I went for a nice walk with a friend through the neighborhood this evening, as we so often do. We noticed that a Victorian house just a couple blocks down was about halfway through a big renovation job. The owners appeared to be doubling the square footage and overall footprint of the house, no doubt also doubling the value as well. Good for them, I thought.
But as we strolled past maybe six or seven more houses undergoing similar construction all on the same block, something dawned on me. I told her, “You know…this neighborhood will forever consist of considerably less green space, with all these bigger houses and smaller yards.”
She responded, “Why don’t you try to look at the bright side for once? At least they didn’t move to the suburbs.”
She had me there. I’m usually a big fan of urban infill. So why was I having an adverse reaction to all these home improvement projects?
As we walked on, I turned this question over in my head for several blocks before I figured it out. It has to do with a seemingly benign word in the phrase “home improvement project”: improvement. If you’ve ever read an appraisal or the county property assessor’s report for your home, you may have noticed that your property has two distinct values for two distinct components: the land and the improvements. The improvements refer to any permanent buildings or structures built on the land. Unless your home is a cabin on 4000 acres of beachfront or a hovel on the strip in Las Vegas, the value of the land will usually be a fraction of the value of the improvements. In other words, houses are worth way more than empty lots. Also, because home values are mostly a function of price per square foot, bigger houses are generally worth more than smaller houses. Therefore, doubling the size of your house roughly doubles the value, regardless of the size of the yard. Makes perfect sense, right?
Well, mostly. But similar to how the laws of Newtonian physics begin to break down as certain conditions—such as the velocity or temperature of matter—become more extreme, the fundamental principles of city planning, zoning laws, and home valuation sometimes cease to create the best urban spaces possible. Times are changing. Conditions aren’t what they were in the 50s when many of these laws and systems were created. Most notably, we’ve redlined the economy and our consumption of natural resources at the same time our sense of community and our level of personal fitness have approached absolute zero. The correlations are subtle but present.
I admit that many factors intertwine in unfathomably complex ways both as causes and effects of modern life. It’s difficult to say that this problem over here is a direct result of that cause over there. However, I do believe that the shape, structure, utility, sustainability, community, beauty, and green space of and within our cities crucially impact the quality of our individual and collective lives in ways we’re only beginning to understand. The growing popularity of new urbanism within planning departments and development companies across the country—across the world even—suggests that perhaps the old rules don’t always work as well as they should. As the world changes, we must adapt to these changes with purpose and intention.
Well, so what? Does this esoteric blather really matter to us regular folk on the micro scale? My answer is yes. Specifically, I believe we need smaller houses and bigger yards, and that our own physical, mental, and spiritual health depend on it.
When we build bigger, better inside spaces (i.e. our homes and businesses) and decrease the quality and quantity of our outside spaces (i.e. our yards and parks), we incentivize ourselves to spend more time inside and less time outside. This cuts us off from interaction with our neighbors as well as with nature. Sociologists tell us it also tends to fatten us up. These are no small things. We need more community, not less; more fresh air, sunlight, and connection to all-things-green, not less; more exercise, not less.
I personally know exactly two of my neighbors, and I don’t know those two very well, partly because I live in a triplex surrounded by large condo buildings and houses with tall fences. The buildings around me have virtually no yards. Avoiding cars as they dart in and out of the underground garage comprises my only interaction with the condo owners. But I am just as susceptible as everyone else; the nicer and bigger my apartment or home, the more time I tend to spend indoors. My current apartment is the smallest quarters I’ve had in years, and my time here also corresponds to the period in which I’ve spent the most time outside in the yard, created my first food-producing garden in two decades, started my first bee colony and compost pile, and walked and biked more than I have driven.
Perhaps even more important than those factors, however, is our runaway consumerism. From the very first television commercial we see as children, we’re imbued with the idea that more is better. We must buy the latest, biggest, and best as often as we can, even when we can’t afford it. Buy a house. Fill it with stuff. Buy a bigger house. Fill it with more stuff. I’m as bad as anyone. I have an iPod, an iPod Shuffle, an iPhone, two digital cameras, two computers, two bicycles, and over twenty pairs of shoes.
I also recognize that virtually none of this stuff improves the quality of my life—at least not for very long—or makes me any happier than I was when I didn’t have it. In fact, as I’ve begun to downsize my wardrobe, my collection of gadgets and toys, and the size of my house, my life has become less cluttered. My mind is less distracted. I’m more organized. I save more money and accrue less credit card debt. My heating bills are lower. I don’t have to work as much to support my lifestyle. I have more free time. I can more easily make do with smaller spaces when I have less junk to store. And I enjoy the things I do have more when I have fewer things altogether.
I know, I know, the annoying simplify-your-life movement is nothing new. But do we really have a choice anymore? What will happen if we continue our trend toward buying more and more stuff, mostly on credit, to fill our ever-larger homes surrounded by ever-smaller yards in endlessly sprawling megacities? Our budgets won’t sustain it. The economy won’t sustain it. The ecosystem won’t sustain it. Our personal need for community won’t sustain it. Our waistlines won’t sustain it. Our souls won’t sustain it. I would argue that we’ve already reached the breakdown point on all these fronts, and if the current economic crisis, global warming, obesity rates, and spate of school shootings are any indication, we’ve already begun to see the fallout in myriad ways.
I’m not so sure we really do need bigger spaces to store our increasing pile of stuff. I think we can be more efficient with what we already have, downsizing our possessions and our unfulfillable desire to have bigger, better, more—and I’m guessing my depression-era grandparents would be proud of that conclusion. I’ve come to disagree with the belief that "unimproved" land has virtually no value. The next house I buy will be very small, in a pedestrian-friendly community, and will have a big beautiful yard in which to plant my garden and spend time reading in the shade. Or perhaps I’ll just work on making my current home and yard more usable, more efficient, healthier, and more neighborly, instead of just adding square footage or buying something new. I bet the flora, fauna, and other people in my neighborhood will appreciate that too.
But as we strolled past maybe six or seven more houses undergoing similar construction all on the same block, something dawned on me. I told her, “You know…this neighborhood will forever consist of considerably less green space, with all these bigger houses and smaller yards.”
She responded, “Why don’t you try to look at the bright side for once? At least they didn’t move to the suburbs.”
She had me there. I’m usually a big fan of urban infill. So why was I having an adverse reaction to all these home improvement projects?
As we walked on, I turned this question over in my head for several blocks before I figured it out. It has to do with a seemingly benign word in the phrase “home improvement project”: improvement. If you’ve ever read an appraisal or the county property assessor’s report for your home, you may have noticed that your property has two distinct values for two distinct components: the land and the improvements. The improvements refer to any permanent buildings or structures built on the land. Unless your home is a cabin on 4000 acres of beachfront or a hovel on the strip in Las Vegas, the value of the land will usually be a fraction of the value of the improvements. In other words, houses are worth way more than empty lots. Also, because home values are mostly a function of price per square foot, bigger houses are generally worth more than smaller houses. Therefore, doubling the size of your house roughly doubles the value, regardless of the size of the yard. Makes perfect sense, right?
Well, mostly. But similar to how the laws of Newtonian physics begin to break down as certain conditions—such as the velocity or temperature of matter—become more extreme, the fundamental principles of city planning, zoning laws, and home valuation sometimes cease to create the best urban spaces possible. Times are changing. Conditions aren’t what they were in the 50s when many of these laws and systems were created. Most notably, we’ve redlined the economy and our consumption of natural resources at the same time our sense of community and our level of personal fitness have approached absolute zero. The correlations are subtle but present.
I admit that many factors intertwine in unfathomably complex ways both as causes and effects of modern life. It’s difficult to say that this problem over here is a direct result of that cause over there. However, I do believe that the shape, structure, utility, sustainability, community, beauty, and green space of and within our cities crucially impact the quality of our individual and collective lives in ways we’re only beginning to understand. The growing popularity of new urbanism within planning departments and development companies across the country—across the world even—suggests that perhaps the old rules don’t always work as well as they should. As the world changes, we must adapt to these changes with purpose and intention.
Well, so what? Does this esoteric blather really matter to us regular folk on the micro scale? My answer is yes. Specifically, I believe we need smaller houses and bigger yards, and that our own physical, mental, and spiritual health depend on it.
When we build bigger, better inside spaces (i.e. our homes and businesses) and decrease the quality and quantity of our outside spaces (i.e. our yards and parks), we incentivize ourselves to spend more time inside and less time outside. This cuts us off from interaction with our neighbors as well as with nature. Sociologists tell us it also tends to fatten us up. These are no small things. We need more community, not less; more fresh air, sunlight, and connection to all-things-green, not less; more exercise, not less.
I personally know exactly two of my neighbors, and I don’t know those two very well, partly because I live in a triplex surrounded by large condo buildings and houses with tall fences. The buildings around me have virtually no yards. Avoiding cars as they dart in and out of the underground garage comprises my only interaction with the condo owners. But I am just as susceptible as everyone else; the nicer and bigger my apartment or home, the more time I tend to spend indoors. My current apartment is the smallest quarters I’ve had in years, and my time here also corresponds to the period in which I’ve spent the most time outside in the yard, created my first food-producing garden in two decades, started my first bee colony and compost pile, and walked and biked more than I have driven.
Perhaps even more important than those factors, however, is our runaway consumerism. From the very first television commercial we see as children, we’re imbued with the idea that more is better. We must buy the latest, biggest, and best as often as we can, even when we can’t afford it. Buy a house. Fill it with stuff. Buy a bigger house. Fill it with more stuff. I’m as bad as anyone. I have an iPod, an iPod Shuffle, an iPhone, two digital cameras, two computers, two bicycles, and over twenty pairs of shoes.
I also recognize that virtually none of this stuff improves the quality of my life—at least not for very long—or makes me any happier than I was when I didn’t have it. In fact, as I’ve begun to downsize my wardrobe, my collection of gadgets and toys, and the size of my house, my life has become less cluttered. My mind is less distracted. I’m more organized. I save more money and accrue less credit card debt. My heating bills are lower. I don’t have to work as much to support my lifestyle. I have more free time. I can more easily make do with smaller spaces when I have less junk to store. And I enjoy the things I do have more when I have fewer things altogether.
I know, I know, the annoying simplify-your-life movement is nothing new. But do we really have a choice anymore? What will happen if we continue our trend toward buying more and more stuff, mostly on credit, to fill our ever-larger homes surrounded by ever-smaller yards in endlessly sprawling megacities? Our budgets won’t sustain it. The economy won’t sustain it. The ecosystem won’t sustain it. Our personal need for community won’t sustain it. Our waistlines won’t sustain it. Our souls won’t sustain it. I would argue that we’ve already reached the breakdown point on all these fronts, and if the current economic crisis, global warming, obesity rates, and spate of school shootings are any indication, we’ve already begun to see the fallout in myriad ways.
I’m not so sure we really do need bigger spaces to store our increasing pile of stuff. I think we can be more efficient with what we already have, downsizing our possessions and our unfulfillable desire to have bigger, better, more—and I’m guessing my depression-era grandparents would be proud of that conclusion. I’ve come to disagree with the belief that "unimproved" land has virtually no value. The next house I buy will be very small, in a pedestrian-friendly community, and will have a big beautiful yard in which to plant my garden and spend time reading in the shade. Or perhaps I’ll just work on making my current home and yard more usable, more efficient, healthier, and more neighborly, instead of just adding square footage or buying something new. I bet the flora, fauna, and other people in my neighborhood will appreciate that too.
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