What is the point of McMansions?

[trixtah]

Seriously, what is the point? I was discussing the proliferation of the horrible things with friends and family in NZ, and the universal consensus is that they're vile and useless. If it's not clear what I'm talking about, it's over-large houses, often featuring ridiculous "porticos" and pillars, stuck out in the outermost suburbs, that fill up an entire land block (maybe a metre or two left around the edges), and in areas where there is no public transport to speak of, necessitating the use of a car for commuting.

I don't actually understand why they keep being built, or why people keep buying them. It makes much more sense to build up rather than cover the entire remaining land area in shoddily-built urban sprawl that requires more energy to maintain (both for commuting and heating/cooling costs of the monstrosity).

Part of the problem is that us colonials seem to have no idea about quality dense housing. Also, if an apartment block was built as a medium-rise, pet-friendly, double-glazed, spacious, conveniently-located, sound-proofed dwelling with some actual green space replacing some of the unused housing footprint, it would undoubtedly cost a bomb (because of course people don't care about double-glazing if they can have a granite workbench and stainless steel appliances for the same amount of money), and people probably still wouldn't want to live in them for the reasons they would prefer to live in the McMansions.

If anyone can explain why the McMs are so compelling, I'd really like to know. Honestly, if I won the lottery, I'd take a punt in developing a desirable high-density dwelling, just to prove it could work. Even in the antipodes.

Comments

[okoshun.livejournal.com]

Okay..first of all, you can't think the way you're thinking to understand why people buy McMansions. You have to think more along the lines of having more money than you know what to do with and wanting to have a very tangible and highly visible way to ensure that everyone knows that you are rolling in money.

People like this don't think environmentally..well, they may put some solar panels on the roof or put in geothermal heating or something else becauase they can afford it, but beyond that...you can't think about it rationally.

[msss.livejournal.com]

But they don't have more money than they know what to do with. Otherwise, they'd be tearing down lovely inner city buildings and building the things here instead. Like the ridiculous two-storey high verandah/carport that we saw on the front door a standard quarter-acre block the other day. With columns.

I've never understood how there can be so many people with so much money and so little taste.

[okoshun.livejournal.com]

I have often felt that when people get rich they somehow lose their sense of taste in proportion to the amount of money they have.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Assuming they had taste before, of course.

[okoshun.livejournal.com]

Excellent point.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I've never understood how there can be so many people with so much money and so little taste.

Money can't buy class.

[msss.livejournal.com]

Sorry, what I meant to say, is that people go out and buy these things out in the middle of nowhere precisely because they're "cheap".

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I can see at least one thought behind it - "I hate taking care of lawns and gardens, and if I've got a square metre of land, then given the choice I'd rather it be covered by an indoor space than an outdoor one."

Being more of an indoor person myself, I can vaguely get this idea, although if I did it myself I'd want a place built which had freakin' EXCELLENT insulation, having grown up and lived in places sporting at least one large room with lots of windows and no provision for preventing heat escaping.

Bunches of people hardly ever see the outside of their place, especially these days with cocooning and telecommuting. They're going to give a damn what the exterior looks like, or how it compares to the neighbourhood?

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

The prime motivation, I think, is to be able to live as though you're richer than you are--and to be SEEN as richer than you are.

Hence humongous cheaply-built houses with flashy *visible* high-end trimmings and trappings fairly far out from the urban centers where land is still reasonably inexpensive.

To understand those people, you have to be able to give up thinking of what's good for society or the environment and start thinking in terms of what will make other materially-motivated consumers think you're "winning".

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

It's got to do with where the money is. People want the most house they can buy for the money they have. Often the land is expensive, so they want the house to use as much of the land as they can.

And don't forget that in the US where so many of these houses come from, they want a large indoors so that during the ultra cold months they have as much space as possible. That of course doesn't translate well into a) Australian conditions and b) cost efficiency, heating, etc.

[cheshire-bitten.livejournal.com]

Personally I am a big fan of two and three story town houses, they allow for decently high dencity without the problems appartments can have.