McMansion

Honey, the house ate the garden

When they think of Australia, people often imagine everyone enjoying the warm weather outside, and healthy kids learning sport or just playing in the back yard.  Many Australian families do live like that .  But an increasing number of them are opting to build or buy houses so large that they virtually eliminate any usable garden space.  They have supersized, and their home has become a McMansion.

They're pretty easy to spot.  They're so damn huge, for one thing.  Many of them have a large side order of ugly to go with that.  Often they're built in the outer suburbs, where land values are much less than in more established areas.  This seems to have encouraged families to spend  what they've saved by moving out there on covering virtually every square metre of the plot with house.  


Unfortunately, their popularity has encouraged increasing numbers of homeowners and developers to tear down smaller houses on good-sized plots in more established suburbs and build all over them as well.  What all of these places have in common, apart from their size, is a pocket-sized back garden, sometimes not more than three metres across, and often impractically L-shaped along two sides of the house as well.

It probably looks worse from the other sides

The extra space inside is given over to extra bedrooms, home theatres, "entertainment zones" or simply outsize hallways, kitchens and living areas.  Over the past half century the number of Australians per household has dropped by 30% but the size of houses has doubled.

The environmental impact of all this is profound.  Australia is already one of the highest per capita consumers of energy in the world, and these monstrosities are air conditioned throughout the summer and heated in the winter.  The outer suburbs where they conglomerate are already poorly served by public transport, and such low-density housing makes what there is even less practical, leading to increased reliance on the motor car.  Moreover, the sheer quantity of land concreted over to build them increases water run-off and therefore the risk of flooding.

Some have argued that one of the driving factors in the growth of the McMansion has been the desire for ostentation, often by those who can't really afford it.  Certain aspects of the phenomenon seem to bear this out.  Although there is often little in the way of usable outdoor space (for the kids to play in, for example), some land is generally found for a formal front garden whose only apparent purpose is to give the house "kerb appeal".  Often the only part of the exterior that looks as if any thought has been put into its appearance is the front, with the sides in particular often resembling those of a shop or industrial unit.

It has been claimed that the market for McMansions is declining.  The turbo-charged Australian housing market has lost some of its edge, and some of their disadvantages may only become fully apparent after purchase.  These include the eye-watering running costs, and the need to travel everywhere by car in an era of rising fuel costs.  We'll see.  In the meantime, McMansions are still being built, and they are likely to remain a feature of the Australian environment for many years to come.

For a readable summary of some of the problems posed by the McMansion phenomenon, this article by Professor Terry Burke may be of interest.