Are suburbs and McMansions particularly American phenomena?
I know in Europe it’s much more regulated. I’m always impressed when I go to France because it seems to me that the French have a very good way of incorporating the new while still preserving what’s best about the old. It’s really a pleasure to drive around to old French towns and see how they have maintained the old agrarian model, where people live in the town and farm out in the field, so that you don’t have everything all messed up together. I think here, again as part of our independence — we think, well, if I have the money I can buy this property and do anything I damn well please on it. It’s part of that “live free or die” spirit that just makes it difficult for some people to cooperate for the greater good. And it’s really spectacular if you look at it in terms of child rearing — American babies not only have their own cribs, a lot of them have their own rooms! In much of the world that would be considered bizarre. I mean right from the get-go we are raised to be independent
