Wildfires are increasing but McMansion developments are underway in brushland.
McMansions have long been connected to environmental concerns. This includes their presence within sprawling suburbs and neighborhoods where driving is necessary and a lot of land is used. It includes the materials required for each home and yard. It includes the use of resources to heat and light such homes.
The concern expressed above is more specific. McMansions are linked to wildfires and brushland. This suggests these homes are being built in places where they should not be built or in places that are vulnerable to wildfires. If McMansions were not in these locations, wildfires would affect fewer people.
Can one property help highlight the changes in Naperville, Illinois in the last century? I ran into this news item first published May 30, 1946 in The Naperville Sun:
The Moser Fuel and Supply company has just completed the first new house to be built in Naperville since the outbreak of the war in 1941. This “No. 1” house, as it is referred to by Moser employees, is at 417 S. Sleight St., and is a little dream in brick veneer with chocolate-color mortar. Ten other Moser houses are going up around No. 1, eight of which are in the 400 block of south Sleight Street and two on South Wright Street.
According to multiple real estate websites, the current house on the property was constructed in 2004 and is worth over $1 million. Here is a June 2019 Google Street View image of the block, including the newer home on the property:
Several patterns worth noting:
-Naperville was a different place after World War Two: much smaller in population, lots of farms and agriculture around.
-Harold Moser and his firm ended up building thousands of units in Naperville. Moser Highlands, one of his first subdivisions, is just south of this location. He and his wife are honored in a statue along the Naperville Riverwalk:
-There are lots of teardown homes in Naperville, particularly near the downtown. As Naperville expanded in population and its status grew, some of the older suburban homes built decades earlier gave way to larger structures. I studied patterns in some of these new homes in a 2021 article.
Growing up, Carhart said he learned the intricacies of the Milky Way from his suburban backyard in Naperville. But slowly, the 64-year-old said, he watched the stars disappear. If someone were to visit his childhood home today, he said, they could count the number of stars they see on their fingers…
“The light pollution is tremendously worse. Out by Naperville we could see the glow in the nighttime sky of Chicago off in the distance, but it only went a little ways up in the sky,” he said. “Over the years we watched it get brighter and then extend overhead and all the way to the other horizon and just take over the sky.”
What can help reduce this light pollution in a large metropolitan area?
The National Park Service suggests considering whether outdoor lighting is necessary, or if reflective tape or reflective surfaces could be used instead. Other sustainable outdoor light specifications, according to the Park Service, are LEDs at 2700 Kelvin. These lights emit a warm color hue instead of blue or white. The Park Service also recommends purchasing LED bulbs that have the lowest lumens possible — the unit of measurement used to specify brightness — and ones that can accommodate motion detectors or dimmers, which it says can enhance health and safety…
Referencing a study from 2020 that found only about 20% of a city’s brightness can be linked to streetlights, Walczak said regulation or policies surrounding light pollution should be directed toward commercial businesses, such as parking lots or building facades.
The proposed solutions – and another suggested later in the article that uses special equipment to avoid certain light wavelengths – are efforts to work around the sprawl of the region. If there are over nine million people living in the Chicago region, is it possible to have a visible night sky?
This could be another argument against suburban sprawl. As Americans develop more land outside of cities, light spreads. Homes and yards have lights. Roadways have lights. Buildings have lights.
Naperville’s success – rapid population growth, vibrant downtown, lots of jobs – comes with lights. It could come with less light than it might have now . But, how many suburbanites are willing to trade lights for seeing the night sky? How many lights are for safety purposes that suburbanites care about (roadways, properties, etc.)?
It would be interesting to see some major suburban communities lead the way on this. And it would likely take significant regional efforts or numerous communities going this direction to make a visible difference.
“Why would anyone live in Phoenix?” You might ask that question to the many hundreds of thousands of new residents who have made the Arizona metropolis America’s fastest-growing city. Last year, Maricopa County, where Phoenix sits, gained more residents than any other county in the United States—just as it did in 2021, 2019, 2018, and 2017.
At its core, the question makes a mystery of something that isn’t a mystery at all. For many people, living in Phoenix makes perfect sense. Pleasant temperatures most of the year, relatively inexpensive housing, and a steady increase in economic opportunities have drawn people for 80 years, turning the city from a small desert outpost of 65,000 into a sprawling metro area of more than 5 million. Along the way, a series of innovations has made the heat seem like a temporary inconvenience rather than an existential threat for many residents. Perhaps not even a heat wave like this one will change anything…
Outside the summer months, the quality of life in Phoenix is really quite high—a fact that city boosters have promoted stretching back to before World War II. They traded the desiccated “Salt River Valley” for the welcoming “Valley of the Sun.” Efforts to downplay the dangers of Phoenix’s climate go back even further. In 1895, when Phoenix was home to a few thousand people, a local newspaper reported that it had been proved “by figures and facts” that the heat is “all a joke,” because the “sensible temperature” that people experienced was far less severe than what the thermometers recorded. “But it’s a dry heat” has a long history, one in which generations of prospective newcomers have been taught to perceive Phoenix’s climate as more beneficial than oppressive.
Most people surely move to Phoenix not because of the weather, but because of the housing. The Valley of the Sun’s ongoing commitment to new housing development continues to keep housing prices well below those of neighboring California, drawing many emigrants priced out of the Golden State. Subdivisions have popped up in irrigated farm fields seemingly overnight. In 1955, as the home builder John F. Long was constructing Maryvale, then on Phoenix’s western edge, he quickly turned a cantaloupe farm into seven model homes. Five years later, more than 22,000 people lived in the neighborhood; now more than 200,000 do. Even today, the speed of construction can create confusion, as residents puzzle over the location of Heartland Ranch or Copper Falls or other new subdivisions that include most of the 250,000 homes built since 2010…
“Why would anyone live in Phoenix?” serves as nothing more than a defensive mechanism. It makes peculiar the choices that huge numbers of Americans have made, often under economic duress—choices to move to the warm climates of the Sun Belt, to move where housing is affordable, to ignore where energy comes from and the inequalities it creates, and, above all, to downplay the threats of climate change. In that way, Phoenix isn’t the exception. It’s the norm.
At some point, such growth may not be possible. For example, water supplies might not hold up. Or, Americans might decide a car-dependent life is no longer as desirable.
Another big factor that might slow growth is rising housing prices. If cheaper housing is indeed driving many people to Phoenix, more expensive housing might send people elsewhere. Phoenix is not the cheapest market people could go to. Right now it is popular and growing but this does not necessarily have to last.
Money and a chance to do something new was my draw to Australia. I picked up a $140,000 IT role in central Melbourne, which was a 40% increase over my New Zealand salary. Pretty much everything here was cheaper at the time, with the comparison of renting out my three bedroom Johnsonville house in New Zealand for slightly less than I rented a five bedroom McMansion in western Melbourne…
In terms of housing we sold our small Johnsonville house in 2021 for $1.3 million, and bought a significantly bigger property with a pool here about 15km from the CBD for $975,000. The value for money was a no-brainer.
The takeaway here is that the McMansion in Australia is larger and cheaper than housing in New Zealand.
We’re deep in a Texas suburb less than a minute from a major highway. As a semi-city-adapted human, it’s a culture shock. I’m not used to jumping on the freeway for a quick grocery run. Or driving 30 minutes to get a decent breakfast sandwich. On top of that, I’m a black woman with facial piercings and a bunch of tattoos surrounded by white Republicans.
It’s… an adjustment.
I can’t walk anywhere, the traffic sucks, and the lack of small businesses and diversity around here is eerily dystopian. It feels like the walls of Starbucks, Orange Theory, and Olive Garden are closing in on me. The only close-by establishments are big-box stores, chain restaurants, and mega-churches. It’s gentrified in the worst possible way…
I understand the appeal of wide open fields and expansive landscapes, but most people don’t live there. Most people live in towns with overlapping, 5-lane highways and poorly constructed McMansions. They live in towns surrounded by giant HEBs.
In the sprawling American suburbs, McMansions are part of a landscape with limited community, walkability, and local character.
These two experiences highlight two perspectives on McMansions: are they a good deal offering residents the best bang for their buck or are they part of a soulless suburbia dependent on cars and chain establishments? Plenty of Americans align with one side or the other.
Arizona officials announced Thursday the state will no longer grant certifications for new developments within the Phoenix area, as groundwater rapidly disappears amid years of water overuse and climate change-driven drought.
A new study showed that the groundwater supporting the Phoenix area likely can’t meet additional development demand in the coming century, officials said at a news conference. Gov. Katie Hobbs and the state’s top water officials outlined the results of the study looking at groundwater demand within the Phoenix metro area, which is regulated by a state law that tries to ensure Arizona’s housing developments, businesses and farms are not using more groundwater than is being replaced.
The study found that around 4% of the area’s demand for groundwater, close to 4.9 million acre-feet, cannot be met over the next 100 years under current conditions – a huge shortage that will have significant implications for housing developments in the coming years in the booming Phoenix metro area, which has led the nation in population growth.
State officials said the announcement wouldn’t impact developments that have already been approved. However, developers that are seeking to build new construction will have to demonstrate they can provide an “assured water supply” for 100 years using water from a source that is not local groundwater.
The sprawl of the United States depends on cheap and abundant water available for the new properties. Phoenix is not alone in pursuing sprawl or in not having to think much about water for a long time.
However, the immediate and long-term future in at least a few metro areas involves a lack of water. This is certainly an issue in the West and Southwest. It could be in play in other regions as well.
The origins of this devil-may-care approach to development stretches back decades. “One of the things we’re going to look at is all that development in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, where we just sprawled out along the highways, built office complexes in the middle of nowhere, and built these five acre McMansions on farm fields. With all those policies, we’re going to have to reverse them at some point where we need to develop in a smarter, better way: places that are more walkable, fewer cars, more green space, less pavement. It’s not going to be easy because we, in some ways, have to fix the mistakes of the past, like on stormwater, where so many of our cities and towns are already paved, how do you go back and retrofit them? How do you break up these heat island effects in places like North Jersey? With planting trees, putting in more green space, green roofs, and stuff like that. That’ll take some money and it takes political will in New Jersey. I’ll just say that we have a flood of problems and a drought of action on some of these issues. We need to have the political will to make some of the tough choices and then make those kinds of investments. So far, we just keep kicking the can down the road.”
By the 1960s, Americans had a history of suburban homes stretching along railroad lines, streetcars lines, and roads. The ideal of the single-family home was well established. Plenty of people had fled cities. New transportation options provided speed and opened up new land for development.
Reversing these significant changes will require significant shifts in different directions plus time. Forget New Jersey; would Americans as a whole, particularly the majority of residents who live in suburbs, want to reverse these patterns or do they enjoy suburban life (or dislike the alternatives) so much that they would resist major changes? Either way, the consequences of sprawl will continue to affect society for decades to come.
It starts with “where we are on the globe,” North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello said. “It’s truly a little bit … unlucky.”
China may have more people, and a large land area like the United States, but “they don’t have the same kind of clash of air masses as much as you do in the U.S. that is producing a lot of the severe weather,” said Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina…
With colder air up in the Arctic and warmer air in the tropics, the area between them — the mid-latitudes, where the United States is — gets the most interesting weather because of how the air acts in clashing temperatures, and that north-south temperature gradient drives the jet stream, said Northern Illinois meteorology professor Walker Ashley.
Then add mountain ranges that go north-south, jutting into the winds flowing from west to east, and underneath it all the toasty Gulf of Mexico.
The geography of the Untied States is often described as an advantage. Lots of land. Many natural resources. A range of temperatures and climates. Across the oceans from major global conflicts.
In this case, the unique geography leads to issues. The expanse and variation in land puts air masses in conflict.
As the article suggests, have American communities adapted to this? If bad weather and disasters are somewhat predictable, do we have structures and planning that mitigates some of this impact? Just as one example, suburban sprawl with its balloon-frame houses and reliance on driving could be prone to particular ill effects.
In New York, the governor wants the state to mandate housing production from local governments and to take over control of their land use if they fail to meet the targets. In California, a bill introduced to the state Assembly on Thursday would require approval of multifamily housing developments in walkable, transit-accessible and centrally located areas.
On Wednesday, the Oregon Legislature passed a package of bills that would require cities to set housing development goals and appropriate $200 million for affordable housing development. Earlier this month, the Washington state Legislature approved a bill legalizing accessory dwelling units, also known as “granny flats,” like an apartment made from a garage or basement. And the Washington state House of Representatives passed a bill last Tuesday that would allow multifamily housing units to be built anywhere in larger cities and near bus stops in smaller towns.
The trend is not just happening in blue states. Montana’s Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte has proposed legalizing duplexes and triplexes all across the state and legalizing apartment buildings in all commercial areas. And the Oregon and Washington measures have drawn broad bipartisan support.
What does this add up to?
“We’re basically declaring a holy war on sprawl,” Matthew Lewis, communications director of California YIMBY, a pro-housing advocacy group that is backing the bill, told Yahoo News.
Is it possible to discuss sprawl and its effects in a civil manner? I suspect this is hard to do. It invokes passion on multiple sides. Is sprawl about having a piece of private land and achieving the American Dream? Is it a waste of resources and destroyer of natural ecosystems? Is it a unique feature of American life to accommodate single-family homes and cars?
As the article hints, there are likely long fights over such efforts. Where exactly is the line between local control and the broader interest of the public? Particularly in communities with money and political voice, the fight may drag on.
Joe McCue thought he had found a desert paradise when he bought one of the new stucco houses sprouting in the granite foothills of Rio Verde, Ariz. There were good schools, mountain views and cactus-spangled hiking trails out the back door.
Then the water got cut off.
Earlier this month, the community’s longtime water supplier, the neighboring city of Scottsdale, turned off the tap for Rio Verde Foothills, blaming a grinding drought that is threatening the future of the West. Scottsdale said it had to focus on conserving water for its own residents, and could no longer sell water to roughly 500 to 700 homes — or around 1,000 people. That meant the unincorporated swath of $500,000 stucco houses, mansions and horse ranches outside Scottsdale’s borders would have to fend for itself and buy water from other suppliers — if homeowners could find them, and afford to pay much higher prices…
Water experts say Rio Verde Foothills’ situation is unusually dire, but it offers a glimpse of the bitter fights and hard choices facing 40 million people across the West who rely on the Colorado River for the means to take showers, irrigate crops, or run data centers and fracking rigs.
Given conditions in the West and Southwest, this could become more common for suburban areas. See earlier posts here and here.
One key from the article: when you move into a home, is the water supply guaranteed (as much as possible)? It sounds like there was an agreement to sell water to this new development. If you have such agreements or live in unincorporated areas or depend on other water sources, will they always be there?
Water is typically one of the lower concerns of those moving to the suburbs. It is assumed to be there. There might be the occasional problem with pipes, particularly in older homes, but the water should keep flowing. Other infrastructure concerns tend to take precedence; are there enough roads for new residents? Schools?
Without cheap water, it is harder to live the suburban life. As the article notes, how does one wash laundry or dishes with limited or really expensive water? Flushing toilets? This does not even get close to beloved amenities, like swimming pools.
Legally Sociable 