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Being close together wouldn’t be as bad with single story homes and decent sized front/back yards. The problem is that two or three story homes 10 feet apart means it’s almost impossible to have privacy in any part of the yard. You can put up a fence but the homes beside you and behind you can still look down into your yard.
Simply making that video seems like a huge waste of time to me. Who cares what someone else likes? Seems like the author is just looking for something to complain about. The caption says that she is an "architecture critic" - is that even a thing?
Its a nice way for her to get around saying, "I have credentials as an architect but can't get hired."
Quote:
Originally Posted by southernnaturelover
I was thinking the same thing. I see subdivisions all the time with 3,000 sqft houses that are only 10' apart. Those are nothing but huge freestanding apartments as far as I'm concerned. I'll keep my smaller house on 6 acres. As the old saying goes, "they're not making anymore land".
I'll forgive that. I love my 1300 sf ranch on 1/2 an acre, but if I'm hones there are plenty of homes and neighborhoods that are right up on each other that I would move to in a heartbeat.
Just another example of the silent majority effect.
People blog about this or that but the millions upon millions of families that are buying these homes with lots of square footage, usually in safe neighborhoods with good school systems, show that there are actually quite a few advantages to these types of homes.
Some people prefer 3000 square feet in a good school district. Others prefer 900 square feet but walking distance to places they can get brunch. To each their own.
The same people that promote high density housing and large high rise units seem to be the one that complain about sizable single family homes on small lots. The are believers in dense city living and are looking to take any shots at the suburbs.
In this country people should be left alone to spend their housing dollars any way the want and if offends some of these 'experts' they should look the other way. I am not a fan of the so-called McMansion developments, but it is not my dollars they are spending, so more power to them.
Again, here are the 'experts' telling everyone else how to live.
yes just like theater critic, music critic, fashion critic, food critic, movie critic. you get the idea.
Apparently there's a critic for everything, I guess, no matter how useless that critic may be to the general public. I guess I could call myself a "nose-picking technique critic" or an "eloquent-use-of-swear-words critic" too, then?
My point is - why would it matter to the average middle-class family whether this woman approves of their house or not? Why, for example, should they care whether the roof "nub" is too narrow or not? That will never affect the integrity of the house. So why should anyone care? The only reason for that is for people who only care about keeping up with the Jones's. Maybe some people just want a large house in a good neighborhood, and aren't interested in what strangers think about them and their house.
To each his own. In my old neighborhood of small (800-1200 sq. ft.) 50's-era homes, people started putting up the McMansions. They'd either fit a long narrow one on one lot or buy two houses, raze them and put up a huuuge house.
There would be five cute little bungalows and then WHAM! a huge Mediterranean villa, a few more bungalows and WHAP! a monstrous French Provincial. It was just sort of "jarring", architecturally-wise.
In my metro area, the older proportional homes are being rapidly replaced by disproportionate mcmansions. Many are actually in violation or borderline violation of zoning laws which set building size vs. acreage, >10 ft. from street, number of stories, etc.
Money seems to explain the exceptions. These towns employ $60K/year bureaucrats to review architecture plans for $1.2 million homes, and the wealthy buyers, builders, and architects can afford great lawyers. Plus, of course, there's pressure to approve, for the sake of the higher tax revenues these monstrosities bring in.
I'm worried that these structures are crowding out the middle class housing that every town needs to avoid becoming some kind of hollow, soul-less bedroom community. When the cops, sanitation workers, firefighters, and teachers can't afford to live in the town they serve, you're in trouble.
If I ever came into $50 million or so -- invent a "cloud connected" mouse trap, for example -- then I would embark on a de-McMansion-ization project in my town. Buy every such structure as it came on the market for whatever they ask, then knock it down and replace with an affordable 3-family townhouse and give first priority to young families, especially cops firefighters etc. Anyone wanna go in on this with me?
Being close together wouldn’t be as bad with single story homes and decent sized front/back yards. The problem is that two or three story homes 10 feet apart means it’s almost impossible to have privacy in any part of the yard. You can put up a fence but the homes beside you and behind you can still look down into your yard.
I think there is value to the blogger's comments. The gist of her blog is for people to rise up and shake the developers to design houses that are more functional than cosmetic and I think we all can agree to that.
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