Brave New Home is a fascinating exploration into the history of housing in America that seeks to understand how single family homes became so popular. As well as being increasingly unattainable for entire generations of Americans, these cul-de-sac homes have significant social, economic, medical, and environmental costs that might be making us sicker and unhappier overall. As the nuclear family becomes less and less the norm for people in the 21st Century, Lind takes to the road to explore how housing is being reimagined to accommodate not just an idealized American Dream but how people actually live and what makes them happy.

 

Publisher description:

Over the past century, American demographics and social norms have shifted dramatically. If trends continue, we should expect to see more people living alone, later-in-life marriages, fewer (and smaller) new families, and a majority-minority population that skews older and older. Americans' daily life and preferences have also changed, whether by choice or by force, to become more virtual, more mobile, and less stable. But housing today largely looks the same as it did in 1950. In Brave New Home, Diana Lind shows why the government-subsidized suburbs full of single-family houses are bad for us and our planet, and details the new efforts underway that better reflect the way we live now, to ensure that the way we live next is both less lonely and more affordable. Lind takes readers into the homes and communities that are seeking alternatives to the American norm, from multi-generational living, in-law suites, and co-living to micro apartments, tiny houses, and new rural communities. Drawing on Lind's expertise and the stories of Americans caught in or forging their on paths outside of our cookie-cutter housing trap, Brave New Home offers a diagnosis of the current crisis in American housing and a radical re-imagining of the possibilities of housing.