Origins
Beginning in California in the 1980s, the larger home concept was intended to fill a gap between the more modest suburban tract home and the upscale custom homes found in gated, waterfront, or golf course communities. Subdivisions were developed around such communities, as well as in pre-existing neighborhoods, either in empty lots or as replacements for torn-down structures. The larger homes proved popular and demand increased dramatically, particularly in light of new land-management laws that were enacted in the 1980s and '90s. Efforts to economize may have led to a decline in quality for many of these new homes, prompting the coinage of the disparaging term.
In a development that runs counter to the previous boom in construction of McMansions, recent reports suggest that the Great Recession (2008–2009) has caused new house sizes in the United States to stabilize.
Read more about this topic: McMansion
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)