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Disclaimer: Part of the freelance GIS work I do is subdivision mapping. (stop throwing stuff, I don't develop 'em, I just turn 'em into spiffy geodatabases) I work mostly off of surveys and aerials but I always make a site visit or two to satisfy my own paranoia and catch any recent changes so I've seen a lot of these beasties up close in all stages of construction. But only in the southeast and mostly in the southern Appalachians so this may or may not relate to the rest of the country.
McMansions are not so much a house as a temple to someone's ego. It might be "I've got a bigger house than my brother-in-law" or "I totally rock 'cause I'm going to make so much cash when I sell this" or "I measure my self worth by the square foot" or whatever but being a house is a secondary purpose. Architecturally they're basically a full size mansion that has been shrunk about 75% but with an attempt to keep most of the architectural details. So you get cool stuff like two story entries on one story houses, dormer windows to let the glorious morning sun into an inaccessible maze of roof trusses, walls with half a dozen corners and offsets in thirty or forty feet, hallways that parallel rooms and don't really go anywhere, stuff like that. And since they're mostly marketed to people who want to be rich but aren't rich they have a lot of faux to keep the price down. Stonework made of half inch thick cast concrete glued to chipboard. "Log" houses that are framed with two-by lumber and covered in slab siding. "Log" houses built out of four-by lumber stacked sideways. "Stone" fireplace walls (more cast concrete) with no chimney that are decorated with electric logs. "Stone" chimneys with a core of plywood unfit for anything hotter than the vent stack from the plumbing. I could go on.
In summation. A McMansion is a half-step from a movie prop. They're for lookin' at, not livin' in. Their long-term survival prospects are dubious. And in thirty years most of those that remain will likely have been renovated to the point of being near-unrecognizable as their less durable component parts age out.
A better question is "what's wrong with other people choosing to live in either the city or the suburbs?"
I personally hate the suburbs even though I live in one (for my job) and really would like to be in the city, but I don't have a problem with others choosing the suburbs over the city.
I'm just curious why people believe someone should live in the suburbs when they clearly prefer the city?
I'm a city guy, and my reason for disliking the suburbs is in line with my belief that human interaction is a good thing. It seems people who move to the newer suburbs want to limit the variety of people and situations they and their children encounter. Safety is great, but what is life without a little excitement? On my block, junkies drool into their change cup twenty feet from a daycare center, and ya know what? I bet those kids won't try heroin. Shut them off from this and see what happens.
I'm a city guy, and my reason for disliking the suburbs is in line with my belief that human interaction is a good thing. It seems people who move to the newer suburbs want to limit the variety of people and situations they and their children encounter. Safety is great, but what is life without a little excitement? On my block, junkies drool into their change cup twenty feet from a daycare center, and ya know what? I bet those kids won't try heroin. Shut them off from this and see what happens.
Can you say sterotype? Plus unwarranted assumptions, like kids who don't watch junkies drool into their change cups will become heroin addicts! While I would have no problems with my kids being in a city day care center, I think I'd draw the line at junkies twenty feet away. In super-enlightened Boulder, Colorado, people were up in arms at the idea of a homeless shelter near a middle school, something I personally had no problem with.
Really the burbs came about has veterans rteturned home after WWII and want somethig better than the inner city for their family.Cties most were a development as to size because of trqnspotation and negery beig conmcentrated for industry thus jobs.The burbs allowed them to cummute. Now we are seeing the bommer generation actaully move even further ut loig for the same thing their parnets did i moving to the burbs and it will increase witht eh coming years. That means that younger people will also follow to service those boomers.Ceetainly we also will not be seeing federal aid to urban renewal in the coming deacdes we have seen since the 60's.So like nayhting that offers what people want 'there is nothig wrong with the burbs or any other choice for a better life as people see it.
To be sure, it was the expansion of highways that allowed them to commute, and by extension allowed the suburbs to exist.
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Ceetainly we also will not be seeing federal aid to urban renewal in the coming deacdes we have seen since the 60's.
The so-called "urban renewal" that was in vogue in the 1960s only hastened the process of urban decay and, in short, helped further the suburban boom. Who knows, maybe that was the ultimate goal. Developers certainly made a lot of money building both subdivisions in the suburbs and instant-slum housing projects in the city. And this country certainly is not above throwing away a city or an entire region in the name of economic progress.
Make no mistake about it, the shift to the suburbs was a result of the largest social engineering endeavor in American history. While this does not make suburban living inherently a bad thing, it makes it grossly disingenuous for anyone to characterize efforts to cities more livable as social engineering, which seems to be popular in some circles, or at least to do so without taking into account the history of suburbia's rise.
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