A Word from Eric Miller for August, 2005

Too Much Space in Our Place

The car I was riding in recently broke down late one evening in a small Pennsylvania mountain town. I called for a ride and was greeted by the huge monster truck. I had never been inside before and couldn't help but notice the wide expanses of space between myself and the other people in the car.

You might have noticed this yourself. You don't have a Hummer? I'm not referring to your car, but right where you are now--in your home office or living room. How many people are in the room with you now? How many people share your home or apartment with you? How many rooms to you have exclusively for your personal use? How many rooms do your heat or air condition just for yourself? How many rooms have lights on?

Yes, it's not only our cars that are too big, it's our homes. Think of your home as a Hummer. The bigger is, the more it hums, with air conditioning units, heaters and more.

Oversized vehicles are popular targets of complaint, but high on my list recently is the monster house. A friend asked me as we walked down a neighborhood business district recently why the residents didn't seem to be able to support the neighborhood businesses. Most of the neighborhood is still intact, just as it was when most of these buildings were built. The answer to that question is the same as the one that's also been frequently posed. "If Pittsburgh's population has been cut in half, who's living in all these houses?"

The answer of course is there is one person where there used to be two or three or five or more. Just as cities have spread over Metropolitan areas, clusters of population have spread out to fill buildings in the older neighborhoods.

That's not the case everywhere, but it would seem it's happening more often in more recent times. In previous years older suburbs that had been lined with large homes built for the upper-middle classes were cut up into apartments. This may have had an over-all effect of keeping the population the same or increasing it slightly.

Closer to center cities we have a different type of housing stock-- row houses or town houses. These were often home to large families and could include extended family members. They may have also later been divided to accommodate smaller housing units. In earlier years even these smaller units might have been filled with families.

Today it is more common for people to live alone or in two-person households. That of course means you'll need to squeeze in more units in a given geographical area to have the same benefit on residential services (ie, stores).

Today in many urban neighborhoods there's a push to accommodate "single-family housing," which, more often than not in urban areas, means one person.

Now, those of you in San Francisco and New York must think this is nonsense. To you it probably is. I'm not talking about New York and San Francisco. You have the density you need to support the services that make it so convenient to live where you do. Take that rare trip out to your suburbs, however, and you'll see what I mean.

Out here in Pittsburgh, where space is cheap, we don't yet see the need to have a lot of people in one place. In fact, we think that one person in each townhouse is having a lot of people in one place. A few of us came from a McMansion in suburbia because we felt lost and alone in such a huge space.

There's nothing at all wrong with one person living alone in a townhome. Attached housing is certainly more efficient than stand-alone housing--in a townhome there are only two walls to heat. It's a pretty efficient architectural style and works well in a walking neighborhood. There is, however a need to increase density over-all and build higher density buildings nearby. Neighborhoods made up entirely of single-family units (ok, we might as well call this single-person housing because that's the most likely use) just don't make it.

The curious thing is there seems to be a demand for smaller housing units, yet they aren't provided. This is likely the result of a fear of mixing economic and demographic segments of the population. Or perhaps because that won't as easily allow places for the Hummers to park.

The size of homes in the United States (urban and suburban) continues to grow. According to the National Association of Realtors, in 2001 about one in eight homes exceeded 3,500 square feet, which was more than triple the average new home in 1950 (983 square feet). Since 1970 the size of the average home has increased 55 percent (to 2,330 square feet), while the size of the average family has decreased 13 percent. Meanwhile, according to the Energy Information Administration, homes exceeding 3,500 square feet use about 40 percent more energy than those between 2,000 and 2,500 square feet.

Like my brother-in-law's big truck, the houses are getting bigger in part because Uncle Sam is promoting it. The folks at the Urban Institute figure about 80 percent of the estimated $200 billion of federal housing subsidies consists of tax breaks for "upscale Americans" to buy bigger homes. That study found Federal housing benefits average $8,268 for those with incomes between $200,000 and $500,000 and $365 for those with incomes of $40,000 to $50,000. (Haven't heard many Libertarians out there whining about these government giveaways; come to think of it I've never heard ?em whine about public parking.)

Look around?perhaps it's time to scale down. Ask yourself, "Do I need all this space? Does it make my life better or easier?"

Having a big car doesn't help the environment, your health (both in terms of air quality and the walkability of your ?hood), the supply of natural resources or the situation in the Middle East. We've thought about that quite a bit. Equally damaging is having too much space in your place.

Besides, wouldn't it be easier to find the keys to your Hummer if you lived in an efficiency?

Eric Miller is editor of The New Colonist.

Go to A Word from Richard Risemberg

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