Harvard Soph Sees Upside of Bubble Bursting
Maybe those Harvard kids are kinda smart. We opened this editorial by sophomore Charles Drummond expecting a chuckle and nothing more. Turned out, the guy has a point, seeing the silver lining of a real estate market correction: There is another bubble that I hope will burst very soon—the ugly housing bubble. If you’ve ever…
Maybe those Harvard kids are kinda smart. We opened this editorial by sophomore Charles Drummond expecting a chuckle and nothing more. Turned out, the guy has a point, seeing the silver lining of a real estate market correction:
There is another bubble that I hope will burst very soon—the ugly housing bubble. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of visiting an upper-middle class subdivision, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Once you’ve found a subdivision that sounds like a WASPish Connecticut country club, you’ll be perfectly prepared to take in the grotesqueness of your surroundings. A guidebook, however, is entirely unnecessary. These subdivisions are filled with the easily identifiable domicile sometimes referred to as the McMansion. The McMansion design seems to me to have been originally conceived as an anesthetized imitation of the past, a sort of fairy-tale version of grandeur meant for mass consumption. As such, it is inevitably an artistic failure.
Luckily for him, this guy isn’t in a glass house throwing stones. He happens to currently reside in Adams House, which has arguably the best architectural bones of any of Harvard’s residential colleges.
The Ugly Housing Bubble [Harvard Crimson]
Sylvia I appreciate the passion of which you seem to be expressing I’m just afraid that it must be mixed in with some reality and facts.
Modern Skyscrappers (generally) are far more efficient in terms of HVAC then medium density townhomes or small apartment houses (again generally). This is due to economies of scale. Not to mention that skyscrappers are far more efficient in terms of land use. They also make for more efficient usage of mass transit as well as pedestrian trips.
As for your point regarding transportation distance to agriculture besides your unrealistic, utopian vision that we could on a planet with 6 billion people have cities/towns be self-sustaining with surrounding farms – the reality is that fuel costs (both in terms of monetary and pollution) are absolutly miniscule in terms of the cost of agriculture and become even less when you consider that unless everyone is going to pick their own produce, you’re still going to need transportion to bring the food to the people. Finally it is also far more efficient to grow agriculture products in places that are best suited for it (ex: apples in Washington/New York; Citris in Florida; Cattle in the Mid West) and then ship it to market then it is to use energy duplicating those efforts all over the place especially in areas where climate and topography make such efforts difficult at best.
It is interesting that you (most likely a Brownstone owner) has a vision of the world that makes your lifestyle (i.e. townhome living) the most ‘responsible’; unfortunatly it just isnt true.
Come on people, enough of the doom and gloom. Yes, we will all agree that fossil fuel will not last forever, but I am also confident that man will come up with alternative energy sources. This does not mean that we should waste what we now have, but come on.
David:
No, I’m not a pro-Atlantic-Yardser. The issue isn’t simply density vs. sprawl, it’s sustainable densities vs. unsustainable densities. I don’t think our megacities (skyscrapers, brownstones and all) are sustainable for the same reason that I don’t think that McMansions are sustainable: both require massive inputs of energy, and from a source that is non-renewable and ultimately irreplaceable by any other energy source.
Both contemporary cities (at their current scale and in their current configuration) and McMansion subdevelopments are:
– too far removed from sources of food (farms), thus necessitating huge oil inputs to transport, refrigerate and package food to be shipped in
– too energy inefficient in terms of heating/cooling (skyscrapers, like McMansions, require ridiculous amounts of oil or natural gas to heat or air condition).
In addition, McMansions are too far removed from places of employment, and any kind of shopping/commerce/civic institutions like schools and post offices, thus necessitating massive energy expenditures for commuting and driving to Walmart.
If you want a name for what I DO think is sustainable, I guess it would be some kind of New Urbanism, with people living in smaller towns or small cities with relatively high densities surrounded by some kind of farmland. But it doesn’t look like we’re set to transition to that kind of workable model any time soon.
And, good New Urbanist that I am, I’m as much of a sucker for beautiful old houses as the next guy, but I realize that, yeah, not everyone can live in one. But I think one of the reasons people love the old houses is that they represent, historically, a time when things were built more to a human scale. They represent a very modest, sustainable scale of living (which is why they’re still standing, they’re built to last) with extra energy expended to make them beautiful as well (hence all the details, plaster scrollwork, etc, etc).
I’d like to agree with you on your first point. The cultural mindset of conspicuous consumption that begets McMansions does indeed seem to be the same one that begat brownstones in the first place (and, as noted, the same one that insists that brownstones NEED central air). But.
It’s not just that people are greedy now and build McMansions and people were greedy back then and built brownstones. People back then were just as greedy, but they lived in a system with some natural constraints, and they built on a scale that reflected those constraints and still tried to make the finished product aesthetically pleasing.
Now we live in a system that gives the illusion that we have no constraints, and we build as if the sky’s the limit, and we tear old things down in a mad rush to make our cities even less sustainable and less attractive. The brownstone renaissance is a backlash against that kind of development, but I wish it would go further. I wish instead of being co-opted by the gut-reno, central air folks, instead of clinging to the love of brownstones as a purely aesthetic, status indicator kind of a thing, it would, as a movement (I guess movement is too grandiose a word at this point) realize that no brownstone is an island, so to speak. Brownstones are part of the bigger system of the city, and the city is part of the bigger system of this country…
That’s a very disorganized (and very long) train of thought, I know (sorry Brownstoner, maybe I should get my own soapbox).
Adams House is not as nice as Dunster or Eliot or Lowell, architecture-wise. I was in Leverett.
I seriously doubt that too many people are ripping out c1800s original plaster to install A/C but if they are then that probably advisable given the amount of lead paint that in contains.
As for the enviromental cost, sheetrock properly installed is far far better at insulation than 19th century plaster could ever dream of being and so from strictly a ‘fuel’ perspective, over a long period – yes t probably would be more efficient to replace the plaster (I am certainly not advocating that however)
but I hope you aren’t now trying to claim that your original post didnt have at least some hint of condensention in terms of sheetrock construction.
David, Bubbellah, I hate to jump on the bandwagon here, but, hey, you called me out. I’m talking about ORIGINAL plaster, which has already been manufactured and installed (back in the 1800’s) and has great insulation value. You’re not saying that it’s better for the environment to rip this out and throw up some sheetrock?
David, I understand your points but I just don’t think people will be renovating Toll houses – I would imagine that due to the quality of the construction (or lack thereof), people will be better off tearing them down and building new, which is happening a lot with older homes in the ‘burbs, as babs pointed out.
Of course the Levitt houses have been redone they are 60 years old – Please find me a single Brownstone still standing that hasn’t been updated and redone (even if the details are intact) at least once.
In fact Anon @11:09 original point was that in 100 years no one will be RENOVATING a Toll Brothers House. – Which of course just like Levitt homes AND Brownstones have been – so will ‘Toll’ houses.
if bklyn were completely filled with brownstones, would they still be special? NO. it the diversity that makes it special, and without have a mcmansion to compare to a brownstone, there is no sense of difference. mcmansions have their place, in the burbs, and I can appreciate them there..i just dont like when they pop up on a block completely lined with townhouses. the environment aside, who doesn’t dream of having a mcmansion in the pocono mountains…fresh air, greenery, hicks..what more could you ask for.