the (Temporary) Death of the McMansion?

This is a small thought, but hopefully a valid one.

As I walking home from work I pass by a two story building that is being constructed to house a new Remax office. It is definitely a testament to optimisim in these times, but perhaps the deals were already signed, labor paid for, and the owner thought it better just to go through with it then not. Walking past the future real estate office I considered that another potential blessing in disguise to this whole economic meltdown, as I have come to call it, (with my penchant for hyperbole firmly in place), is that we will, hopefully, see a reduction in big, ugly houses.

You know the ones that I'm talking about- the McMansions and the ungainly houses that pretend to display their girth as a desirable quality, not who the heck would want to live in such an ugly place?

I lived in Connecticut in the Simsbury-Avon region during the dot.com boom and it was odd to see the more modest Colonial-style salt boxes juxtaposed next to the nouveau riche mini mansions that sprouted up, which looked like saltboxes on steroids. Or the McMansions tried to imitate some Palladian style mansion of yore- the Villa Emo, etc., Feeble attempts were made at incorporating symmetry and classicism. But it was weird seeing literally flat columns pasted on houses that look like they were just there as a stab at credibility.

Even here in the town that I live in, which has modest economic incomes across the board, there have been numerous subdivisions that have sprung up with houses so monstrous and crammed so close together that I wonder if the neighbors literally know when you're taking a shower because they can see right in your window that's only two feet away from theirs. OK, the distance is probably slightly greater, but driving by it certainly doesn't look like it.

I also privately wonder who could afford to buy those houses since we only have one hospital in town = there are only so many doctors, but I guess our current economic state can tell me who- everybody who was trying to keep up with the Joneses, who in turn were trying to keep up with the Dr. McDreamy's.

While I wish that front porches, turrets, and real gables would make a comeback, I'm not militant about the subject. At the very least I would like to see houses that don't look like an intro course to Auto CAD come to life. There is one house in town that is so square that it's hard to tell where the front door is. I think it's the side that faces the street, but other days I'm not so sure. I'm equally committed to this concept in terms of public space as well. Not every place has to look like a Norman Rockwell, but I'd like it to not to resemble scenes out of Bladerunner either. I advocate places with a mix of architectural styles, with lots of green space, and of course many access points to mass transit!

(more thoughts on whose fault it is that we have a low-density auto-dependent society it really is/ a review of the premise of Jonathan Levine's work, Zoned Out: Regulation, Markets, and Choices in Transportation and Metropolitan Land Use coming up)

My reasoning not only is aesthetic, it's also environmentally based. Bigger places consume more resources and use more energy. This is kind of a duh point- your office building's A/C bill is (hopefully) higher than your house's. But a 500,000 sq. ft. house consumes more resources and emits more waste than say a 5,000 sq. ft. house. I'm not saying we should all live in hobbit houses and cram ourselves into shoebox sized spaces. But how badly does one need that house on the hill? versus how badly do we need a healthy planet?

(I try to reduce my carbon footprint by not turning on my A/C for the past two consecutive summers. Highly unadvisable. I was just cranky and probably alienated people with both my attitude and general sweatiness. Solution: only turn on A/C when absolutely necessary, fans are quite lovely, and find other ways to reduce your footprint, by say, driving less and using CFLs. Not perfect, but significantly less sticky)

And for more thoughts on houses that feel instinctively "right" versus those that just feel "off" I highly recommend Jonathan Hale's work, The Old Way of Seeing: How Architecture Lost Its Magic (And How to Get It Back)