aside from magic juice pyramid schemes, this is my favorite utah rant topic. so for the record, i DO hate mcmansions. the wikipedia article is great.
mcmansion's are built because greedy developers want to squeeze every square foot they can out of the development land they buy, so they cram these monster faux houses on tiny lots, and people (especially around here) just drink whatever they are being served, so they buy them. it's the job of the city council to put in place restriction on square footage to lot size ratio's - but the city councils are usually filled with developers, real estate agents or other affiliated cronies and so that will never happen. and about the trees - yeah, they usually bulldoze down any trees, bluffs or variations in the terrian to make building easier. this is something that local government should regulate as well, but they don't. it's the whole "free market" issue - you can't expect these greedy SOB's to NOT try and make as much money as possible, so that's why you have to have something like a city council step in to represent the people and the community, and to think longer term than flipping the next mcmansion. and about the parade of homes - holy cow, that's got to be the most sickening thing i've ever experienced here in utah. a couple of years back i went to a handful of them and i had to quit on account of my aversion to vomiting. it seems as though these home owners could've saved a lot of trouble by just putting a big sign in their yard that says "I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I HAVE MORE MONEY THAN YOU DO." fake plaster, fake wood, fake bricks, fake antiques, fake "old world european-ness". it's just too much for me. thank you ivory, patterson and local city councils for making utah just that much more embarrassing of a place to live. </rant> -josh /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
