A new musical duo, Charles McMansion, has arrived with their first single. And it lives up to the typical critiques of McMansions: garish, poor construction, meant to impress but lacking in substance. If I had to guess, the group name is playing with “Charles Manson” but with a wealthy, big house flair. I couldn’t find any info on why they chose McMansion as part of their name but I did find info on how this relates to the reality TV show of one of the members…
Tag Archives: McMansions
McMansion tourism in Austin
One visitor to Austin, Texas wants help from Reddit in finding good examples of McMansions:
I’m visiting Austin and heard about these McMansions. It’d be really cool to drive around and see some of these beasts. Which neighborhoods or streets are worth seeing?
The other thread participants then offer some good feedback for a city that recently instituted guidelines intended to reduce the number of new McMansions. But, if your city is known for its big houses, why not take advantage of this? Most cities would love to bring in more tourists who then spend money and demonstrate that the city is worth visiting. According to critics, McMansion owners want these homes in part because they want to impress others with the square footage and attention-grabbing architecture. Match this desire for visitors with the attention McMansion owners want (at least according to critics) and you could include such homes as important sights to see.
Of course, some cities might not want to highlight McMansions that are criticized for a variety of reasons. I’m guess Austin wants to be known for creativity and tech, not the poor architecture of overlarge homes. Similarly, I imagine many McMansion owners would not be thrilled if tour buses started regularly driving slowly past their homes giving tours.
At this point, I could only imagine regular McMansion tours being given by those who don’t like McMansions.
Yes, Thoreau would have disliked McMansions
One writer describes how Thoreau helped her move on from her McMansion:
“The cost of a thing is the amount of what
I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it,
immediately or in the long run.”
Henry David Thoreau, WaldenThese words hit me hard at the age of 29. It was 2008, and depending on the hour, I was watching my marriage unravel, witnessing the collapse of the financial markets from the office of my first-year financial planning business, or determining whether I was even or underwater on a 2,500-square-foot McMansion. Collectively, my husband and I were $275,000 in debt…
One day I picked up the book and read it all the way through. I looked around my home and finally understood: I was drowning in debt, and my lifestyle was making me miserable. I exhausted hours every Sunday dusting, vacuuming, and mopping. I spent the majority of my time either working to pay for things like furniture or electronic gadgets or fearfully maintaining them by obsessively dusting and scrubbing. I could see my future, and it looked bleak…
Seven years have gone by since I left that lifestyle, and so much has changed. I now make about half the annual income I once did, teaching yoga, writing about health and wellness, and waitressing part time. I have good days and bad days, but I no longer feel controlled by debt. I take 12–16 weeks off each year and one winter spent four months on the Big Island of Hawaii, eating homemade dinners on the beach and listening to the trumpets of humpback whales. In moments like those, when the magic and wonder of the world offer themselves so vividly, I experience so much gratitude for simply being alive.
It is interesting to note that the anti-consumption narrative of today – avoid the McMansions and big debt, simplify your life, pay more attention to things you love – is not exactly new. It could appeal to more people today after the spread of consumerism throughout much of American society with the prosperity of the 20th century. McMansions make easy targets since they require a large financial outlay (not only is it costly but it requires payments for a significant portion of adult life), require maintenance (whether because of cleaning, repairs, or making use of all that space), and critics argue they are meant to impress other people.
In the end, I wonder if Thoreau would find such efforts as described above enough to truly get away from modern life. Are vast resources now required to get away from it all?
Offset House on display in Chicago peels layers of balloon frame homes
The droll Offset House by Otherothers in Sydney addresses lot-hogging McMansions by tucking smaller homes into the flabby frames of McMansions that have been stripped to the studs to serve as balconies and porches.
And a further description from the American Institute of Architects:
One of the most striking examples here is the Offset House from the Australian firm otherothers, which tears away the derivative façades of typical suburban housing to reveal simple stick-framed structural grace. The balloon frame was developed in Chicago, and otherothers uses it to create semi-public open-air verandas.
This is the best image I could find with some further description:
Using the Sydney suburb of Kellyville as its prototype, Otherothers suggests the adaptive reuse of timber-framed suburban homes by stripping off the outer cladding (often brick), exposing the outer frame, and creating a verandah in the space between the outer and interior frames. They claim there is beauty to be found in the exposed frames. They also propose that since the verandah would now define the home’s outer border, fences would no longer be necessary and spaces between houses could become shared common areas for gardening and communing.
The design seems to shrink the interior square footage (a waste to many McMansions critics) as well as alter the private nature of single-family homes (another critique of McMansions and suburban homes). The design also seems similar to some of the buildings in the post-World War II era that flaunted their essential infrastructure rather than cover it up. The retrofitted home still takes up the same footprint and the exterior balloon frame still requires maintenance. Yet, some of the critiqued aspects of the McMansion are softened and social life might improve. I’d be interested to see this in action across a whole neighborhood…
Are McMansions bad for children?
I recently read how one family wanted to help their kids avoid McMansions:
No McMansions: Andrew Porter said that his family was drawn to Maywood by the idea of raising his two preschool-age daughters in a community full of homes that felt plucked from a bygone era.
“The historical designation really helps preserve the character of the neighborhood,” said Porter, a lawyer in his mid-30s who lives on 23rd Road. “You don’t have to deal with people tearing down the original structures and replacing them with huge McMansions on tiny lots.”
So here is one argument for how McMansions could be bad for kids: they get to experience older homes in a historic neighborhood. What might be other reasons?
- McMansions encourage consumption. They are big houses with room for lots of stuff.
- McMansions teach bad things about proper architecture and design.
- McMansions are often constructed in suburban neighborhoods where kids become dependent on cars, limiting their opportunities to explore, and have limited interactions with neighbors.
- McMansions are poorly constructed (not built to last, cheaper materials) and this could hurt kids in the long run.
- Fires work differently in McMansions.
- If the oft-criticized teardown McMansion is located on a small lot, there is little room for kids to play.
I imagine some McMansion critics could add to this list. Of course, the owners of such homes might argue McMansion could also be positive for kids – how many parents would move into a home that could hurt their children? I’m actually a little surprised neither side makes this case more strongly; claiming that their actions are best for their children or future generations is a common tactic of opinionated people in the United States.
American homes grow in size yet lots shrink
Zillow finds that American homes continue to grow larger even as their lots shrink:
Nationally, the median size of a new house is now 2,600 feet, a full 500 square feet (or almost 25 percent) more than it was just 15 years ago.
Yet the median lot size is now 8,600 square feet, down 1,000 square feet (or about 10 percent) over the same period:
Zillow continues to find interesting patterns in real estate data. So what could be behind this trend? Both the land and the home (materials, labor) cost developers and builders money. Thus, smaller lots with bigger houses can reduce land costs even as the home price might stay similar or increase because the home is growing. Or, perhaps this is also the result of land regulations from municipalities. Small lots could be preferred by some places because subdivisions and residential properties then take up less space.
One of the common complaints about McMansions is that the big house are on small lots. Yet, this may be necessary for some housing in order to (1) make housing more affordable (lower the costs for land) and (2) to limit damage to the environment (use less land and open land for more green space or open space).
Successful people want to own tiny cabins
The oversized house may be less appealing to the wealthy compared to owning a small cabin:
McMansions used to be one supersize symbol of the American dream, but these days many of our country’s most celebrated businesspeople see success more diminutively: in the form of a cabin. Preferably one on the smaller side, made of recycled wood, as technology-free as possible. Ironically, many of the cabin’s great champions are tech giants.
One such champion is Zach Klein, co-founder of Vimeo, whose Cabin Porn Tumblr blog garnered enough followers to warrant a book of the same name, one The New York Times has been musing over.
“The cabin and the shack are ideal launchpads for remarkable lives but lately they’ve become homes to aspire to—particularly for overburdened types whose acquisitive binging has made them want to purge,” the Times noted.
Think of these simple spaces as an architectural panacea. “Driven mad by status anxiety? Addled by technology? Bankrupted by consumerism? Then shrink your footprint. Go minimalist. Get free,” the Times said.
Sounds like trading one status symbol for another: moving from the image of wealth and grandiosity with the large McMansion to an interest in getting away from it all. Of course, the small cabin is simply another luxury for the wealthy who can escape to it when they please and then return to their other expensive housing. Instead of spending money to show that one can afford the wasteful use (conspicuous consumption), now it is more desirable to forgo the luxuries of a house for a short time to show that one can. And we could ask: what kind of world do we live in where people have to regularly spend large amounts of money to escape from their everyday lives?
Another downside: McMansions threaten trees
McMansion critics may have another argument at their disposal: constructing McMansions may often require removing trees.
About 2,000 street trees, or trees near Los Angeles roadways, are removed annually, according to Los Angeles City Hall leaders.
The trees are removed in some cases because of disease or death, but in other instances, they’re taken down because of the construction of so-called McMansions.
Concerned about the loss of trees at the hands of developers, a City Council committee called for a report back on new policies for the removal of street trees…
With some tear-downs, a “double driveway is needed where one used to be sufficient,” she said, resulting in the loss of a tree.
This doesn’t seem like that many trees, particularly since there could be multiple reasons behind the removal of street trees. Yet, losing trees could be another blow dealt by teardown McMansions to neighbors: not only will the new home fill up the lot and look out of place with nearby homes, it will require losing some of the greenery that residents tend to like. This is probably less about nature and more about appearances and quality of life where mature trees on residential properties lend gravitas and pleasant barriers between the street and sidewalks, lawns, and homes.
If the problem is the larger driveways for the new large homes, it would be interesting to see how Los Angeles regulates their width. Is there a ratio or size that could be invoked to fit all kinds of situations?
How about this crazy idea: builders of McMansions, teardowns or otherwise, should spend a little bit more money and cover their properties with decent-sized trees. Neighbors and others may still not like the house but who can argue with a number of new trees?
The “Reincarnated McMansion Project” taking on big issues
The Reincarnated McMansion Project of an Australian artist keeps developing:
His plan is simple enough: buy one giant, carbon-hungry McMansion on more than 800 square metres of land and carefully demolish the brick veneer home to rebuild four sustainable, affordable and architecturally designed townhouses for $450,000 each – less than half Sydney’s $1 million median house price…
Gallois’ dream is to create a company or strata-titled commune where like-minded “model citizens” embrace sustainable living rather than climbing the profit-centric property ladder…
The community-funded project has attracted sponsors and some of Australia’s best environmental architects – including Tone Wheeler, who designed the eco house on reality TV show Big Brother – which is why the price tag is so reasonable.
“We have raised half the money and we want one or two more families with like-minded values to register their interest,” Gallois said.
The price tag could be even cheaper if there was a family currently living in a McMansion who wanted to join the project and downsize into one of the eco-townhouses, which feature greywater treatment, a shared laundry and “features that save space and are good for the environment”.
Gallois is taking aim at several issues at once: the growing size of Australian homes, limiting the carbon footprint and energy use for single-family units, avoiding the “profit-centric property ladder,” and finding alternative funding to make this possible. It will likely take some time to do all of this; the third and fourth ones seem more difficult to me while the first two are already prompting a number of people in the United States and Australia to consider other options. The market for smaller homes may be growing as people consume differently and both retiring residents and younger people want some smaller options. Being more energy-efficient is more attractive with rising energy bills and it isn’t too hard to do some simple things in newer homes that could have positive long-term consequences. But, how do you get buyers to see their homes differently such as moving away from “the most bang for your buck” and having lots of extra space for things that owners might need? Or to find large enough funding sources to do this on a bigger scale when it may be more profitable to develop, build, and sell McMansions?
See an earlier June 2015 post on the project here.
All whites fleeing minorities bought McMansions?
In an article about the reconcentration of poverty, the journalist includes this description of how white residents responded to more minorities moving to the suburbs:
As newly middle-class minorities moved to inner suburbs, though, the mostly white residents of those suburbs moved further away, buying up the McMansions that were being built at a rapid pace. This acceleration of white flight was especially problematic in Rust Belt towns that didn’t experience the economic boom of the mid-2000s. They were watching manufacturing and jobs move overseas.
The use of McMansions is interesting here. It could be doing three things:
1. It could simply be referring to larger houses. The size of new American homes has increased in recent decades and McMansions are often held up as the exemplar of this.
2. It could be shorthand for suburban sprawl. McMansions are often viewed as emblematic of big lots and expensive houses in whiter communities. Using the phrase McMansion here could reinforce the idea that all wealthy suburbanites live in McMansions.
3. This could be more negative as substituting “large homes” for “McMansions” doesn’t carry the same kind of negative connotations.
And for the data on the number of Americans living in neighborhoods where more than 40% of residents are under the poverty line:
The number of people living in high-poverty areas—defined as census tracts where 40 percent or more of families have income levels below the federal poverty threshold—nearly doubled between 2000 and 2013, to 13.8 million from 7.2 million, according to a new analysis of census data by Paul Jargowsky, a public-policy professor at Rutgers University-Camden and a fellow at The Century Foundation. That’s the highest number of Americans living in high-poverty neighborhoods ever recorded.
Not a good trend.
Legally Sociable 