Modern society faces a lot of problems, but one of the most frustrating is the razing of natural landscapes in order to build lavish homes.
Nature is already being ravaged by problems both outside of and within our immediate control, but it's somehow worse when it is done to clear land for properties of excessive size and with unnecessarily ornate finishes. That is harder to let slip by without at least raising an eyebrow.
An example of this came to light in a post shared with the McMansion Hell Reddit community.
Someone uploaded a photo of a large building under construction "at the middle of a busy commercial intersection outside Atlanta."
Many comments on the photo speculated that the in-progress architecture of the building called to mind a funeral home, which would be much more forgivable than a mansion, given that these are necessary businesses that likely require certain design specifications.
However, as one Redditor pointed out and The Cool Down confirmed, the building was indeed zoned as a "homesite" and "residential vacant" on county records — shown on Redfin and Loopnet — when the land was last sold in 2022 for $150,000.
Overall, homes are homes, and a big family is entitled to a larger one — after all, we don't know who may end up living there. This is not to shame anyone who lives in a big house, more to point out cases of excessive home footprints that require huge quantities of building materials.
But an issue with homes like this is that they generally require more energy for heating and cooling. Aside from being expensive, this leads to a disproportionate responsibility for energy-related pollution. Solar panels are one of the best ways to draw down the pollution impact of a home, regardless of size, and are at least becoming increasingly common with the advent of comparison shopping through tools like EnergySage. Despite renewables entering the mix, grid-provided electricity is still mostly created via burning dirty fuels.
That doesn't stop the intrigue of onlookers, though, who might wonder how such creations came to be despite looking a bit silly and over the top.
Commenters weren't necessarily outraged as much as dismayed.
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Definitely 🙁 "It is a sad state of affairs across the metro area," wrote one user.
In response, another commenter exclaimed, "That blows my mind, no one needs that much."
A third response summed it up well: "Man, this is hitting all the McMansion bases. I'm impressed and disgusted."
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