Quote Originally Posted by GLC1968 View Post
Are you suggesting that 1700 sf is BIG? Because if so, then yes, you need to experience a bit more of rural/suburban America before drawing that conclusion. Compared to most of the people I know in real life, 1700 sf is quite small (for a house - not an apartment).

Apartments and townhomes are different - living small is much easier to do when you are willing to live in an urban environment. Unfortunately, that means letting someone else provide all your food, provide all your water and remove all your waste. When you consider all those factors, the cost of heating our 1700 sf has less of an impact on the environment than the cost to heat 500 sf and provide all the other services that we can secure for ourselves.
I think alot of environmentalists would argue with that. It's pretty well-established that urban living has been shown to be less harmful to the environment than spread-out living. You can grow your own food in urban areas in community gardens. The necessity of a car in rural and semi-rural areas is a huge environmental suck. You don't need that in an urban area because you can walk or ride a bike everywhere, and infrastructure is already in place. Now that more and more urban areas are allowing chickens, and many more people are growing some of their own food, and farmers markets are pretty much normal in urban areas (with produce from urban farms), I'd say that urban living can be alot lighter on the earth than rural living mainly because of the car and infrastructure issues.

One of my biggest peeves of "green building" are the houses built in the middle of nowhere that require personal transport in the form of an internal combustion engine (or electric car--coal fired plants required) to get anywhere and to obtain anything. If you never leave the farm, then that's different. But most people leave the farm every day, multiple times a day.

Just as an example, take someone who lives in a 900 SF house that is in an established urban neighborhood--no new roads or pipes required! This person could grow some of his or her own veggies, shop at local farmers markets that are accessible by foot or bike. Even better if there is an urban farm in the same city--they are becoming more and more common. And that person could telecommute or walk or bike to work. The benefits would be even greater if that person lived in an apartment and had a plot at a nearby community garden because that person would take up less space and use fewer resources than someone who lived in a house in a rural or suburban area, had to drive 20+ miles to work and back everyday (double that for a couple unless they carpool), and also had to drive everywhere to get other necessities.

1700SF for a house is a moderately sized house. I don't understand the need for 4000+ SF houses. However, I would not want to grow up in a 2-bedroom house with 6 kids and 2 parents like Shootingstar did!