GROVETON’S LEXICON AND TMT’S LOCATION VARIABLE COSTS – NOTES FROM UNDERWATER MORTGAGE COMMENTS:
Groveton, Good to hear from you.
You are right that the term “McMansion” is used to describe a range of inappropriately-scaled shelter options but as far as causing wide-spread confusion, it is not in the same league with the Core Confusing Words.
Actually, the admittedly ‘rough’ definition in Wikipedia is not bad. There is a list of characteristics which are stated to not ALL necessarily be present to be classified as a “McMansion.”
As EMR sees it there are two general categories of McMansions:
Mc Mansions INSIDE the Clear Edge
Large, recently built houses on small lots. These Units are frequently the result of “knockdown redevelopment.” These dwellings are disconcerting and disruptive for the Dooryarders and Clustermates. However, in the long term they MAY represent a transition to larger units in a given location.
When the dust settles from the ongoing housing bust, most of these McMansions will have far more square-footage than can be afforded by the vast majority of Households.
These may be wrong size house but not necessarily Wrong Size House in Wrong Location.
McMansions OUTSIDE the Clear Edge
The other form of McMansions are Big Houses on Big Lots – especially in scattered, orphan subdivisions. They would be among the 12.5 percent of the Urban dwellings that fall OUTSIDE the 87.5 Percent Rule.
These dwelling may be Big or REALLY Big but the key is that they are too Big for the actual income / lifestyle of owner. Real mansions are owned by people who could afford to throw parties that would fill up the entertainment areas and have out of town guests that fill the guest suites and / or they can afford to let them sit vacant for months at a time. There is a subset of McMansions called McLodges that are vacant most of the time.
Many owners of McMansions know they bought more house than the can afford / use. These dwellings have been marketed as “investments” in the housing obesity binge over the past 35 years.
From a settlement pattern perspective the problem is not the SIZE of the dwelling, it is the amount of land that is taken up for a single Urban Household.
From an economic perspective it is the SIZE and the LOCATION of these dwellings and the fact that they have been subsidized by Agency and Enterprise actions that generates dysfunction.
Others can speak for themselves but EMR does not live in a McMansion by any definition.
The dwelling plus, library, office and studio / conference room are in a substantial structure but not far from the median in the municipality and it is the same size as the others in its Dooryard and about the median for the Cluster.
The dwelling sits on a small lot (less than .2 acre) but the house is not too big for the lot. The Cluster is inside the Clear Edge around a Village-scale agglomeration and within walking distance of Main Street and a much shorter walk to a range of services in the Neighborhood via a path system. The Dwelling and Cluster would contribute to a Balance if the vacant and underutilized land within the Clear Edge were built out.
On the other hand Grovetons use of “socialist” IS a candidate for Core Confusing Words in the Fundamental Transformation of governance structure discussion because of its current wide-spread misuse.
There are no “socialists” as classically defined just as there are not “cities” as classically defined and not “rural” as classically defined. The world has moved on. See Harold Meyerson’s 4 March column “Who You Calling Socialist?” in WaPo. Even he is a “democratic socialist” not a “socialist.”
Groveton may be correct in describing the Obama administration program. However, there may be no alternative to “more government” given the state of the resources that citizens are left with after Supercapitalism has created:
The obscene Wealth Gap in the US of A and other First World Nation States,
The equally obscene Consumption Gap with the rest of the citizens of the planet, and
The Global Financial Meltdown – back to those Wrong Size House in the Wrong Location…
What did ANYONE expect would be the Global result when consumers were subsidized to buy stuff they could not afford and in the process provided Indians and Chinese with jobs making cheaper STUFF? Now they see no reason they should not Mass OverConsume too.
TooManyTaxes:
EMR thinks you were trying to slip in a trick question about Location Variable Costs.
The answer is very simple:
Both of the Households you hypothecate (as well as the neighbors who lives and works in Fredericksburg) would pay EXACTLY the same for the goods and services they actually used – no location-based subsidies or discounts.
Then they could decide if their choice of job location / and efforts to mitigate costs made sense.
EMR