Creating a market for home estates...

[update: I've been thinking about this article a lot, and I wish I called it "Stealing the American Dream..."]

The NYTimes Magazine covers the incredible growth of the Toll Brothers, one of the largest "home estate" (McMansion) home building companies in the country. One of the executives reported being impatient with the crticism that these types of developments cause sprawl and claims the company's only responding to market forces.

OK, Toll Brothers, you have no choice? But does the Toll Brothers have some hand in creating the market and therefore demand? Another executive chuckles, "we're like a marketing company that happens to build houses." Ah, the dirtiness of cashing in on the American Dream.

It's true, many people picture a large single-family home to call their own, a large backyard their kids can play in, the next-door neighbor, a street in front that isn't congested with traffic. The cul-de-sac developments do have that. But in choosing to live in these developments, families give up so many other aspects of the American Dream. They give up having schools nearby that their kids could bike or walk to, knowing people other than the neighbors that abut their properties, and supporting independent small businesses that invest in the town. Perhaps most importantly, they give up time which could be better spent in their lovely home with their family but is instead wasted on commuting to their job or being stuck in traffic running errands.

I'm all for development, and it's true that if the Toll Brothers didn't build on available land, some other developer would. And the Toll Brothers claim to be open to mixed-use. But it's like the West Windsor mayor, Shing-Fu Hsueh, says,

What's regrettable...was not that Toll was allowed by the courts to develop 290 acres or even that it will ultimately build more than a thousand homes here, but that the town didn't work with the company to create more of a mixed-use area - one where offices, stores and homes commingle, for example, or one where a different configuration allows more open land to be preserved.

"If I had the opportunity to see it done over again... I would have loved to see that."