Death to the McMansion!

[Dog Walker]

Found this interesting article in Slate archives from last May.  Too long to post here but here is the important excerpt:


Boomers and millennials, the two largest demographic groups in the country, are converging in a time-of-life moment where what they want is smaller homes on smaller lots in walkable, service-rich, transit-oriented communities. Boomers, who have just started turning 65, are empty-nesting and downsizing. But they are going to have to work much later into what they thought would be their retirement, and they fear the fate of their parents, who had their car keys taken away and ended up in the nursing home. Millennials are in the process of getting married and having kids, and according to market surveys, 77 percent simply don’t ever want to go back to the ‘burbs. At the end of the day, traditional subdivisions are isolating and expensive, while millennials are increasingly connected, are more into tech than cars, and are seeing their economic future more like their grandparents’â€"full of hard work and living on a budget.

Add it all up, and the National Association of Realtors estimates thatâ€"todayâ€"56 percent of Americans want the attributes of this new American dream in their next housing purchase. Yet only 2 percent of new units being built today fit these attributes. That’s a massive pool of pent-up demand, locked away by federal policy still supporting suburban growth at the expense of all other types of communities. Change the policyâ€"without having to spend a dimeâ€"and we’re off to the races with new jobs in construction and infrastructure, plus homes and communities that reflect the way we want to live today. And they happen to be good for the planet, reducing energy, water, and waste by at least one-third.

Full article here: 

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/architecture/2011/05/the_death_of_the_mcmansion.html

[finehoe]

Add it all up, and the National Association of Realtors estimates thatâ€"todayâ€"56 percent of Americans want the attributes of this new American dream in their next housing purchase. Yet only 2 percent of new units being built today fit these attributes.

Yet developers claim that when they build far-flung auto-centric sprawl that they are only "giving the market what it wants".