The big city in the United States is dense. It has tall buildings and busy streets. There are plenty of apartments and mixed-use structures. They look and feel different than suburbs, small towns, and rural areas.
More than 40% of the city is zoned for single-family housing…
This figure might even be higher in other cities, particularly sprawling ones.
What might this figure mean? Some thoughts:
Denser populations can fit into less space. But the amount of space given to one kind of land use, homes in this case, still matters.
These neighborhoods and residents are going to get at least some attention and representation. Their interests might converge and diverge in important ways from interests of other locations and residents in big cities.
Suburbs are in between cities and more rural areas. Are city neighborhoods of single-family homes often in between denser populations and suburbs? Do these city places feel more like suburbs or like life in different densities in the big city?
Another way to think about this percentage: even the places that Americans tend not to associate with houses and the lives that go with them have lots. of single-family homes.
A new proposed subdivision in one Chicago suburb will have “custom, high-end homes.” But the image provided suggests these homes will be right next to their neighbors. Do these things go together?
A description of “high-end” and “custom” plus looking at the rendering suggests these will be pricey homes. To have this square footage with a garage in a new single-family home build in an older suburb will cost buyers a good amount.
The demand will be there for these homes, yards or not. Housing supply is limited. Some buyers want to pay for less yard space. The new spacious interior with features will outweigh other downsides. If plenty of Americans prefer private interior spaces, these homes will offer that. Like many in the suburbs, people can drive into their garage, close the door, and do their thing inside with little interaction with neighbors or the community.
I also imagine there are a good number of people in the United States who would look at the drawing above and not have any interest due to the lack of space around each house. These are denser suburban homes that do not appeal to everyone.
One critique of mass produced postwar homes is that they would not stand the test of time. They were not built well. They were constructed quickly and lacked quality.
Many of them are still standing. Many of them have been improved over time with renovations, additions, and changes. But how many would survive a global pandemic or major natural disaster or the explosion of a nuclear device in the big city 25 miles away?
Part of the issue would be how close the homes are to the issue at hand. A second is whether the people living there can access resources to keep the home maintained. A third concern is whether people can keep living in the home or if they must flee elsewhere; a home with no one there will suffer over time.
If someone has the money and the fears (or foresight?) to buy a home that prepares them for a period of crisis, now is the time to purchase before the properties get snapped up or they become more expensive. The rest of the residents of the United States will have to wait for the mass produced version…
But as the cost of buying a home has exploded and McMansions have fallen out of favor, homebuilders have reversed course, building smaller homes with an eye to first-time buyers. In 2023, the median single-family home built was 2,233 square feet, down 9% from the 2015 peak, with many formal dining rooms and “bonus” rooms disappearing…
Homebuyers are warming up to the idea of smaller dwellings: According to an April study from the National Association of Homebuilders, the typical buyer wants a home that is 2,067 square feet — still smaller than the typical new home size last year…
There are signs those efforts might be helping buyers get in the door: The median sales price of existing homes jumped to $426,900 in June, according to the National Association of Realtors, while the median price of new homes in June was $417,300, according to the US Census Bureau.
Three thoughts in response:
It will be interesting to watch the long-term trends. The article marks 2015 as a peak. Does this mean homes will continue to get smaller in the coming years?
Connected to #1, how much do Americans want smaller homes or how much do housing prices constrain what Americans expect and want? The first option could be connected to Americans having less stuff. If you buy more consumer goods, you need somewhere put them. But if you stream everything and prioritize experiences, perhaps a house is not needed as much for storage. Or if household sizes are decreasing, smaller homes could be fine. In contrast, if mortgage rates went down or housing prices became more attainable for people, would they once again want bigger houses?
The figures above suggest the new homes are slightly lower in price than existing homes. But the newer smaller homes are still pretty expensive. At what price point and square footage would a bunch of potential homebuyers be able to jump into the market? Where do these lines cross on a graph? A median of 1,800 square feet at $340,000 (very hypothetical)?
From the Census data, it may be worth noting that since 1999 the percent of new homes completed at 3,000 square feet or higher has always been a minority of the market (at 31% in 2015). Now this size is a smaller segment of the market as the mid-size new homes percentages are up (1,400 to 2,399 square feet).
Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes made of ticky tacky Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes all the same
The rest of the song then describes the people who live in these homes and the ways they follow the same paths.
This song borrows the imagery of new suburban construction – a lot of similar looking homes (“little boxes”) emerging out of open spaces outside cities – to argue the communities and people within are falling into patterns of conformity. This was a common argument in the 1950s and 1960s: suburbanites thought they were achieving the American Dream but they were really getting a dull and common life. Instead of becoming individuals or households that had made it, they were sold a bill of goods.
Even as Seeger’s song became a hit (reaching #70 on the charts), many Americans did not appear to be swayed by this song. They continued to move to the suburbs in large numbers for subsequent decades. Perhaps they might even admit there is conformity in the suburbs in the houses and social life – and they might be okay with that.
If home is “where the heart is” or “wherever I’m with you,” I should be fine with my mom moving anywhere—especially to a nearby apartment, as she plans to, where she’ll doubtless have a place for me to sleep whenever I want. Instead, any mention of a future sale prompts an ache akin to the homesickness I felt as a kid at summer camp—except that now I ache for my future self. I imagine her standing outside that suburban New Jersey house, pacing back and forth, insisting that some piece of her remains in this one edifice on a certain corner of a specific street, even though she hasn’t lived there for decades…
Going home can be a much more effective way to time travel. Our past isn’t just preserved in knickknacks and memorabilia; it lingers in the spaces we once occupied. When we talk about our experiences, we often focus, understandably, on the people who’ve shaped us, and we “treat the physical environment like a backdrop,” Lynne Manzo, a landscape-architecture professor at the University of Washington, told me. But setting can be its own character; it colors our day-to-day, and we endow it with agency and meaning. If social interactions and relationships are the bricks constructing our identities, our surroundings are the scaffolding.
Setting is also central to how we remember. Recalling events (as opposed to information) involves “episodic memory,” which is deeply tied to location. Many researchers, in fact, believe that episodic memory evolved to help us physically orient ourselves in the world. (One very sad study—partial title: “Implications for Strandings”—found that some sea lions with damage to the hippocampus, the hub of episodic memory, get lost and wander ashore.) When you’re in a given space, your brain tends to “pull up the relevant memories” that happened there—even ones that have long been dormant, Charan Ranganath, a neuroscientist and the author of Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold On to What Matters, told me. People remembering a specific moment can even demonstrate what Ranganath called a “reboot” of the brain-activity patterns they showed during the original event.
But without the physical space to visit, it can be hard to mentally transport yourself back. When the 19th-century French writer Stendhal wrote his memoir The Life of Henry Brulard, detailing a difficult and lonely childhood, he drew the places of his youth again and again, in an obsessive attempt to spur his memory. “Winding staircase—Large, cheerless courtyard—Magnificent inlaid chest-of-drawers surmounted by a clock,” he scrawled under a sketch, as if the incantation might apparate him to his grandfather’s imposing Grenoble townhouse. Yet his recollection remained, as he put it, like a fresco, solid for stretches and elsewhere crumbling apart.
I am interested here in the powerful connection to a suburban home. Little is said about this home that might differentiate it from other New Jersey suburban homes. There are millions of Americans who could have similar positive memories about their suburban homes.
At the same time, critics of suburbs argue these homes are not worth much. They are cookie-cutter. Tract homes. Poor quality. Big but empty of meaning and purpose.
We are physical beings whose memories and emotions are tied to particular places. It is easy in our current age to forget our embodied lives amid social media, travel, and ideas.
The suburban homes that might look from the outside to be similar can also be settings where millions of people develop important memories in their life.
When suburbs build apartments or condos in their downtowns, who do they envision living there? A quote from suburban leader provides a hint as I have seen similar sentiments across suburban downtowns:
Suess said there’s a high demand for apartment space in the downtown areas and the suburbs in particular.
“The attraction of this I think is very much towards empty nesters,” Suess said. “I think it’s towards young professionals starting out and, again, folks who want to be in the downtown area.”
That is a very specific set of people. Presumably, these are people with the resources available to live in nicer apartments near a lot of suburban amenities.
At the same time, highlighting these groups also reinforces the importance of single-family homes in suburban communities. Empty nesters are ones who might have owned a home for years and raised kids there but now are looking for a change from maintaining a home. Young professionals are just starting out and perhaps they do not yet have the resources to be homeowners for the first time.
Often, suburbanites do not like apartments and/or the people who might live there. But the right apartments in a downtown setting can attract certain residents – the ones named above – and contribute to a denser, walkable, thriving downtown.
Since he started the account in December 2020, it has exploded into a social media phenomenon, amassing more than 4 million followers across the major social media platforms and spinning off an HGTV show that debuts next month with Mezrahi as executive producer. Throughout it all, Mezrahi’s recipe has remained mostly unchanged: Find the zaniest homes on the market – castle-themed mansions with full drawbridges, for example – then blast them out to the internet with a bit of pithy commentary, and watch the clicks, likes and shares pile up. The simplicity of the premise is part of the brilliance; it’s the result of the decade-plus that Mezrahi spent charting the internet’s fascinations as social media director for BuzzFeed.
Does all this interest in houses translate into money?
None of this, however, was enough to save Mezrahi at BuzzFeed. The now-struggling company laid him off last spring. He had survived previous cuts, “but eventually you don’t last, especially as a strategist kind of person,” Mezrahi says. Already, he’d been mulling the prospect of leaving the full-time gig to focus entirely on his personal projects. BuzzFeed simply made the choice for him…
Still, there is one thing that Mezrahi shares in common with the rest of them: He’s trying to figure out how to make more money off the internet. Aside from the HGTV executive producer credit, most of Zillow Gone Wild’s revenue comes from ads. He did one for “The Bachelor,” posting what looked like a typical listing but for the show’s famed house. PopTarts and Royal Caribbean have also paid him to promote fake listings for a house made of PopTarts, and for the new Icon of the Seas cruise ship.
But the account still brings in “very little” money, he says. He imagines a future where his newsletter has a paid classified section or where he dedicates more time to growing a YouTube audience because that platform can be the most lucrative.
It will be interesting to see how this goes in the next few years. How big can the social media audience get for this account? Would users be willing to pay for such content or special content? How much content could there be? Will a TV show lead to more opportunities or spin-offs or streaming shows? Can Zillow Gone Wild be its own brand soon with different content and products?
They owe younger adults nothing. Older adults worked hard to acquire and maintain their properties. They are holding on to them as valuable assets that can continue to appreciate in value. If they can stay in the homes (considering finances and health), why shouldn’t they stay in the homes they selected as long as they can?
They owe younger adults something. Older adults can balance what they would like as they age – staying in their homes, cashing out the value of those properties – with also helping younger adults who desire housing. This might look different for a variety of households and locations.
They owe younger adults everything. Older adults should actively work to pass along their homes and properties (and their associated wealth and opportunities) to younger people. They should make way for future generations who could benefit from the housing they benefited them. They are passing along a housing legacy that can enrich their children and grandchildren. They have an obligation to insure housing is readily available for those who come after them.
This is a rough approximation of options available within the United States. Numerous articles in recent years highlight this dynamic of generational shifts in housing options and preferences. The housing situation in the United States is unique – emphasizing single-family homes, limited supply, high mortgage interest rates, a big Baby Boomer generation, decades-long housing value increases, and more – and Americans tend to think that housing is a market, not a human right.
Fast forward ten or twenty years down the road: I would guess Americans will follow some middle option above. Some older adults will want to or have to pass along housing, others will hold onto it as long as possible. What might be most interesting is if some of those big houses stop rising in value so much or even lose value – how much might this change the dynamics in housing turnover?
The Sims felt like a trial run for adulthood, exploring how you’d make use of your future autonomy. Much of this validated the importance of personal space: how to lay out a room, how to choose a sofa that balanced aesthetics and comfort, how to make a house a home…
The official trailer for The Sims 4: For Rent emphasizes the potential of “multiunit life,” promising “ample opportunity … [for] eavesdropping, snooping, or even breaking and entering”—a description that instantly evoked memories of my worst roommates…
Inevitably, a lot has changed. The peaceful suburb I remembered from childhood has been replaced by elaborate “worlds” that I can (effortfully, via a loading screen) switch between to grow my property portfolios. TheSims 4 is more immersive and finely drawn, visually, than the original was, but it’s also more involved: It took me a whole afternoon to create my first Sim and set her up in her “hovel.”…
But soon my frustration (as Edith) with Jazz’s requests started to outweigh my commitment to being the Only Good Landlord. Every notification from the rental instantly provoked my impatience. Not the damn tenant again! The slow, clunky transition within the game between Edith’s home and the rental only added to my frustration and my creeping sense of Jazz as a burden. Why did this guy need so much of Edith’s energy?…
With For Rent, The Sims has perhaps moved too far toward reflecting brutal reality, forcing players to choose between being on one side or the other of an often fractious and all-too-familiar power imbalance. As a child, I was drawn to The Sims as a role-play for adulthood, a world of expansive promise and possibility; playing For Rent, I was reminded, depressingly, of how the game is rigged.
The Sims is a game, a product intended to provide enjoyment for players. Can one gamify the rental experience in the United States?
Anyone able to offer an analysis of housing, landlords, and properties in general across the Will Wright creations? Simcity offered a particular take as did SimTower – has this changed noticeably over the years? Are there any video games that do a different or better job of portraying property and renting?
Legally Sociable 