Salinas_mcMansion.jpg:
Brendelderivative work: NVO, CC BY-SA 2.5
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons
Mark Zweig posted something on LinkedIn recently that brought a familiar tension back
into view: the mismatch between the suburban dream many people still hold and the
fiscal realities cities face in trying to support it.
He opened with a jab we've all
heard before: architects sneering at “McMansions,” from the vantage point
of homes that reflect their own tastes—mid‑century, Victorian, bungalow, or
something they designed themselves—many of them with small closets and electrical
systems that show their age at inconvenient moments.
My wife and I know this
condition well. Our 1,000‑square‑foot house on 34th Avenue was built in 1952,
and until last year our electrical system did exactly what he describes. We
finally upgraded it as part of a deferred maintenance project, but for decades
we lived with the quirks and compromises of an older home. Our neighborhood is
an early, modest version of suburbia: small houses on small lots, built when
34th Avenue was near Eugene’s southern edge. Today, miles of similar
neighborhoods extend farther south, but the underlying pattern remains low‑density,
single‑family, and residential.
That’s important context. I
don’t live in a McMansion, but I do live within the development pattern that
has shaped this debate. I understand the appeal of space, privacy, and a quiet street. It’s part of my daily life.
Mark’s larger point is
straightforward. Millions of people love the suburban ideal: the cul‑de‑sac,
the walk‑in closet, the bonus room, the fenced yard, the predictable streets
where children can ride their bikes. These preferences aren’t moral failings. They're simply human. They’ve been reinforced for generations by culture, mortgage financing,
transportation investments, and zoning codes that made this version of the
American Dream seem both normal and attainable.
The dream itself has become
more varied in recent years. Housing costs, changing demographics, and shifting
priorities have broadened what many people want from a neighborhood. Even so,
Mark’s post reminds us of an enduring cultural truth: people value space,
privacy, comfort, and a measure of separation from the activity around them.
The civic ledger tells a
different story.
This is where Joe Minicozzi’s
work becomes relevant. Joe, founder of Urban3,
has spent years showing how patterns of development affect a city's long-term finances.
Back in 2015, I
wrote about his presentation for the Making Great Cities series,
where he showed that compact downtown parcels typically generate dramatically more
tax revenue per acre than low‑density suburban development while requiring
proportionally less infrastructure to serve them.
His work reveals something
that isn’t obvious when we’re choosing where to live: every development pattern
is also an entry in a city’s balance sheet. Streets, water lines, sewer
systems, parks, and public services all carry long‑term costs, and those costs
don’t necessarily align with our personal preferences. That’s the tension.
People
want space, privacy, and comfort.
Cities need development patterns they can afford to maintain.
Neither truth
invalidates the other. In fact, the debate becomes more productive once we
acknowledge that both are legitimate.
Architects often find
themselves caught in the middle, criticized as elitists for questioning
suburban expansion while recognizing the fiscal realities cities eventually
confront. Yet the real issue isn’t architectural taste. Whether we prefer walk‑in
closets or walkable neighborhoods tells us very little about what a city can
afford over the long run.
Perhaps that’s the lesson
hiding beneath this familiar debate. We naturally evaluate housing choices at
the scale of our own lives. Do we need the extra bedroom, the larger yard, the quieter
street? Cities must evaluate those same choices at another scale entirely, where
thousands of individual decisions accumulate into miles of pavement, acres of
infrastructure, and decades of public obligations.
The suburban dream and the
civic ledger are not opposing visions. They are two ways of seeing the same landscape—one at the scale of individual lives, the other at the scale of the community that sustains them. The challenge isn't choosing between them. It's learning to see through both lenses at once.
