Why are houses in America so...ugly? (Lincoln: condo, neighborhood)

[hellaslover]

Mikeetc,
i'm not attacking anything. At first i asked why houses are built that way in America. They look ugly the way they are built. There are some nice houses no doubt, but i'm talking about the majority. The only reason i'm attacking America is because someone attacked Greece for no reason and took the conversation to a different level. We started talking about houses and he brought up how poor and behind greece is...i'm just answering back why America sucks compared to Greece that's it. No offence to anyone and especially to americans. America is great just stating the facts

[Kid Quake]

You brought us the Toga party. No need to defend your country.

[j760]

Originally Posted by jguillot

I don't think it is appropriate for you to come here from Greece, and criticize our architecture and our home building techniques. No one is forcing you to buy a home in this country.

Well said.

[j760]

Originally Posted by hellaslover

America is great just stating the facts

No, your not stating the facts. Your stating your opinion, which your entitled to. It's not a fact that Europe has nicer looking homes though, because it's ultimately anyone's opinion.

I love this country and happen to feel the homes here are beautiful, I don't know how they look in Europe and I really don't care, I'm sure they have some nice homes out there to, but I personally feel the homes are just fine here in the U.S.A.

[wburg]

Part of why American homes have been built to be disposable is because land in the United States is considered pretty much disposable too. People don't build homes that will last for centuries because American communities don't last that long. Suburbs are a disposable consumer product, intended to be used up and thrown away, because American land is considered so abundant that we can never, ever run out. The suburb gets built, professionals and upper middle class move in. A few years later, a new suburb gets built and a few professionals leave. Middle-class blue-collar folks start to move in--but when plumbers driving Fords move into the neighborhoods, the doctors driving Lexuses start deciding it's time to move up to the newer suburb. As the neighborhood gets less desirable and more of those Fords are up on blocks in the front yard, poorer folks move in, sometimes sharing a single house between multiple families. By this time, even the plumbers are getting ready to move. The neighborhood is now considered "blighted" by the powers that be, and it won't be long before there are calls to redevelop it, or at least knock it down.

European ideas about land are very different. They ran out of land a long time ago: it is all spoken for. Most European cities are places that have been European cities for many centuries: evidence of their permanence is all around, even in the cities that were bombed out in two world wars there are plenty of examples of old buildings being used and reused, simply because there isn't more room to expand, and brick or stone are more common building materials because wood is too expensive. Families stay in the same place for generations because there isn't much alternative, and nobody is constantly building new suburbs on the periphery, like they do in America.

In the United States, we got so offended by our own old buildings (most of which were far less than a century old) that we effectively bombed our own inner cities in the postwar period with urban renewal. We used bulldozers instead of B-17s, and "urban renewal" acts instead of Norden bombsights, but the result was the same: destroy the old, build the new. Housing policy deliberately encouraged the construction of quick residential suburbs on virgin land--almost all intended for whites only, even outside the more-segregated South, by racial exclusion covenants. So, at least until those laws were overturned in the late 60s and early 70s, nonwhites were crowded into whatever older suburbs didn't have those covenants. Now, poor nonwhites and the white urban poor are the motivating force that encourages the plumbers above to move to new suburbs.

Hellaslover, once again, I invite you to look at older American neighborhoods, not newer ones, if you want to see examples of beautiful American architecture. We used to build some pretty darn nice houses, before we started cranking them out on an assembly line.

The analogy to McDonald's is kind of a good one. Let's take cheeseburgers, for example. Cheeseburgers are the archetypal American food, and done right, they are delicious. Take a fresh-baked bun, put in some flame-broiled high-quality ground beef and a nice slice of cheese, maybe a little rabbit food on top, and you've got a delicious meal. And if you go into a half-decent restaurant, or even a half-decent greasy-spoon diner, that's what you'll get. If you go into a McDonald's, you get a gray hockey puck that hopefully contains more meat than filler, served on a piece of Styrofoam, with a slice of artificially cheese-colored dairy by-product on top. It's still technically a cheeseburger, and it fills your stomach, but it's not quite the same as the quality product.

Contemporary American housing is a McDonald's cheeseburger. It fills you up and it's technically a cheeseburger, but they sure don't make them like they used to--now, they could, but cheeseburger makers would make less money doing it.

[NewToCA]

Originally Posted by wburg

Part of why American homes have been built to be disposable is because land in the United States is considered pretty much disposable too. People don't build homes that will last for centuries because American communities don't last that long. Suburbs are a disposable consumer product, intended to be used up and thrown away, because American land is considered so abundant that we can never, ever run out. The suburb gets built, professionals and upper middle class move in. A few years later, a new suburb gets built and a few professionals leave. Middle-class blue-collar folks start to move in--but when plumbers driving Fords move into the neighborhoods, the doctors driving Lexuses start deciding it's time to move up to the newer suburb. As the neighborhood gets less desirable and more of those Fords are up on blocks in the front yard, poorer folks move in, sometimes sharing a single house between multiple families. By this time, even the plumbers are getting ready to move. The neighborhood is now considered "blighted" by the powers that be, and it won't be long before there are calls to redevelop it, or at least knock it down.

Interesting take on the situation you have there, Wburg, but I generally disagree with your point of view on this issue. It may be generally true to Sacramento, or perhaps many California communities, but isn't the case across the USA.

Many examples exist that demonstrate this frequently isn't true. I know of many areas in places such as Cherry Hill and Voorhees, NJ (suburban Philly) Lakewood and Bay Village, OH (suburban Cleveland), and Worthington OH (suburban Columbus) that were built and populated 25-40 years ago, and are still very desirable places to live today.

While many suburbs eventually decay, quite a few don't too. Much of the decay came from the rapid suburban growth that really began in the mid 1960's, and wasn't very well planned due to the explosive nature of the population shift.

And back to the original posting in this thread, a lot of older and new homes are quite nice, but perhaps just not the OP's taste.

[zen_klown]

First there is a tremendous amount of nonsense in this thread.

In both the US and Europe, suburbs now constitute the bulk of metropolitian areas in both continents. As countries have gotten wealthy enough for cars, they have started designing communties to accommodate those cars. That means suburbanization.

Is urban sprawl an American problem? - By Witold Rybczynski - Slate Magazine

Moreover, as transportation costs have fallen and enviroment restrictions have increased, more building supplies are being sourced globally, not locally. The wood in a house in California generally isn't coming from the Sierras, its being sourced out of Canada where there are less restrictions on logging.

The net result is that building styles are converging globally because materials are often being sourced from the same places.

The suburban ranch house is probably more popular in Ireland than California. In Cairo they have an area of town named Beverly Hills that is intended to look like the one in Los Angeles. Bangalore now has multiple areas that look a lot like Santa Clara. In China, they are building neighborhoods that look a lot like Orange County. Archietecturally, its tough to distinquish Australia or New Zealand from California.

Because Americans mostly visit central cities when they go to Europe, they assume that all of Europe looks like the Ville de Paris. But just like most of the bay area doesn't look like San Francisco, most of region around Paris is suburban. The world's second largest big box retailer, Carrefour got its start in burbs of Paris. Big box retail thrives in auto oriented communities.

http://www.rentalcartours.net/rac-paris.pdf

Until fairly recently, Greece was still a poor country. Even today, it isn't that wealthy of a country. Generally the poorer the region, the less new construction it has.

Lastly cities and communities change. Pittsburg used to be the center of the steel industry, now that industry has mostly left Pittsburg. It looks like the auto industry is in the process of collapsing in Detroit. Communties and neighborhoods change over time. That means land uses need to change over time too. There was a time when this region's principal economic endeavor was gold production, that industry has basically fled.

One of the points, that Stewart Brand made is that buildings and neighborhoods change over time. The fashion for lofts is the desire to move into old warehouses. Is that a quality product? It depends on your preferences.

Amazon.com: How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built: Stewart Brand: Books

[BennyPhoenix]

Garage doors are in front because:
1. driveways are a waste of land
2. Having the garage in the rear would require a lot of concrete to create a driveway to. Concrete is not cheap.
3. Having the garage as part of the house means they share walls, which reduces costs.

I do agree though that having the garage in front is ugly 100% of the time.
A stand alone 2 car garage in the rear of a property can easily cost $35,000 or more to construct(including driveway). In front of a home the cost is about $5000 to $10,000 depending on size and location.
So, on a $200,000 home, having a garage in front makes the home around 10% cheaper. A lot of money. Can lower a mortage payment about $100 per month.

[outsider1]

Originally Posted by hellaslover

I don't understand why houses are so ugly and cheap made?......... Is there a reason homes are built this way or do americans have no sense of style?

The aswers to your questions about America are buried in the writings of Karl Marx. Study them, and all the reasons will soon become painfully obvious.

[Coldjensens]

You are correct that many modern houses are pretty ugly. There are several reasons. It has nothing to do withthem being made of wood.

First and foremost. Houses cost a fortune to build. Not many people can afford to own their own home, but everyone wants one. People do not cram into tenament buildings they way they do in many European countries unless they are very poor. However high end tenament dwellings are becomming more and more popular. For the most part, we want one house for one family.

To meet this demand, they have learned to apply mass production techniques to homes. Homes are designed and built like cars almsot an assembly line techinque.

They come up with a fairly basic design that is economical and easy to build. Make certain that the design can be followed by people who cannot read (i.e. the cheapest labor avialable). They take a single design and tweak it by turning it 1/4 turn and adding some features cut from a catalogue of other easy to build designs. Now they have a half dozen or so floor plans from what is basically a single design.

Next they build the homes in the fastest cheapest way possible. Framing with wood using nail guns is amazingly fast. I have seen 100 house subdivisions completed in less than two months.

Materials within a subdivision are mostly the same. Although individual houses may have a different mix of materials, they try to use the same set of materials in any given subdivision. They just mix the different types of things differnetly. That way you only need one crew traind to install one thing in one way. They go through and bang out their installation of every house that gets each type of material. At the same time, other crews are working in a different order on the same houses. Using the same matierlas on dozens or hundreds of homes also allows them to buy in bullk which is cheaper.

Designs have to be kept simple basic and similar. That makes is easy to use technicians rather than craftsmen. Materials are bought in bulk to save costs. That limits the variety of mateirals that will be used.

Modern design pushes convenience and privacy. Older american homes have seperate garages in the back and large porches int he front. In those days, people were more friendly and more dependant on their neighbors. Now people drive home, remotely open their garage door, go into the house and turn on the tv until bedtime. People want privacy more than light so you see fewer windows except in the higer end homes. Windows also leak heat and or air conditioning plus they ar emore expensive than walls. Wiht airconditioning, no one really needs windows.

The advnent of the front facing atttached garage was a terrible thing. It prevent people from intermingling and keep neighbors from meeting and developing relationships. Many developments are going back to a front oriented style with detached or rear facing garages and front porches. Those developments tend to be polular, but more expensive. They are not popular with everyone. For many people choosing a house is finding what will provide the fastest and most convenient route from the office door to the living room couch.


Wood is the traditional building mateiral in the US. That is becuase it is the most readily avialable and easiest to build with. In Euope wood is less comminly used becuase there is less of it. Wood also had the advantage of being flexible (earthquakes) and it does not usually kill you if it falls oun you. Properly cared for, wood buildings will alst as long as stone or brick. There are wooden homes on the East coast that are over 300 years old. Not much by european standards, but then the US has not been here that long.

Well designed wooden houses are extremely beautiful. Have you been to Sna Frnacisco, new york or Seattle? If you do not see the beauty in the various craftsman, Queen Anne, Stick, Colonial Revivial and other well designed homes, then maybe you just do not have any taste as some people have accused. Architecture students from other countries come here to study our architecture.

Wood allows a lot more flexibility with features than sotne, brick or metal. Wood can be made into any shape. It just is not used to its poetnial in the mass produced homes.

You will see a lot more brick and stucco homes when you move away from earthquake area, however wood is still the most common material. There are even some sod houses still remaining in the prairie areas. They are not very pretty though.

Clay tile roofs are fairly prevalent in the American Southwest. They are not used ni cold climates becuase they break. In the north roofs are made of wood, fiberglass or composite shingles. In the sourht metal roofs are popular. In california tile or composite materials are the most common.

Although tile roofs last forever, I personally think that they are ugly, especially when there are a whole lot of them bunched together. In California you also have the risk of them falling on you in an earthquake. Stone and brick is basically prohibited in Claifornia due to earthquake concerns.

The use of wood is limited in the US. They are no longer allowed to cut down the older growth timber and the modern forced growth wood is not very strong. It also tends to twist and warp as it dries. Metal studs and plastics (polymers) are becomming more common and will probably be the material of choice in 10 or 20 years.

Stucco is used mostly in dry warm climates. It is incredibly cheap by comparison to other cladding. It is also the ugliest cladding material in my opinion, but everyone likes different things. You see almso no stucco in cold climates and very little in eastern warm but wet areas. It just does nto hold up well to weather.