The evolving modern home
Have you ever returned to the old neighborhood, to see the house you grew up in? Are you shocked at how it’s changed, or horrified at how small it is? Can you really have grown up with all those siblings in that shoebox?
And there was an insect problem too ….
You’re not merely reimagining your past — the last fifty years have experienced an evolution in housing so rapid it might almost be called a mutation, driven by seven profoundly significant trends:
Here come the McMansions!
1. Households are smaller. For half a century, the average number of Americans per household has steadily dropped, and shows no signs of plateauing. The nuclear family of dad, mom, and two point two children is now barely a plurality. But what caused what? Housing demand is elastic, and supply always races to keep up. If consumption is increasing, that’s because the true cost (per person per cubic foot occupied) is declining.
2. Rooms are more specialized. Today’s modern house has the extra bathroom, the downstairs half-bath, the exercise room, the home office, home theater, game room. Our ancestors would have been agog at our self-indulgence.
To the big screen and beyond!
3. Houses are more technological. Today’s home has low-flow toilets and showers, setback thermostats and climate zones, multiple phone lines, a fast broadband pipe, and a juiced up electrical system to handle the amperage required to run all the high-tech gear that decorates those specialized rooms.
4. Rooms are bigger. Bedrooms (walk-in closets), bathrooms, family sizes, island kitchens, breakfast nooks — all are larger than their 1950s’ counterparts.
Look at those bedrooms: 10 x 11 feet!
5. Houses are bigger. Fifty years ago, a three-bedroom house was 1,200 square feet. Today that’s a two-bedroom flat, and the median house is 2,500 square feet and rising.
Postwar subdivision house
6. Lots are smaller. Even as houses get bigger, lots are shrinking, even to the zero-lot-line or townhouse.
7. Densities are higher. In 1960, there were 130 million Americans; today we are nudging 300 million, and by 2050 our population could be 500 million. Couple that with increasing urbanization (as farming becomes mechanized, the average farm is growing ever larger, using fewer people and more machines) and you are forced to increase density, housing more people per acre, using both shrinking lots and rising verticality.
Dozens of people per acre
This gives us a vision of the house of the future:
1968’s concept: suitable only for Gidney and Floyd
The house of the future
Bigger, smarter house
Smaller, tighter, closer lot
High-rise going up?
In other words, the despised McMansion, which means that the revulsion some people express is simply frustrated nostalgia.
Add them all up, and these seven factors mean that houses older than about thirty years tend to be functionally obsolescent, so when they sell, they are massively renovated, with reconfiguration of rooms, spectacular new additions, even demolition and complete rebuilding.
Loocy?
What are those growths on your body?
