"Pete C." > wrote:
> The critical part here is the yards. There are far too many 4,000+ sq.
> ft. micro mansions squashed into tiny postage stamp lots that provide
> absolutely no play area for children. When I was looking for a house the
> requirement was an absolute minimum of two acres, you can easily add on
> to a small house, it is far more expensive and difficult to add on to a
> small lot.

I don't have kids, so the issues might be quite different. Here in the city
I have minimal yard space (a 10' x 12' patio with 1 to 3' of garden border
around it), with a 60' x 80' common courtyard beyond that. But within a very
short distance (10 to 15 minute walk), there are vast tracts of public
parkland, much of it river front. That is my space. (There are smaller parks
right in my neighborhood.) I think newer cities tend not to have some of the
vast parks that cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and
Washington, DC have, and that's certainly true of the suburban areas
virtually everywhere. If you don't got the green space on your own property,
you don't got it at all. There's a dearth of convenient park land in much of
suburban America. Anyway, it's a different way of doing things... private
green space vs. public green space.

When I was a kid in the 1960s living in Philadelphia, we had I guess what
would be a rather large house on a quite small lot. Though it was a twin or
duplex, it had 6 bedrooms and 3-1/2 baths, and a 2 car garage on a 39' x
170' lot, built in 1926. To some, that would be a small lot, but with 5
kids, we didn't seem to think so. We did have the closeby parks in that city
too.

> The big problem is that nearly all development in recent decades has
> centered around micro mansions and apartments, i.e. pseudo high end and
> very low end. There has not been nearly enough development of decent
> mid-range neighborhoods with 2+ acre lots and 1,500-2,000 sq. ft.
> houses.

Around here that would be a developer's dream... to demolish and rebuild at
a higher density! ;-) There have been at least two major land deals in this
area that involved buying up entire neighborhoods built in the 1950s/60s
with 1-2 acre lots and relatively small houses. The developer will tear down
ALL the old houses and built townhouses and condominums in their place,
along with some retail and office. Land near major transit lines has just
gotten too valuable to leave at low density. Of course, stuff such as this
has gone on for centuries. Midtown Manhattan was farmland once, was
residential once, and is now skyscrapers.

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