Your Dream Home Could Be Ruining Everyone’s Life, Including Yours: An Excerpt From Diana Lind’s Brave New Home

The new book from writer and urban policy specialist Diana Lind hinges on a big question: Could the dream of the big, suburban-style-even-when-it’s-in-the-city home be just another thing that’s driving us apart and making us crazy? In Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing, she looks at the question from a host of angles. Here’s an excerpt.

BY DIANA LIND | There is a lot of discussion about our national malaise—one in eight Americans over age twelve has taken antidepressants— but we largely place the blame on the accelerating pace of life, distracting technology and media, and the downsides of globalization. Why is so little attention paid to the home, the place where we spend the most time? And why isn’t there a more robust public conversation about how living differently— more affordably, more communally, and more simply— could strengthen our society, economy, and health?

American demographics and social norms have shifted dramatically over the past century. Consider that at the turn of the twentieth century, most adults were married, a miniscule percentage were divorced, and the average family had 3.5 children. This type of household strongly influenced the building boom following World War II, when the suburbs rapidly expanded and a new car-centric approach to living flourished.

Today, the prior dominance of white, heteronormative families has given way to a much more diverse country. According to analysis from the Brookings Institution, children under eighteen are already anticipated to be “majority minority” in 2020, with the whole country expected to be minority white by 2045. The average age of first marriage has risen from early twenties in 1960 to late twenties today. Marriage rates overall have dipped to their lowest levels since recording began in 1867, at just 6.5 marriages per one thousand people.16 While the rate of divorce peaked in the 1990s, it’s still between 40 and 50 percent. Today’s average family size is just 3.14 people, including children, and only 35 percent of home buyers have children under eighteen in the home.Some 28 percent of Americans are now living alone. Average life expectancy is near seventy-nine, having gained a decade in the past half century. And these are just the demographics of today; imagine the world the next generation of Americans will inhabit. If trends continue, we should expect to see more people living alone, fewer new families (particularly among native-born Americans), further delay of marriage and more interracial marriages, and a population that skews older and older.

Americans’ daily life and preferences have also changed, whether by choice or by force, to become more virtual, more mobile, and less stable. A society built around driving is looking for ways to incorporate a love of ride-hailing apps, electric scooters, and walkable neighborhoods. Our television habit has morphed into a phone addiction. Single-earner households have turned into dual-earner ones, and women now make up the majority of the college-educated workforce. Steady jobs with daily commutes have declined, while the gig economy, working remotely, and even a rootless digital nomadism have taken hold. Freelancers currently make up 35 percent of the country’s workforce and are expected to become the majority in the next decade. Augmented reality and driverless cars are bound to shake up physical and social contours even more. But housing today largely looks the same as it did in 1950.

Granted, architecture has a certain permanence literally built but even brand-new developments are full of 2,500-square-foot houses with two-car garages. As so much of American life has changed, why hasn’t housing?

— from Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing (Bold Type Books). Reproduced with permission of the author and publisher.

Grab a copy of Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing here, or from the Philebrity Bookshop. 

Diana Lind has worked at Architectural Record magazine, Next City, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently the Executive Director of the Arts + Business Council for Greater Philadelphia. Follow her @dianamlind.