Housing In The Future

I just finished reading an article by Walter Russell Mead called From Levittown To Suburbia. I'm a big fan of Mead. Even though I'm a conservative and he is a liberal, he is a completely common sense liberal, who is not afraid to hold liberalism's feet to the fire. He is a deep-thinking intellectual worth reading on a regular basis.

From Levittown To Suburbia, is one installment in Mead's commentary on America's "Blue Social Model." In this installment, he challenges the current notion that the younger generation preferres to live in New Urbanism style high density housing on top of public transportation lines.

Even though I'm a conservative, I'm a New Urbanism kind of guy; I would prefer to live in a condo above a Metro or high speed rail line, rather than where I live. I live in a small single family home in a former working class suburban neighborhood, but that is just me. Downtown Rockville, Maryland, and Kentlands in Gaithersburb, Maryland, are my models when it comes to housing. I'm also a big fan of public transportation, because I hate driving, especially in the DC area. If I didn't have to haul drum and band equipment, and public transportation ran 24 hours per day, it's more than likely that I wouldn't own a car...back to Mead...

Based on his research, most Millenials would prefer to live in single family homes in the suburbs and exurbs, but they can't afford to. What are we going to return to? We are going to return to the multi-generational single family home of days gone by. Many builders are now offering that kind of housing unit: They are offering large single family homes with separate sections for two or three generations of family members. I can also see this becoming a model for two or three unrelated families that get along well, choosing to live together in this type of housing. If you go back in history, it wasn't that long ago, that multi-generational living arrangements were the norm here in the United States. When my parents were first married, and my father was going to graduate school, they lived in the home where my mother grew up with her 12 brothers and sisters...all but 5 who never married, and continued to live in the same house until the day they died.

I am a New Urbanist Conservative; yes we do exist, I do agree with Mead's assessment. Read his article. It makes total sense. I can see an America, where multiple generations share housing, taking a large burden off of the social services industries when it comes to caring for Grandma and Grandpa in their golden years, while they provide valuable services in helping raise their grandchildren without the need for day care, as well as making things easier for the younger generations to get themselves planted in the American culture and economy, with the help coming from two generations of family stability providing family assistance, as opposed to government assistance.

We'll see...