The nightmare of the American Dream

The concept of home ownership for all Americans is failing; in effect, the home ownership dogma is a house of cards. While the mega industry built around home building in the past 10 years has made home ownership possible for many people who might otherwise have been locked out, so to speak, it's my belief that the wanton construction and purchase of single family homes has been a more destructive than positive development for this country. Home ownership is the foundation of the so-called American Dream, but maybe it shouldn't be.

I've watched many excellent wild fields destroyed so housing developments could be built, driving out wildlife and destroying natural grass landscapes. I've observed suburban blight grow like fields of mushrooms, enveloping perfectly good acres of open land. I'm aware of the materials that are required to build thousands of single family homes, many with square footage in ten-plus thousand range. Perfectly good forests have been harvested, some no doubt illegally, to provide wood to build thousands of single family homes. The energy consumption around building and occupying suburban developments is outlandish, particularly for the mega-homes that have sprouted up around the country. Think about the poisons and toxins that go into making and keeping hundreds of thousands of lawns green, trees, shrubs, and flowers pest-free. Consider the resources used to deliver raw materials from their source, perhaps halfway around the world, to some half-acre plot of land in some average American city where people are eager to own their little piece of the real estate pie.

We are the greatest consumers of everything, but notably of petroleum products. Part of the reason is that people have moved to suburbs that are increasingly distant from their workplace. Living in the suburbs requires people to drive everywhere: to work, to the grocery store, to McDonalds, the post office, etc. James Howard Kunstler, a scholar of architecture and noted commentator on the American condition, has written extensively about the hazards of suburban sprawl. He notes, "We invested most of our late twentieth-century wealth in a living arrangement with no future. American suburbia represents the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. The far-flung housing subdivisions, commercial highway strips, big-box stores, and all the other furnishings and accessories of extreme car dependence will function poorly, if at all, in an oil-scarce future. Period."*

It's not that I want to deny people the opportunity to share the experience of owning a home of their own; it's that it is not a realistic and sustainable arrangement. Although the financial meltdown that we're living through today is a threat to the "American Dream," the greater threat posed by rampant suburbanization is a real national and global nightmare.
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*"Making other arrangements, a wake-up call to a citizenry in the shadow of oil scarcity," Orion Magazine, Jan/Feb 2007, http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7