Go inside and play!

Think it's the "cocoon effect." The trend is people are doing things from the comfort of their own homes....internet shopping, food delivery, ect. One way this just falls into place with this trend, if people are doing more things at home, including work, and home theatres/media rooms, then they want more space.

I think it's a bunch of things all taken together. One is, in the areas where new homes are being built most aggressively, the trend is to big build homes. I think the reason for this is that it doesn't cost builders much more money or time to build a 3000 sf house than it does to build a 1500 sf house. There are very few exceptions. I think Atlanta is one of the only places I've read about where new homes are being built closer to the scale of the older homes in the neighborhoods. That really appeals to me, but even there, that's not the norm. So the point of all my rambling is that families who live in areas where there is great competition for housing often find the best bang for their buck in buying a new house. Once that decision is made, there don't seem to be many choices.

Then there's the whole cultural thing where we don't like to talk to each other. We want to live in sprawling neighborhoods where we don't have to see our neighbors and where there are no sidewalks so we have to drive everywhere.

It's been a dream of mine to become a developer some day and to design communities that maximize human interaction and allow people to walk to shopping yet still have nearby green spaces for play. I think so much could be accomplished for human health (mental and physical) by well designed communities.

But how much more space, Slappy? And at what expense?

We're starting to see the rise of those kind of communities here, Free Duck. The most popular of these user-friendly areas are being built up around the mass transit corridors too, which is nice.

I have a friend from the Phillipines. She and her husband just bought a new house in one of those neighborhoods. The house is about 1,700 sf. She says that in the Phillipines that 3 or 4 families would be living in a house like hers - living happily, I should add.

While that seems excessive and I don't think I could live that way, I still think its strange that we cocoon ourselves away from everything and only invite the outside world in via electronics.

You've got a good dream there, Free Duck!

Totally agree, FreeDuck. I think you, boomer and I should design a child-centered community and all move there. Wouldn't that be great? Just turn the kids loose...

The size and interest of our yard was an important aspect to me when we bought this house. It's got plain ol' lawn, it has ginormous trees, it has several different levels to it, and it has a porch from which I can generally keep an eye out while letting the kid do her own thing.

I love my house. :-D

Front-page NYT article yesterday somehow ties into this for me -- growing industry is "parenting coaches."



Is there anything more American than the "dream home"?

I haven't connected all the dots yet, but one makes me think of the other.

I hate those mongo-houses passionately. They were (are) a huge problem in Naperville. We had a little 100+ yr old house on a giant lot, in a part of town with a lot of old houses, and in the four years we were there the block changed utterly. A bunch of tear-downs and rebuilds, all of them disgustingly huge. When we left, our favorite neighbors had just sold their cute little old house to a guy who was probably going to tear it down and rebuild. Yuck.

Actually a friend of mine(older, w/kids and makes a lot of $$), just did that. Tore down their house, and rebuilt, now they have this enourmous house, with half the yard they had(even though it's still an ok sized yard). Place is insane, the master bedroom/bath is the size of my old 2-bed apartment, probably bigger.

House here in Germany with 1,400 square meters (as semi-detached houses) are among the biggest. However, 'normal' houses usually aren't bigger.

Houses bigger than 1,800 sq ft are for upper tenthousands.

Yuck indeed. We don't have much of a yard, but we chose the neighborhood because it's centered on a park, there are sidewalks everywhere, and very often at least one street is blocked off by parents and all the kids in the neighborhood just play in the street. My son, at 5, is very very good about being aware of his surroundings and looking for cars before he crosses. I attribute this to getting to know his environment. We have a mix of families, singles, childless couples, and elderly which I think is ideal. It's an old house. It's bigger than any other we've had, but it's still probably only around 1500 sf and it's more than we need. The only thing missing is a small grocer within walking distance. Basically, it's pretty close to my ideal neighborhood, the worst thing about it being its location in the armpit of the universe.

You and boomer name the place and I am totally there!

FreeDuck have you heard of Celebration, Florida. This sounds like a community you want to develop.

http://www.celebrationfl.com/

Take the best ideas from the most successful towns of yesterday and the technology of the new millennium, and synthesize them into a close-knit community that meets the needs of today's families. A place where memories of a lifetime are made, it's more than a home; it's a community rich with old-fashioned appeal and an eye on the future. Homes are a blend of traditional southeastern exteriors with welcoming front porches and interiors that enhance today's lifestyles.

In the spirit of neighborliness, CELEBRATION residents gather at front porches, park benches, recreational areas, and downtown events celebrating a place they call home. CELEBRATION is a community built on a foundation of cornerstones: Community, Education, Health, Technology, and a Sense of Place.

In-fill housing and tear-downs are a big thing here too. Portland has really restrictive urban growth boundries because they want to keep downtown as the primary business/commercial area.

I hated our house when we first moved in. I've always lived in the city proper and this place felt very suburban. It was only after Mo moved in that I came to love this house and this neighborhood and my neighbors.

Maybe its the fact that we don't have any media rooms but on nice days you can usually find a mix of us sitting on the curb watching the kids run wild.

Remember when being sent to your room was punishment? Man, if we'd had TVs and computers and stereos in our rooms I doubt I would have ever wanted to leave it.

And to not even have to share your room with a sibling!?

I'm not really one of those "back in the good ol' days" people but this trend reported in the paper seems very isolating to me.

I grew up sharing a bedroom with my younger bro. I suspect it civilized both of us. Now, I must have my own space, small though it be.

I think these big new houses are absurd. The domestic equivalent of driving a Humvee...

I see them as oppressive. The idea of owning something so massive that it could swallow 50,000 dollars in furniture without blinking, and the responsibility of keeping it all tidy, and what to do with it if you don't want to live there anymore, it gives me heartburn just thinking about it. It just feels like baggage to me the same way I'm overwhelmed by having an attic full of crap we don't need, I am overwhelmed by the idea of having to maintain that much space.

It is isolating, boomerang. And you have good reason to be concerned.

There is a growing architectural movement in the U.S. called "New Urbanism." It also goes by the name "Smart Design" and a few other names as well. Developments are planned to layer together residential units, commercial spaces and planned civic areas in high density to form a complete community. Celebration, Florida is often touted as a pioneer development of this movement. It seems remarkably similar to the type of environments planned by developers before WWII and enjoyed by those who live in older neighborhoods today. Remember the grocery store on the corner and the park at the end of the street? This movement proves that when it comes to making places inviting and livable, what's old is new again.

Here's a quote (several years old) from Peter Katz, executive director of the San Francisco-based Congress for the New Urbanism: "For people who conduct their lives by driving all around the region - going 5 miles for a haircut or 2 miles to the shoe repair shop - chances are that when they step out of their cars, they're among strangers: there's no connection. And that's when civility breaks down, when we conduct our lives among strangers."

So you see, boomerang, you are not the only one concerned about this.

Granted my daughters are young, but they share a room and love it. When they misbehave at night and start talking and stuff rather than sleeping, we punish them by having the younger one sleep in her playpen in our hallway.

Celebration, FL has homes in the 1,000,000's. (but I know the point is the community).

I don't understand what's wrong with having a nice large home if you can afford it. If I had a ton of money, why the hell would I buy a tiny ranch?

Honestly, I don’t have a problem with whether you want a large home or not, but it does seem the community thing is what is disappearing. I doubt it is just the large homes, I think the large homes may be a result of people not wanting to be part of a community.

What about the thought of condos? They actually seem to be growing in popularity.

That is intersting, Eva.

There is a neighborhood not far from my house that is like that: shops and restaurants with apartments over the top, a few blocks of row houses and then single family homes with lots of parks. Every weekend they have a big farmer's market in the parking area behind the shops. The houses there are not huge, but are big. Everything in the area sold immediately and the price of homes is exhorbinate - very much more expensive that much bigger homes in other neighborhoods.

I would love to live there but now it means I would have to leave my neighbors and I don't want to do that.

There really isn't anything wrong with it, Slappy, but for me, it has no appeal. I could certainly afford a muh bigger house. I would love to have a bigger kitchen and a bigger bathroom and we have been talking about doing some remodeling here.

Before we had kids a media room had no appeal because we could just go to the movies. Now, with a four year old, I don't get two hours to sit down and watch TV ever. In a few years it might just be impossible to get Mo off his duff and out of there to go outside and play.

In the same way, having the latest gizmo and gadget doesn't do much for me. I had a cel phone that I never turned on because it was so annoying to always be available. I finally got tired of paying the bill for something I never used and got rid of it.

Plus, I don't want that kind of debt. We can afford all kinds of things we don't need (or want) but we don't feel compelled to get them anyway. Now if I had buckets of money there are beautiful areas of town with amazing older big homes that I would love to have. But not one of those McMansion type things.

I drove through Celebration, Florida about 7 years ago and it is indeed nice. Not nice enough to make me want to live in Florida though.

This is one of my pet topics. Of course, like Walter points out, houses here in Europe are much smaller than over there - like everything. (In Holland even more than in Germany I'd gather). But the rate of increase in size is much the same. I saw stats for average house size in Holland a year or two ago, and here too the houses have become something like twice as big as they were in the fifties - even as the average number of people living inside one dwindled drastically (remember, Dutch families were notably large before the 60s).

Thing that strikes me is that nobody ever remarks on it. Even though the consequences are enormous. The whole issue of cultural integration aside, even the issue of ever decreasing green space in our country is, if anything, blamed on immigration. There's a group called the 10 million people group who have long favoured immigration stops because of how overcrowded Holland has become. "Full is full" or "Holland is full" has in fact been the slogan of choice for the anti-immigrant right ever since the early 80s, sanitised into the legally more acceptable "Holland is busy" by Fortuyn. Most of the discussion centers around the livability of the city, of course, so many different cultures, all that, social problems - but yes, there's also always the recurring discussion of how more people simply "won't fit" in our country, there's hardly any forest left already, even the polders are all built full! Well, yes, hello! What do you bloody think, with all your new expectations and demands!

What I would like is for someone to calculate and publish, every day anew if necessary, how much extra square kilometres of development you need when, instead of having 10 million Dutchmen live, four to five at a time, in houses of 500 sf, you get 12 million grandchildren of the same Dutchmen living, two at a time, in houses of 1000 sf?! Hell, the impact of the immigrants, mostly living in cramped quarters downtown anyway, is positively negligeable!

People just dont wanna know. I for one get infuriated whenever the physical space argument is used re: immigration. Spoiled effin' brats.

I dunno, isnt there some kind of limit of sanity or socialness or something? Or would that be a laughably European notion?

I mean, like - the house you describe your friends as having, a master bedroom the size of a fair apartment itself, I dunno - well - to avoid causing direct offense, lemme put it this way: please, if I ever get that much money, any of you tell me to effing share it before buying something as obscenely luxurious as that.

And the house vs yard thing I think is also a question of social responsibility. Farmerman was writing about that, the new urbanites moving into his deliciously rural area and putting bling-bling type houses that practically fill the yard to its very border - ugly, ugly - and I bet they'll next be complaining anyway that the council doesnt provide enough parks and greens! Not to mention the demolition of old houses, I know America's never been all too focused on cultural legacy, but as far as I'm concerned the more pretty historical houses they slam under the protected monument law the better (here most of downtown is protected, though the pretty old working-class neighbourhoods they're suddenly getting into gear to demolish apparently still weren't, alas.)

Kinda thing so regresses me into some kind of socialist calvinist (or vice versa).

Eva totally has a point as well, re: how it all ties in together. Huge, yard-filling, self-sufficient houses are tied up with the loss of "the grocery store on the corner and the park at the end of the street", which in turn imply ever extra car traffic (bad for safety, bad for environment, requires new ugly highways), which in turn is connected with ever an bigger lack of social interaction, which means less community sense and sense of responsibility for each other's welfare - or commitment to the very notion of it (which has larger political implications, when you think of it), which again comes with - etc. Like our societies are enrolled in some kind of course on how to become ever more rich and anti-social simultaneously - the only difference I'm afraid is that you're pointing the way of where we'll be heading in a decade or two.

Oh, and there's the stuff brought up in the parallel thread on raising "resilient children", or what was it. The ever more overprotected, overplanned raising of children means ever less confrontation with - I dunno - uncontrollable surroundings. Physical challenges, set by the surroundings rather than your own exercise plan. The need to compromise with other kids, of other backgrounds, too, when out in the street. I'm afraid all of it will breed a generation thats more technically savvy, even formally better informed (thanks to TV, net, games etc) than any before - but also more ignorant, in that they've lost the flexibility to deal with obstacles, with differences, with compromises.

edited above to add paragraph