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The fascination of the single family house
Paper for the ENHR Conference in Dublin, 2008
To be presented in Workshop 12: Housing Market Dynamics
Hans Kristensen
Centre for Housing and Welfare – Realdania Research
Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
Abstract
The owner occupied single family house has very often been neglected in
housing research, and it has been quite unpopular among architects and
urban planners for years. It has, however, been the favourite choice of most
families in Denmark over more than 40 years.
In the paper I summarize recent research findings from economy,
demography, sociology, anthropology and cultural science in Denmark
trying to explain the continued fascination of the single family house. Most
of the quoted research has been carried out in the Centre for Housing and
Welfare.
In the conclusion I argue that the single family house is in accordance with
the demands and lifestyles of the modernity – not in conflict to it. And if
there is a conflict it has a tendency to disappear in the dialectic relationship
between the house and it owner: we make a mark on our home – and it
makes a mark on us.
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Paper:
‘…the point is exactly that the importance of space varies depending on
time, place and social structure; ie it depends on variation in social and
spatial structures so that the driving causal power is always the social
situation, the action, the work or the nature that affects the space’
(Tonboe 1993, p 518).
Homes: The space overlooked by sociology
In Danish sociological analyses and discussions of the interplay between life
and space, people’s homes have often been overlooked. Extensive analyses
have been made of the importance of neighbourhoods and residential areas,
and sociologists have analysed the use and development of urban spaces for
many decades. However, the spaces very close to individual human beings –
their homes, where they spend up to two-thirds of their lives – have not
attracted the interest of sociologists. This is particularly true with regard to
‘ordinary’, well-functioning people and the ways in which they live in and
with their homes. Only the housing and living conditions of poor and
socially ostracised groups have been examined, albeit with the main
emphasis on the significance of residential areas. In simplified terms, we
could say that it seems as if Danish sociologists share the political left
wing’s traditional antagonism against ‘the bourgeoisie’ in their detached
single-family houses.
Political opposition to single-family houses
The political opposition to ownership of single-family houses originally
stemmed from the political left wing. I once interviewed a former
syndicalist who, with regret, had seen his party swallowed up by the Danish
Communist Party in the 1920s, and he told how, as a young father, he had
bought an inexpensive property in Husum (which back then was a far-away
suburb of Copenhagen) on which he built a bungalow. When the party
leaders became aware of this, they told him that, as the owner of a house, he
had become a traitor to his class and was therefore expelled from the party.
The discussion of whether it was possible to be a good socialist and the
owner of a house at the same time was not only seen in the Communist
Party. In the Social Democratic Party, this issue gave rise to many
confrontations as well, although there was never a clear party line for or
against home ownership. In the post-war era, when the Social Democrats
took the lead in developing the welfare state, subsidies were provided both
for owner-occupied housing – ie single- or two-family houses and terraced
houses – and for rented housing units. Non-profit housing associations in
particular benefited from subsidies for rented housing.
There is still political opposition to single-family houses, but the reason for
it has changed. It is no longer treason against the working classes. The
opposition is still found on the left side of the political spectrum, but now
the focus is on single-family houses being a threat to an ecologically
sustainable society. Single-family houses are portrayed as the ‘4x4s’ of the
housing sector: they are too big, take up too much space and consume too
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much energy. In some contexts, they are considered to be an asocial type of
housing representative of a self-centred, individualistic way of life.
Professional opposition to single-family houses
The professional opposition is particularly manifest among urban planners
and architects. It has varied over time. In the 1950s and early 1960s,
architects’ attitudes towards single-family houses were not negative; in fact,
they were constructively working to ensure that such homes were optimally
designed, even if resources and floor areas were limited. During this period,
many excellent architectural solutions were seen in well-designed
standardised houses. However, when the standardised house boom hit
Denmark in earnest in the mid-1960s and peaked in the mid-1970s, planners
began to resist this type of housing. The resistance was expressed very
clearly by young architect and planner Ane Vium, who, with evident
disgust, described the trend in these terms: ‘the lava of single-family
housing is spreading across the landscape, destroying everything it touches.’
Most planners agreed with her in thinking of the loss of landscape valued in
the infinite rows of houses in what they called ‘areas shaped by chartered
surveyors’ with rigid road layouts and a multitude of 700 m2 sites. They also
thought of stereotypical family life and the lack of social life that such areas
would inevitably bring. When I bought my own house in 1974, one of my
sociologist colleagues – who lived in an ideologically correct commune –
made this sceptical and critical remark: ‘Choosing your home is a political
statement!’
The critical opposition of the time has not faded away completely. In an
interview with architect Jan Gehl in 2007, his scepticism about singlefamily houses was evident: ‘I don’t think single-family houses are ideal
homes for working men and women. They represent the American dream of
owning your own home. It’s a dream from a time when everyone more or
less had to do the same things at the same time. But we live in a different
world now in Denmark. Conditions have changed completely: the way we
organise our lives and the number of children we have are different from
what they were in the 1950s, when the concept of single-family housing
really took off. Today we don’t have as many children as we did then.
Divorce rates have gone up, and an increasing number of people live on
their own or in alternative family settings…. The single-family house is an
anachronistic type of housing that does not match our current lifestyle’
(Kraul & Madsen 2007).
The people’s choice: The democratic victory of the single-family house
Despite the criticism of politicians and professionals of owner-occupied
single-family houses, the majority of the population has chosen this type of
housing for the past forty or fifty years. More than fifty per cent of the
population currently live in single-family houses, and even more people
would like to have a house of their own (SBI & AKF 2001 and Mandag
Morgen 2003). It would be fair to say that, since the end of World War II,
single-family housing has outperformed all other types of housing in
Denmark. The victory of single-family housing is interesting because it
happened despite both political and professional resistance. It could be
called a democratic victory, as it was won through the deliberate choices of
individuals and families in a housing market that also offered other options.
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Out of the total Danish housing stock of 2.5 million housing units, 41% are
single-family houses, 5% are farmhouses; 14% are terraced, row or twofamily houses, while the remainder of about 40% are units in multi-storey
buildings (Vestergaard 2006).
Are housing spaces uninteresting?
Why do people choose to live in single-family houses when leading experts
have insisted for decades that it is not a good housing type? And what about
the life led in those houses? How much of it is due to the type of housing
and to individual spaces in a broad sense? How much is due to social
aspects, our own actions, work and current trends in society? How do we
change the houses – and they us?
I will try to answer these questions below, mainly on the basis of research
conducted at the Centre for Housing and Welfare (www.bovel.dk) since
2005, but also on the basis of recent literature on housing, people’s choice
of housing and various lifestyles.
A close-up on life in and with single-family housing
The following paragraphs are about facts and fascination of privately owned
homes. Most single-family houses are located on a lot of their own, and you
can walk around them. However, there is no sharp distinction between
owner-occupied units in single-family houses, two-family houses, terraced
houses or former farmhouses that now function as ordinary single-family
houses. With this relatively imprecise definition, we are actually talking
about the housing type in which more than half of the Danish population
live.
Age, design and location of the houses: The physical angle
There are about one million single-family houses in Denmark. They are
located in all parts and areas of the country, in the countryside and in towns
and cities. No less than 44% of them were built between 1960 and 1980.
Construction of single-family houses peaked in 1973, when almost 40,000
were built in one year. Only about 14% of these houses date from after
1980. This means that a large share of Danish single-family houses are
becoming relatively old. The size – and in particular the interiors – of these
houses clearly reflect the time in which they were built. In houses from the
1960s and 1960s, the living room or living rooms are large, centrally located
rooms intended to form the framework for family life and to be the place
where guests were entertained under the wood-clad ceilings. In modern-day
houses, the open plan kitchen/dining area fulfils this important role. In the
single-family houses of the past, toilets and bathrooms were smaller,
discreetly located, semi-private rooms. In contemporary houses, these rooms
are growing both in size and number (Jensen 2006), and the hand-held
plastic showerhead above the tub is being replaced with separate shower
cabins made of chrome, steel and frosted glass, just as there are a whirlpool,
several washbasins in a row and a plethora of mirrors. The round plastic
bowl with a 60W light bulb above the washbasin has been replaced by a
series of built-in halogen spots.
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Houses are growing larger. This is true of both new and already existing
houses. An average single-family house built between 1940 and 1959 has a
floor area of 119 m2; the newest houses typically have floor areas of 150160 m2. When older houses change owners, the typical process is that the
first renovation or modernisation focuses on the kitchen, which is soon
followed by the bathroom and toilet. Once the owners can afford it, they
generally extend the house. Extension activity in recent years has been on a
par with the building of new single-family houses: 2.7 million m2 of
extensions and 2.9 million m2 of new floorage. On average, old singlefamily houses have thus grown by a little less than three square metres a
year.
There are single-family houses all over the country, but in cities they
generally make up much less than half of the housing stock. The opposite
applies in suburban and rural areas. This is more a function of historical
trends in urban housing stock than current housing needs and desires of the
people who live in cities. Families with young children in large towns and
cities would like to have a single-family house not too far away from the
city centre. Such houses exist, but a limited supply makes them too
expensive for families with young children.
Families’ financial situation and progress on the housing ladder: The
financial angle
Single-family houses are expensive to buy, at least in growth areas, and
expensive to live in until mortgages have been paid and inflation has had its
effect. A major reason why it has been difficult for (young) first-time buyers
to acquire a house is the dramatic price increases seen between 2000 and
2006. Banks and mortgage credit institutions have complex models to
calculate the maximum mortgage costs people can afford, based on their
income, available capital and number of children. The amount can be used
to calculate the maximum price they can afford to pay for a home. Some
years ago, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation made a simplified version
of these calculation models, which stated that people could afford to buy a
home at a price equivalent to two and a half to three times the household’s
annual income. This means that a family with a gross income of
DKK 700,000-800,000 would be able to buy a home at a price of DKK 22.5 million (Andersen 2006). This amount did not give – and still does not
give – people many options in the Copenhagen housing market. An annual
income of that magnitude allows a household to buy an apartment with two
and a half or three rooms, but not to buy a house unless the household has
some savings or capital, for example equity released in an owner-occupied
apartment or house. Even now, after a year of slowly falling prices, this
situation has not changed. However, within the price range of DKK 2.5-3
million, people will have a wide range of options outside growth areas, even
though prices have not dropped significantly there in recent years.
Purchase price is one thing; continuing to make mortgage payments on
one’s home is another. In addition to the purchase price, the continuing cost
of owning your own home depends on when the house was bought and what
kind of mortgage was chosen. To this should be added real property taxes,
heating, insurance, necessary repair work and general maintenance. Danish
families spend an average of 25% of their disposable income on their
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homes, a percentage that has climbed continuously since World War II. In
growth areas, the continuing costs associated with owning one’s own home
are significantly higher than the cost of living in a rented housing unit, at
least in the short term. In the longer term, price trends in the market for
owner-occupied housing should be taken into account.
If, for example, someone bought a house or apartment in the Greater
Copenhagen area when prices were in a trough in 1993 and left the owneroccupied housing market when prices peaked in 2006, he or she would – all
things being equal – have earned between 150% and 200% simply by living
in his or her own home. However, if we look at longer-term trends in
savings and capital gains, for example from 1985 to today, the situation is
much less dramatic. Average annual price increases during this time period
of a little more than twenty years amounted to between two and three per
cent. In other parts of the country, particularly in fringe areas, house price
rises have been much lower or non-existent. In other words, in those areas,
people pay a price for living in their own homes, albeit not very much, as
purchase prices are so low that instalments on loans do not represent the
same kind of burden on household budgets as they do in the growth areas
(Kristensen 2007).
Housing is one of the factors creating social and in particular financial
inequality in society. The main inequality is between owners and tenants. To
become an owner, a person has to have a certain reasonably stable financial
position or, alternatively, savings or an inheritance. There is thus an incomebased selection at the bottom of the housing ladder. It is clearest in large
cities and growth areas and less manifest in rural areas and small towns: the
higher the income group, the higher the percentage of people in that group
owning their own homes. For household incomes of less than DKK
250,000, the percentage of people owning their own homes is a little less
than 60%, whereas it is 90% for incomes above DKK 700,000.
If we look people’s occupations, there is no social selection: the average
percentage of workers owning their own homes is 70%, while it is 74% for
high-level salaried employees (Mandag Morgen 2003). Once a young
person has chosen a specific type of housing, the consequences of that
choice will accumulate in subsequent years. If people stay in an owneroccupied dwelling for a sufficiently long period of time, they will generally
reduce their loans. This could be called ‘forced savings’. If, on top of that,
they are fortunate enough to have a dwelling located in a growth area in
which housing prices go up, their ‘savings’ will accelerate due to the
increasing property prices. Rented dwellings may seem an inexpensive
alternative, but they do not lead to the same kind of savings. Jytte
Kristensen and Jørgen Elm Larsen deal with a number of the inequalities in
an article about poverty, social exclusion and housing (Kristensen & Larsen
2007). It is mainly these savings – or lack of them – that creates a difference
between owners and tenants. The article illustrates this inequality by quoting
a newsletter called Ugebrevet A4, which says that, on average, the
wealthiest 10% of home owners pass on almost DKK 8 million to their
heirs, while deceased tenants pass on only DKK 250,000 (Ugebrevet A4,
25 June 2007).
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Life stages and housing career: The demographic angle
Most single-family houses are designed for a family with two children. It is
in fact at the stage of life where people have (young) children that it is most
common to buy a house. The average age of people ‘acquiring’ a house has
gone up over the past twenty years: the average age now is thirty-five before
50% of the age segment in question own their own home. Twenty years ago,
the average age would have been thirty (SBI & AKF 2001). There are
several opinions about the reasons for this trend. Several planners who are
keen advocates of densely built cities and thus believe that large areas with
single-family houses are problematic see this as the expression of a wish to
stay in the city, also with children in the family. Just as journalist
trendspotters do, they talk about a new urban lifestyle that is more dominant
than the wish to have a single-family house of one’s own. An alternative
demographic or sociological explanation is that an increasing number of
young people in the age group from around 18 to around 30 have a young
lifestyle characterised by long-term education, low income, changing
partners and relationships, travelling and parties. At this stage of life, people
want a city dwelling and city life. Once they have found their life partner
and have started a family, a single-family house is what they want. The
house will be located either in a suburb or in a more remote (and less
expensive) small town. In an article entitled ‘Housing consumption –
generation, life and ethniticity’, Norwegian sociologist Ivar Frønes
describes this settling phase in which people around the age of thirty want to
find their ‘life’ partner, have children, find the right home for their family
and make a career in the labour market as a compressed and vulnerable
phase in life (Frønes 2004). If you make a wrong choice, the opportunities
to make another and start over are not nearly as good now as they were
thirty or forty years ago, when most people started a family and stepped
onto the first rung of the housing ladder in their early twenties.
Although single-family houses are generally designed for a family with
(two) children, only one-third of the houses are occupied by families with
children living with their parents. The majority of the other two-thirds of the
houses are occupied by families in which the children used to live in the
house (Jensen 2006). Almost half of all people aged 60 to 80 live in singlefamily houses; a large proportion of them live in some of the 440,000
houses built between 1960 and 1979, ie when that generation was in their
thirties, had young children and were ready to move into a house. This
means that the next wave of old houses put up for sale will be those built
during that time. This wave will emerge when the original owners are no
longer able to maintain the houses or when a spouse dies. Over the next few
decades, many of the single-family housing areas and their quiet streets will
be taken over by a new generation of young families. There will once again
be children playing in the gardens and streets, almost as it was when the
houses were new. Both on weekdays and at weekends, the areas will echo
with the sound of power saws and tree-felling, just as they will bustle with
builders’ vans due to the many maintenance and remodelling projects.
Who does not live in single-family houses? Very young people who have
just left home do not. When people leave the nest, they usually do so to
study or work in the city. At this stage in life, cities are immensely
attractive. The young people generally move into an apartment owned by a
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private landlord or a social housing association, but a few have an owneroccupied apartment. Seventy per cent of young people aged 18-29 live in
rented dwellings; the rest live in owner-occupied units or in cooperative
housing. A typical assumption would be that most single people aged 30-59
live in rented homes, but this is not the case. More than half of them live in
owner-occupied housing units, many of them in houses. If we look at the
group of people aged 60+, most of the unmarried or divorced (ie the older
version of ‘singles’) live in rented or cooperative units. Only one-quarter of
the members of this group live in owner-occupied homes. Almost two-thirds
of widows and widowers in the same age group (60+) live in rented homes.
Single-family houses and social life: The sociological angle
More than half of people aged 35-70 live in single-family houses, and a very
large proportion of young people have done so in their childhood. It is a
plausible sociological hypothesis – as reflected in the Jens Tonboe quotation
above – that this type of housing affects our daily lives, our attitudes and our
values. Furthermore, it is an indisputable fact that we change the interiors
and physical structures of the houses. The question is whether people’s lives
in and with their homes change their lifestyles, attitudes and values.
Various studies clearly show this correlation between people’s homes and
the ways they lead their lives. In their study of people’s attitudes to their
houses in four different single-family housing areas in Aarhus, Claus BechDanielsen and Kirsten Gram-Hanssen conclude that ‘[h]ousing projects thus
not only show that the (already existing) personalities of the people living in
them are reflected in their homes. The modifications to the buildings are a
function of people creating their own identities in and with their homes.
When people build and decorate their homes, they create a setting for
themselves and, in reality, they are thus in a process of creating themselves’
(Bech-Danielsen & Gram-Hanssen 2004, p 156). Other studies look at the
dialectic between space (understood as the local area) and various lifestyles.
In some housing areas it is the rule rather than the exception that carports
are used to store building materials, cement mixers and trailers and that
weekends are used for DIY home improvement projects or garden
landscaping. In other housing areas, such ‘messy’ activities basically only
happen when there is a change of ownership, and then they are mainly
carried out by professional builders on weekdays. The different lifestyles
make their marks on the housing areas and, conversely, people choose to
live in an area because of the signals it communicates about residents’
attitudes and activities (Ærø 2002). In the next phase, the ‘unwritten rules’
that apply in the area have a regulating effect on people's behaviour.
A classical sociological measure of how well a neighbourhood or housing
area works socially is the extent of contact and depth of social relations
between neighbours. A general assumption has been that single-family
house areas were social deserts in which people basically kept to
themselves, whereas more social housing types such as high-density, low
social housing areas or social housing areas with multi-storey residential
buildings in which there are club activities, a local housing association
board and a communal building were characterised by vibrant social life.
This is not true. The closest social contact, measured on the basis of
statements such as ‘we help each other by looking after each other’s
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children’, ‘we borrow things from each other’, ‘we participate in communal
activities’, etc, is seen in areas with single-family houses (Mandag Morgen
2003). This is not because the houses are designed to promote such social
life – quite the contrary, in fact – but because there is typically homogeneity
in terms of social status, attitudes, values and perhaps also age in the singlefamily housing areas.
People in single-family houses are very satisfied with the type of home they
have. Actually, when asked directly, people in all housing types would say
that they are pleased with the type of home they have. A number of studies
conducted by the Danish Building Research Institute (SBI) on various issues
occurring in social housing areas (Christiansen et al 1993 and Andersen
1999) showed that whenever less than 90% of residents in an area said they
were pleased with their home and the area in which they lived, that area was
an area with really serious problems (as determined by means of other
parameters such as vandalism, fear of violence and criminal activities, a
high resident turnover rate, etc). If people are asked indirectly about their
satisfaction with their current home by asking them what kind of home they
expect to have in five years from now, some interesting differences are seen
(SBI & AKF 2001). Almost all people (88%) living in a single-family house
say they expect to live in the same kind of home five years on. They have
reached the top of their housing ladder and are pleased with where they are.
By contrast, about half of the people who live in rented housing say they
expect to have moved out of their rented home into an owner-occupied
dwelling, typically a house.
Why are people so fascinated with houses? Otherwise, a modern lifestyle
today is urban, liquid and mobile. A house more or less represents quite the
opposite: being rooted and stable. Furthermore, most houses are located in
suburbs, where there is a dull and drab lack of culture, cafés and challenging
city life. In a sociological analysis of families who had recently moved to
various suburbs of Copenhagen, the difference between the intense city life
they had left and the new suburban life in open surroundings and natural
scenery was a recurring theme taken up by those families. An important
reason for the move was a desire to give the children the best possible
conditions to grow up in, and in that sense the families had got what they
wanted. However, some of them tried to reduce their city withdrawal
symptoms by telling themselves that it would be easy to move back to the
city later in life (Oldrup 2007). When people who have lived in suburban
single-family houses are asked, it seems that the assumed discrepancy
between life in a single-family house and a contemporary lifestyle has been
eliminated. These people find it most important that their house gives them
freedom to determine the framework of their everyday lives, which they do
by deciding how they want to lay out and use their homes and gardens. No
other housing type can offer a similar degree of freedom. Houses thus cater
to modern lifestyles with respect to a very crucial parameter: the desire for
the freedom to stage and shape one’s own life. Actually, our homes are one
of the most important ways in which we show who we are, what we stand
for and how successful we are, not only in terms of our rise on the housing
ladder but in terms of our entire life project (Bech-Danielsen & GramHanssen 2004).
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Housing and the current significance of homes: The anthropological angle
We are now moving into an anthropological analysis of the importance of
the house both to individuals and as an element of our culture. The
importance of houses was a key theme in the project entitled ‘Housing in
Time and Space’ carried out by Inger Sjørslev, Mark Vacher and Kirsten
Marie Raahauge (see for example Sjørslev 2007). A crucial point is the
distinction between a house and a home. A house is the physical structure,
the shell, the spaces; a home is the occupied house in which the residents
have made their mark and taken ownership of the spaces, turning them into
living spaces. An analysis of homes in Danish single-family houses clearly
shows that the process of taking ownership takes time (Vacher 2008). A
new house only gradually becomes a home: a place where people can close
the door to the world and relax in well-known, secure surroundings.
Everyone who has changed residence knows that it takes some time to feel
at home in the new dwelling and even longer to develop the same sense of
belonging to a housing area or neighbourhood. Part of this process of taking
ownership is to acquire equipment, furniture and decorations for the home
to make it personal. For people of a more practical persuasion, another part
is remodelling the house and changing its layout by removing or installing
walls, fitting in new kitchens or bathrooms, install shelving and so forth.
The process of taking ownership may also include the home becoming a
museum of one’s life and family. The home is where people have pictures
of children and grandchildren on walls or desks, and where holiday
souvenirs gradually sneak in and find a place alongside inherited furniture
or paintings that are impossible to discard. Seen through the optics of
anthropology, these objects are expressions of vertical family relations (for
example between parents and children) that raise several questions about
how little – or rather how much – such family relations mean in modern-day
life. In the first instance, they are claimed to be insignificant, but in reality
they play a much greater role than they appear to do by simple observation
(Sjørslev 2007). Inheritance is not only a matter of transferring tangible
values from one generation to the next – although this is of course part of it
– but just as much a matter of transferring attitudes and values. Houses and
homes shape the people who live in them as well as their lives. This is
particularly true of children, many of whom will seek to return to the type of
housing they grew up in when they themselves become adults and parents
(Ærø 2002).
The paradox between the requirements of modernity and bourgeois homes:
The cultural science angle
For the sake of argument, it could be said that the interest in forming a
family and living in a single-family house is a paradoxical, anachronistic
symbol of the revival of ‘bourgeois families in bourgeois homes’ in our late
modernity era. This is a society otherwise characterised by globalisation,
mobility, individualism, new family patterns with serial monogamy, singles,
living, COLAs (couples living apart together), etc. Most of all it is a society
in which success in the workplace, where mobility and flexibility are
required, sets the agenda for the majority of people. Mette Mechlenborg
asks whether the undeniable interest in leading a conventional life in singlefamily houses conceals an otherwise unfulfilled desire to know one’s roots
and history and to have stable relationships, express one’s emotions and
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have a sense of belonging to a place. In other works, late modernity creates
a demand for its own opposite (Mechlenborg 2005). The popularity of
single-family houses suggests that this may well be the case.
However, it may also be a case of misconstruction of the meaning of
modern-day homes and the preoccupation with homes. The apparently
outdated bourgeois home is not a closed, stagnant universe. At least
metaphorically, modern homes are wide open to the world through Internet
connections and television. For people working from home, the line
between home and workplace has become much more blurred than it was in
the industrial period. In a later article with the telling title ‘Home is where
entertainment is’, Mechlenborg (2007 a) elaborates on her characterisation
of modern homes, describing them as places where the entertainment
industry has invaded and set the stage. The TV set is no longer simply one
piece of furniture among many, but has become a home cinema with huge
plasma screens and surround-sound systems. Soon it will be possible to
order films and entertainment individually so that people will not have to
live with the average-taste programming of the various TV stations. Kitchen
equipment is such that even the most discerning chef would be able to cook
exquisite meals using it, but taking the easy road in cooking is also possible
by simply heating some ready-made dishes. The home bar is about to leave
the basement. The shining chrome surfaces of the espresso machines sizzle
cheerfully. It is not necessary to go out to have a good experience. The
home is competing fiercely and victoriously with public spaces in terms of
offering entertainment and experiences.
In a later article, Mechlenborg concludes the following on the basis of an
analysis of modernity’s ambivalent perception of the home: ‘the home will
continue to be a source of both nostalgia and a yearning to go out in the
world, and it will continue to be possible to live there with both a feeling of
security and claustrophobia. However, the home no longer represents either
one or the other and is thus no longer tantamount to a general ideological
conflict. As everything else in the era of globalisation, the home has become
subject to negotiation, dissolution, construction and reconstruction: a project
on a par with all other projects, something we constantly re-relate to and
reflect on. We are, albeit with some prudent precaution, about to feel at
home in a globalised setting’ (Mechlenborg, 2007 b, p 83).
The future of single-family houses: A sociological conclusion
There is no single possible future scenario for single-family houses. Almost
all of the more than one million houses that already exist are likely to
remain standing and occupied in ten, twenty and thirty years. There may,
however, be some distinctive changes in the attraction value of different
houses and consequently in their prices. Even now, the ratio of difference in
price per square metre in a single-family house in the least and most
expensive areas of the country is 1:10 (www.danmarkshuset.dk).
The greatest threat against the popularity of single-family houses is the lack
of energy sustainability in parts of this housing stock. Criticism of singlefamily houses by planners and architects could well up again if energy
prices rise dramatically.
11
A surge in energy prices could cause problems: faced with the necessity of
costly renovations to improve insulation and energy savings, it would be
technically possible to meet new energy-sustainability requirements, but it
would be difficult for many house-owners to finance such measures. If
improved insulation and energy-saving installations have to be financed by
loans, it will be a precondition for obtaining such loans that the value of the
house exceeds the value of any outstanding mortgages, and this is not
necessarily the case in outlying areas.
Furthermore, dramatically increasing energy prices would almost inevitably
make transport more expensive. This would affect houses in remote
locations where people have to drive long distances to go to work
particularly hard. It would simply be too expensive to live where one has to
drive fifty or sixty kilometres to and from work. In other words, the
problems of outlying areas – as we know them today – may move closer to
the city and workplace concentrations in growth areas (Kristensen 2006).
In connection with the ‘single-family house crisis’ of the late 1980s and
early 1990s, when house prices plummeted, the fear of disrepair and
dereliction of single-family houses was taken very seriously, and it was
discussed whether it would be necessary to initiate an (urban) renewal
process that would not happen if left to market forces (Jørgensen 1995). In
this connection, a competition was held for the conversion and remodelling
of ‘single-family houses typical of the 1960s’ into up-to-date dwellings. The
objective of the competition was ‘to show new possibilities for individual
solutions and new settings for activity that can revive the best aspects of the
dream of owning a single-family house.’ Two of the entries in the
competition were realised in full scale. The entry winning the second prize,
which combined energy savings and densification (a 138 m2 house was
extended and remodelled into a two-family house), provided a particularly
good response to some of the aspects that may once again become relevant
in the event of a more general single-family house crisis (Lind & Møller
1996).
However, even if the prices of single-family houses are no longer rising, and
even though energy prices are, there is nothing to suggest that the future of
single-family houses is under threat. Based on a demographic and marketoriented assessment, futures researcher Jesper Bo Jensen is highly optimistic
about single-family housing developments in coming years. He simply notes
that older people do not want to leave them and young people want to move
into them. Since there are more young people who want to move in than old
people who are forced to leave against their will, there will be a permanent
shortage of single-family houses for many years to come. A contributing
factor is that even in the most hectic years of economic boom, when there
was an enormous demand for houses, only about 8000 new houses were
built each year (Jensen 2006). The negative aspect of the ‘happy’ message –
– that this type of housing is apparently not under threat – is that it will
remain expensive for (young) first-time buyers to acquire these coveted
single-family houses.
12
We know they are coveted now, but will they remain coveted? The
anthropological, cultural and sociological analyses described above, the
message is that there seems to be a conflict between the demands made by
current late-modern lifestyles and type of production and the typical ‘oldfashioned’ life that single-family houses invite people to lead. This raises
the question of whether ‘…the driving causal power is always the cosial
situation, the action or the work...', as concluded by Tonboe in the
introductory quotation, and whether this will make us gradually abandon
single-family houses and opt for other, less committing housing types
instead. Does the fact that this has not happened yet mean that our lives in
the single-family houses are contrary to this causality? Well, not
necessarily, because an important point in the analyses is that the conflict is
only apparent. Many factors suggest that the advance of technology and the
organisation of work will make the boundary between home and workplace
more blurred and thus in fact increase the demand for large, spacious and
flexible dwellings: exactly the type of dwelling that can be found – or is
relatively easy to create – in a single-family house. Likewise, it seems that
labour market requirements with respect to adaptability and mobility are
compatible with a long-standing connection with a house. Even more open
and changing ways of living together have been accommodated within the
flexible framework provided by single-family houses. Houses can be
extended or remodelled to cater to the diverse, individual lifestyles of late
modernity. A house can also amplify the signals of our individual
understanding of culture and aesthetics, perception of art, desire to read
books and the knowledge we possess. A house becomes a very important
component in our individual branding of ourselves.
However, the analyses also show that our homes gain ‘power’ over us over
the years in that they come to play a decisive role when we make a choice of
staying in or moving out of our home, they make 'demands' with regard to
maintenance and predictability, and they influence our social behaviour in
the neighbourhood. It is probably mainly this causality that Tonboe refers
to, but perhaps it is in fact a dialectic process in which we make our mark on
our home – and it makes a mark on us.
13
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