I've hoped for some time that our generation will evolve away from the typical Baby Boomer dream of owning a giant pretentious house. If you ask me, there are too many suburban and exurban zones littered with McMansion "subdivisions." These developments (a far cry from real neighborhoods) consist of rows upon rows of new, identical, treeless "Texas Tuscan"-style homes that manage to pull off the rather impressive feat of being simultaneously joyless and unsustainable. The McMansion is perhaps best summarized in this Urban Dictionary entry:

A large and pretentious house, typically of shoddy construction, typical of "upscale" suburban developments in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Such houses are characterized by steep roofs of complex design, theatrical entrances, lack of stylistic integrity and backsides which are notably less fussy than their fronts. They are often placed closely together to maximize the developer's profits and appeal to people who value perceived social status over actual, physical, economic or historic value.

Although Nancy is just a school teacher, she mortgaged herself up to her neck to buy a new McMansion on Woodbridge Road Court in Clayton Hills Valley Estates at North Pine River Hollow Meadows.

As I understand it, the reasons people buy these houses must be because:

• they are cheap compared to the alternatives— you get a crapload more bang for the buck, but often at the expense of quality construction and good architecture;
• these types of homes are the only ones being built in many communities;
• people just don't know any better, because they've never lived in a human-scale home; and/or
• many of those that live in these suburban developments unconsciously embrace (or even defend) the rather racist foundations of Caucasian suburban flight in the late twentieth century.

We should be living closer to each other in smaller, more efficient, human-scale homes. On the other hand, this just seems a bit extreme.