown next week in Vancouver:

Vancouver’s treasury of modern architecture is the subject of Coast Modern, by Michael Bernard and Gavin Froome (May 8, 7 p.m., Vancity Theatre).

“Coast Modern is an exceptionally beautiful film,” says Woodend. “I have a bit of a yen for modernist architecture, just because it’s so exquisite, and it’s one of those films [that takes] house porn on a whole new level.

“Although, to give it credit, it looks at architecture as a manifestation of social values. [It has] Douglas Coupland weighing in on McMansions, and how they’re sort of this travesty, not just in architectural terms, but as an embodiment of cultural and social values, the excess of greed that has come out of the last 10 years and shown up in brick and mortar.

“In that regard it’s pretty thoughtful, it really uses architecture as a means to talk about culture.”

From this point of view, houses are not just things to be purchased by individual buyers. Rather, homes and their architecture represent broader trends in society. McMansions can then be viewed as symbols of excess, products of an era where people consumed more than they needed with impunity. Presumably smaller homes indicate (whether they are tiny or “not-so-big“) fighting back against this culture of excess.

Of course, labeling a home as a McMansion then does the job of pointing out the excess. If you live in such a home that acquires this label, do you try to respond that the home really isn’t that excessive? Or perhaps that it is green enough (perhaps a tactic of celebrities)?

Two common uses of the word McMansion: to describe teardowns, tied to larger issues of consumption

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Earlier this week, I ran across two articles from two major newspapers that illustrate two of the definitions of McMansions.

1. The term McMansion can often refer to teardowns. In the Chicago Tribune, an interesting overview of teardowns in several North Shore communities in the Chicago suburbs uses the term this way:

Critics often pair “tear-down” with the pejorative term “McMansion,” coined more than 15 years ago to describe quickly built, super-sized structures that replace more modest homes. Some neighbors complain that once a home is torn down, there is seldom an effort to blend its replacement with the surroundings…

But now tear-downs seem to be rebounding. Last year, the village [of Winnetka] issued 28 demolition permits. Through March of this year, the village received 10 applications for permits, according to Ann Klaassen, a village planning assistant…

The factors behind the new upswing have changed from a decade ago, when developers and speculators were driven by easy profits. Tear-downs now seem to be the result of the foreclosures that left homes deteriorating.

Whatever the cause, Follett says tear-downs threaten the North Shore’s historic housing stock.

But builders call it a positive sign of an economy finally getting back on its feet, and argue that many buyers just prefer new homes over renovation jobs.

The key here is that teardown = McMansion plus the term McMansion is used as an effective piece of negative rhetoric. This is quite a different idea than a McMansion being built on a cul-de-sac in an exurb. These North Shore communities have a long history and an aging housing stock. The battle over teardowns is taking place in many communities across the United States and one tool at the disposal of preservationists and those who wish to avoid this architecturally incongruent new homes is to label them McMansions.

2. In contrast, an op-ed column in the New York Times about obesity and eating habits in the United States ties McMansions to other objects of excessive consumption:

I lived in Western Europe—in Rome—for two years. And I happen to be in Western Europe—in Lisbon—as I write. And in this part of this continent there’s a different attitude and set of signals about the appropriate amount of food a person should eat than there are in America.

In restaurants and at dinner parties here, portions are much, much smaller. And, seeing them, no one cries foul about insufficient value or inadequate hospitality. We Americans somehow imprinted our nation’s historical and famous “bigger-is-better” mentality onto the way we eat. Our Costco purchases and our supersized meals mirror our S.U.V.s and McMansions: they’re assertions of wealth and expressions of comfort through sheer size.

This matters. Because if, indeed, our evolutionary nature is to grab and gorge on food when it’s there, then we’re best served in the current era of abundance by cultural cues that try to condition us in the opposite direction.

This is a common argument: American culture promotes the idea “bigger is better” and this applies even to our food. But particularly interesting to me is the link between McMansions, Costco, supersized fast food meals, and SUVs. When this argument is made, these objects often are placed together, perhaps to show how pervasive this American mentality is: it covers where we live, what we eat, what we drive, and where we shop. In other words, McMansions are an easy to spot symbol of a larger American issue of excessive consumption.

Overall, I would argue that these are just two of the meanings of the word McMansion. These two articles do illustrate the idea that when people use the term McMansion they don’t necessarily mean the same thing.

The “vibrant cottage industry in polemics against consumerism”

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In reviewing two new academics book on consumerism, Megan McArdle takes a look at the field of “polemics against consumerism”:

All this profligacy supports a rather vibrant cottage industry in polemics against consumerism. Authors as varied as the economist Robert H. Frank (1999’s “Luxury Fever”) and the political theorist Benjamin R. Barber (2007’s “Consumed”) have ganged up on what they see as the particularly unequal and excessive American spending habits. Unsurprisingly considering their abhorrence of waste, they are avid recyclers; the same arguments, behavioral economics studies and anecdotes appear time and time again. Access to credit makes consumers overspend. Materialistic people are anxious and unhappy. The conspicuous-consumption arms race is unwinnable. Down with status competition! Down with long work weeks, grueling commutes and McMansions! Up with family time, reading and walkable neighborhoods! The effect is rather like strolling down the main tourist strip in a beach town: Each merchant rushes out of his shop, gesticulating wildly and showing you exactly the same thing that you saw at all the previous stores…

Like their forebears in this robust polemical genre, neither Mr. Livingston nor Mr. Roberts gets us much closer to answering the essential questions: What makes American consumers spend as they do—and is it a bad thing? For some thoughts on these matters, I’d suggest turning to James B. Twitchell’s “Living It Up” (2002), a wry account of the author’s own complicated relationship with luxury brands that explores the moral and psychological aspects of our free-spending ways without seeming to be a paternalist rant against the folly of BMWs. “The pleasure of spending is the dirty little secret of affluence,” says Mr. Twitchell, a professor of English literature and advertising at the University of Florida. “The rich used to do it; now the rest of us are having a go.” He is keenly alive to the risks—and occasional risibility—of American-style consumerism. But he never pretends not to understand its undeniable appeal.

This could be a very interesting research project: what are the common arguments against consumerism, how many of these arguments are backed by data and social science theories (rather than just opinion), how do the authors position themselves within the debate (I assume generally they suggest they are above it), do these arguments have a sizable effect on readers, and do the books address structural issues and solutions or primarily peddle in individualistic concerns? Additionally, how often are these ideas tied to other ideas like environmentalism, New Urbanism, and other popular schools of thought?

This is also often a complaint within the Christian marketplace of ideas. And yet, have Christian consumption patterns changed or been reduced by these books/sermons/polemics? This reminds me of something one of my graduate school professors said: even the monks who took a vow of poverty couldn’t get rid of their books. (I don’t know the actual truth of this statement.)

Do any of these authors consider the irony that they are making money by selling books about reducing consumerism? Perhaps the book is supposed to be the last item purchased…

How much it costs to live in the cheaper suburbs or expensive New York City

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Opponents of sprawl argue that while many prospective buyers move further away from work in order to buy bigger yet cheaper homes, there is a cost. One website argues that the each mile closer to work is $15,900 that could be spent on a house:

We all know that driving to and from work every day is costly, but exactly howmuch of a toll does each mile of commuting take on your finances? This True Cost of Commuting graphic breaks it down.

Taking stats and calculations previously mentioned by Mr. Money Mustache, the infographic illustrates just how expensive commuting is. Each mile you live from work costs $795 in commuting expenses per year (assuming a driving cost of 34 cents per mile and factoring time lost with a salary of $25 per hour). $795 a year for just one mile! You could buy a house worth $15,900 more with that, as Mr. Money Mustache pointed out in his article, since $795 would cover the interest on a 5% mortgage rate.

If you don’t want to calculate in the time-is-money factor, each mile (one way) of commuting will cost you $170 a year. It’s a compelling reason to move as close to work if you can (or bike to work or telecommute).

See the large infographic here. I don’t know about Mr. Money Mustache’s calculations but this is a sizable number.

At the same time, there were reports this week that the Occupy Wall Street protestors tend to live in pricier homes. As Megan McArdle notes, this is a consumption choice where people decide to spend more of their income on a home in a great city:

My initial reaction was the same as many people I’ve seen in comments sections: the protest is in New York, which is expensive.  This is hardly surprising.

But on second thought, I don’t think that’s quite right.  At least some of the houses identified by the Daily Caller are in places like Texas and Wisconsin.  But more importantly, I’m not sure we should “discount” these home values for location.  The fact is that living in an expensive city is a consumption choice.
You hear this argument all the time from people in New York.  “Rich?  Hah!  We’ve got four people in 1600 square feet, and our school bills are going to put us into bankruptcy.”  Many New Yorkers believe that they should be given some sort of income tax abatement because of the expense of living there (with the lost revenue being made up from “really rich” people, natch).  Slightly less affluent New Yorkers frequently believe that landlords should be forced to offer them “reasonably sized” apartments at a modest fraction of their income, because after all, otherwise they couldn’t afford to live in New York…
Living in a blue state is a choice.  If coming to New York meant that you had to put four people in a three bedroom apartment that’s uncomfortably far from a subway line, instead of buying a nice little condo in Omaha, this does not mean that you are not “really” better off than your counterpart in Omaha; it means that you have chosen to consume your extra wealth in the form of “living in New York” rather than in the form of spacious real estate, cheap groceries, and an easy commute.

So what people in the Midwestern suburbs might spend on a daily 20 mile each way commute in a SUV translates into a more expensive apartment in New York City.

Both stories cited above suggest consumption is a choice. But is it truly an unfettered choice? What would lead some people to aim for the bigger yet cheaper house in the suburbs and others to spend more money on a smaller place in a cosmopolitan paradise? Perhaps this information would help both sides engage in conversation rather than talk past each other and try to force the other side to follow their logic…

Of course, we could look at the broader trend of American political and cultural discourse on this subject. On the whole, government policies have promoted suburban living while a few big cities, such as New York City, have successful dense, mass-transit oriented living. Cultural discourse, even if it is shifting toward the younger generation’s increased interest in denser living, still privileges the suburban American Dream.

Even Gawker says “The McMansion is dead”

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Since Gawker is reporting it, does this really mean that the McMansion is dead?

This heartless recession has stolen from America our most treasured national totems. Huge SUVs? Too gas-guzzling. Sprawling suburbs far removed from the “diverse” cities? Reduced to slums. And now, the recession is coming for our very homes.

By “our,” I mean “people with too much money and too little taste.” The WSJ says that the humble McMansion—the rightful reward of all hardworking Americans willing to take on a $450,000 mortgage and a 75-minute commute in order to have a huge, useless foyer lined with the thinnest sheet of marble veneer—is no longer the popular thing to build, for builders who want to build homes that will actually sell. Shrines to conspicuous consumption are out! By necessity.

Goodbye, grand foyers! Adios, spiral staircases! Hello, newly poor American rationalizing their now meager living spaces like a bunch of formerly wealthy people wiped out by financial calamity—which they are!

Totem could be taken as referring to a religious object of devotion, a la Durkheim. If so, do Americans worship SUVs, McMansions, and suburbs? That would be interesting to discuss.

Granted, Gawker is quoting an interesting Wall Street Journal story that suggests the wealthy/big homes of the future that will include “drop zones,” space for an elevator, a “lifestyle center” (not to be confused with gussied-up outdoor malls masquerading as community centers known by the same name), steam showers (goodbye soaker tubs!), and outdoor living space.

A reminder: this is the same website that has this description leading off its stories about Jersey Shore (this is from earlier this year).

When watching Jersey Shore, the most important sociological experiment of our time, we’re looking for new and exciting behavior.

Me thinks there may be some hyperbole and/or mocking there. At least that is what I hope.

Assembling your own furniture benefits you through “the Ikea effect”

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Ikea may be able to have lower prices because consumers have to put together their own furniture but there could be another benefit as well for consumers: they will value their assembled purchased product more.

“When labor leads to love,” a paper in the Journal of Consumer Psychology experimentally tests “the Ikea effect” that leads to people valuing things that they assemble, customize or build themselves more highly than premade, finished goods. We’ve all heard the story of how cake-mixes didn’t sell until they were reformulated to require the “cook” to stir in a fresh egg, but most of what we know about this effect is marketing lore, not research. It’s fascinating stuff.

The abstract of the paper:

In four studies in which consumers assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, and built sets of Legos, we demonstrate and investigate boundary conditions for the IKEA effect—the increase in valuation of self-made products. Participants saw their amateurish creations as similar in value to experts’ creations, and expected others to share their opinions. We show that labor leads to love only when labor results in successful completion of tasks; when participants built and then destroyed their creations, or failed to complete them, the IKEA effect dissipated. Finally, we show that labor increases valuation for both “do-it-yourselfers” and novices.

I suspected there may not be much positive effect when the consumer can’t assemble their purchase.

While this is interesting in itself, it leads me to another question: were companies like Ikea and others aware of this effect and therefore required assembly for more items so that consumers would have more positive feelings for certain products?

Americans are coolest nationality according to Badoo.com poll

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A new poll from Badoo.com finds that Americans are the coolest nationality:

Social networking site Badoo.com asked 30,000 people across 15 countries to name the coolest nationality and also found that the Spanish were considered the coolest Europeans, Brazilians the coolest Latin Americans and Belgians the globe’s least cool nationality.

“We hear a lot in the media about anti-Americanism,” says Lloyd Price, Badoo’s Director of Marketing. “But we sometimes forget how many people across the world consider Americans seriously cool.”…

“America,” says Price, “boasts the world’s coolest leader, Obama; the coolest rappers, Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg; and the coolest man in technology, Steve Jobs of Apple, the man who even made geeks cool.”

Brazilians are ranked the second coolest nationality in the Badoo poll and the coolest Latin Americans, ahead of Mexicans and Argentinians. The Spanish, in third place, are the coolest Europeans.

At least one marketer is happy.

Two thoughts:

1. I would be very hesitant about accepting the results of this poll. If this is a web survey of social network site users, it is probably not very representative of people within these countries. Serious news organizations should report on the methodology and discuss the downsides (and advantages) of this approach when reporting this information. But, if it is an accurate take on social network site users, generally younger, plugged-in populations, perhaps this is exactly what American companies would want to hear.

2. America has military, political, and economic power but this hints at another, less-recognized dimension: cultural power and influence. For better or worse, American values, celebrities, products, and ideas have spread throughout the world. Even if our economic and political power goes into a relative decline, this cultural influence will live on for some time. (A bonus: a Badoo poll from earlier this summer also said Americans are the funniest nationality!)

3. Is being “cool” really something to aspire to as a nation? In an America dominated by celebrity, media, and consumption, it may be hard to know that this is not the primary objective.

(Some background on Badoo.com.)

Winner selected for new, greener Barbie house

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One columnist takes issue with the winning design selected for the new Barbie house that was intended to be a greener home:

What Li and Paklar imagined was a series of glass cubes stacked on top of each other with enough space underneath the beach mansion for a car or motorbike to park. Very chic, very elevated, very Le Corbusier. The interiors (pink, of course) look airy, clutter-free and, with 4,881 square feet of living space, lonely for a single person. There are bamboo floors and a roof garden with natural irrigation. But even those tiny eco-design gestures cannot offset the fact that Barbie gets to hog a massive house on three acres of pristine West Coast beach. Sorry, girlfriend!

America has been damned by the tyranny of the excessively large house. Check the explosion of square footage over the last half century of the private home, from the modest two-storey of Leave it to Beaver to the sprawling residential heaps featured on The O.C. Barbie once cavorted through her own shopping-mall playset. It was just something she had to have, like a purse.

The problem with the McMansion scenario? It’s unaffordable and unsustainable. But, like Barbie’s impossibly small waist, it’s a dream that everybody is conditioned to want…

Li and Paklar might have been tempted to design a compact, art-filled studio in the heart of Manhattan for Barbie. They might have edited her massive wardrobe down to a few edgy, well-designed outfits and given her a pair of workboots to wear on construction sites. If they had, my bet is they wouldn’t have won the design competition. In America, what suits Harvard-educated architects doesn’t really count. You have to think big, hungry thoughts to get ahead. Just like Barbie.

It sounds like this columnist thinks that McMansions can’t really be green.The fact that the home is large and has a large lot is simply too much to overcome.

Did anyone really think that Mattel would select something small, non-luxurious, or small? Perhaps the selection of this design suggests Americans want green and luxury to come together and don’t want to sacrifice much in order to be green. Therefore, acquiring smaller homes is driven more by economic trouble (people can’t access the actually homes they would want) or individualistic choices (wanting to declutter, simplify, improve, etc.) rather than the idea of sacrifice or helping the world.

The actual home design is more modern than I would have expected. How about a discussion about Barbie’s aesthetic tastes in homes?

“Hedonistic sustainability”

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Perhaps going green doesn’t require having to give up much if one subscribes to “hedonistic sustainability:”

Award-winning architect Bjarke Ingels of BIG seems to think so. He believes the way towards sustainability is not by inconveniencing people, but rather by re-engineering the structures of society to make them less wasteful.

From the Guardian:

I work with the idea of hedonistic sustainability, which is sustainability that improves the quality of life and human enjoyment. The fact that Copenhagen is so clean you can actually jump in the harbour [water] in the city centre is almost a miracle. The city is sustainable but doesn’t become synonymous with making lots of sacrifices.

–Bjarke Ingels

Ingels’ latest project is a giant waste-to-energy plant that doubles as a ski slope. The incinerator will be Copenhagen’s tallest building and will send a giant smoke ring into the sky every time a ton of CO2 is released, in order to remind the city’s residents of greenhouse gas emissions…

I agree that revamping infrastructure, city planning and government projects do more than market-based solutions like buying organic cola or putting solar panels on your McMansion. But the idea that we can carry on consuming and enjoying in the rich world without consequence – believing that scientists, engineers and architects will solve the Earth’s problems for us – seems a bit optimistic and kind of reminiscent of what got us in into our current eco-mess in the first place.

I’ve asked this question before: could McMansions be made “acceptable” if they were green? Making a trash incinerator into a ski slope sounds pretty good.

I’ll be curious to see if this term catches on and who wants to use it.

Can’t we build greener McMansions?

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This is a story that comes up from time to time: people who live in larger homes, sometimes called “McMansions,” should pay some sort of penalty as they consume more. Here is this very suggestion from an Australian academic:

People who want to build energy-guzzling McMansion-style homes should pay more taxes, an academic says.

And taxes should also be used to make owning multiple plasma TVs prohibitive, says Melbourne University construction expert Dr Robert Crawford.

Rapidly increasing suburban house sizes, more reliance on cars and a rise in demand for consumer goods had wiped out many of the benefits of building energy-efficient homes, he said yesterday…

“Indirectly through the price of materials and things like that, if you make it more expensive in some way to build larger houses then that might encourage people not to do it,” he told the Herald Sun.

Such a move would be similar to other incentives that governments offer regarding certain activities.

But I have wondered in recent years why there aren’t more builders who are trying to make these large homes greener. They could benefit from this as one of the big knocks on McMansions is that they are symbols of excessive consumption. So why not earn some points back by making them more environmentally-friendly? I assume there are things that could be done that might cost some money but could also fight back against this image. In the long run, it may just be “greenwashing” but building homes that most people consider “McMansions” because they contribute to environmental problems is a losing cause. Additionally, this might expand their markets to people who are looking for greener homes. What reasonable American homebuyer with money today wouldn’t want a larger AND greener home? And for critics of McMansions, what if they were quite green – is the larger issue the presumed unnecessarily large size or the home or suburban sprawl or something else?

Of course, we could also have a larger national conversation about greener standards for buildings. But we would know how this conversation might play out…