Why do we have to "Work so Hard" to make a living?

[jeff47]

135. Because it was very hard to build a house

Homebuilding was pretty damn difficult until the latter half of the 20th century. You built small because you were sawing every board by hand....starting from a log. Time passes and lumber is finally available directly, but you still are cutting it by hand. Power tools weren't ubiquitous on job sites until the 50s.

As for the farmstead, you have to remember every square foot used for "house" was a square foot you couldn't use for "farm". They had a pretty strong incentive to minimize the size of the house.

Yes, there is a degree of what's "normal" involved. But the ability to demand more space is directly related to how far we will now drive, and how much land we will now purchase for the house. For example, the countries you listed with smaller average home sizes don't have the concept of "exurbs" because they don't have enough land.

But this begs the next question....so what?

Yes, the bigger house will take more raw materials to build. But not that much more from an environmental impact perspective. And the really environmentally bad part (concrete) tends to be minimized as we build a lot more two-story houses than the first generations of suburbs.

Ironically the bigger house will actually take less energy to heat and cool it. To say insulation is "much better today" is a massive understatement. Lighting requirements are probably not that much different - since the house is big there's probably some rooms not occupied at night, which thus have lights off. Water demand is based on people, not house size.

About the only real negative for us is the increased miles we put on cars in order to have enough space to fit the big houses.