It has been clear to me that homes will be smaller, certainly in the U.S., in the future. For the last 20 years, I have stated this forecast. There are many reasons and trends that point to smaller homes as we move ever more into the 21st century.
This forecast is going against the general expansion of the American home since WWII. The size of the new home in America is now close to three times the size of the average new home in 1950
· 1950: 983 square feet
· 1960: 1,289
· 1970: 1,500
· 1980: 1,740
· 1990: 2,080
· 2000: 2,266
· 2010: 2,392
· 2014: 2,657
This post-war expansion went right along with the wealth and affluence of the country in the middle and final third of the 20th century. It was called “the American Century” and all was good with the huge moves to the suburbs first and then the exurbs a bit later. This post-war time was when the middle class expanded to record levels. Every home was acquiring the new appliances and cars called for in the “planned obsolescence” economy.
Refrigerators started small as did stoves, toasters and all kitchen appliances. In the living room, the big radio was replaced with an even bigger cathode-ray-tube TV. People collected books, records, and then cassette tapes, CDs and DVDs. The kitchens ended up expanding to the restaurant level with stainless steel freezers, stoves, and dish-washing machines.
Bigger was better. Bigger was “keeping up with the Joneses” Suburbia and then exurbia grew ever further away from the central cities into corn fields and vast farms where expansion could continue.
The nuclear family with two parents and two to four kids was the dominant family structure. This meant that, through time each member of the family got a radio, a TV, a computer and even a car for that expanding garage and driveway.
Then came several things that led to the Shift Age in the early part of the 21st century:
-the move from analog to digital
-personal computers, then laptops and smartphones
-the Internet
-the global economy
-the microprocessor chip
-the cloud
The three most important of these changes to affect the size of the American home were the move from analog to digital, the microprocessor chip and the Internet.
Analog to Digital
This was a gargantuan transition. One result was the elimination of physical stuff that we all needed to store at home. Records, books, tapes, CDs and DVDs were all physical products we purchased and stored. 20 years ago I lived in a 1200-square foot condo. I measured the amount of linear feet of all my shelves that I used to store all my “media” and it was some 90 feet. I had hundreds of LPs, hundreds of CDs and was beginning to expand my small DVD collection. But the books! I have always been a book magnet in my life. No matter how many books I gave away or donated, I always seem to have more incoming. Lots of stuff.
The Chip
The microprocessor with an integrated circuit is the reason every device we have is becoming smart [ and now beginning to become “intelligent”]. It also miniaturized power. The number of transistors in a mid-century radio was 5-8. Current chips have the equivalent of a few hundred million transistors. More power, a fraction of the size
The Internet
In addition to being the most disintermediating invention since the moveable-type press, this connected the world in an unprecedented way. Ultimately at the speed of light. It also became the backbone of all media. As speed and storage increased exponentially all kinds of media could be watched in real-time on all screens. Cable TV now comes through the Internet, not the coaxial cable. Antennas are no longer needed.
So all these changes mean that we don’t need to have room for all our content in whatever form we have collected it. It can all be “in the cloud” or “on the device”, not on row after row of shelves. [I like to buy books when they go on sale, so I am always buying eBooks, such as Tolstoy’s complete works for $1.99 or all of Thomas Wolfe’s or Ernest Hemingway’s novels. I did a quick count and I have over 400 books on my large-screen iPhone. Assigning one inch as the width of a book, that translates into 34 feet of linear bookshelves. Yes of course I have about half that number of physical books but I only have to house one third of my library. I no longer have all physical music, it is all digital, and either in the cloud or on my devices, which are all smaller than those I owned 20 years ago.
Now we look at all the technology we have, and it is also smaller. I had a 32 inch Sony before I got my first flat screen TV. It was huge! My first flat-screen was 42 inches and four inches deep and I hung it on a wall, just like a painting that size. My MacAir is the smallest laptop I have owned, and another old Mac houses my music and other media. I think my 65-inch flat screen now is less in total volume than that huge cathode-ray tube Sony.
So digital, technology and high-speed electronic-connectedness frees up a lot of space.
How we live in the United States
This is a big trend, the downsizing of US households in terms of people. The average US household is getting smaller
Part of this is due to the huge increase in number of US households that have only one person.
Affordable Housing and Homelessness
These are global trends. The need for more affordable housing and the increase in homelessness. Generally speaking, the smaller the house the more affordable it will be to build. Affordable usually means smaller certainly on a cost per square foot basis. Until all humans have a home, they don’t and are “homeless”
It is estimated that close to 2% of the global population is homeless, or 150 million people. The US averages roughly 500,000 homeless people on any given day. Until they are housed, they are perceived as a problem.
In many parts of the US there is a growing perception that “real estate is expensive”. This has led to many stories, such as this one about how traditional new home developers are building small to tiny homes, such as this story in the NYTimes .
Climate Crisis
Humanity needs to lower its emissions. Humanity needs to conserve energy. A smaller home lowers use of energy, and often emissions. Of course the costs to maintain a small house are less than a larger one. So as we try to do our part in facing this existential crisis, smaller is better.
The US homes will be getting smaller due to all these dynamics.. I am not sure what the average size will be, but I think we are looking at mid-20th century numbers of around 1,000 feet. This is much less than half of the current size.
Downward we go. Smaller is better in the future.
Thanks for the information Gordon.
If you are using Apple Music and haven't "tasted" Apple Lossless there on one of the new M-chip MacBook Pro models you're missing out. I was an DJ and listened to much of my current library thru studio monitors at the station. With Lossless and my M-chip MacBook I've heard many new things on the same music! And the instruments sound like theselves as well!