Do you want size with that? The McMansion malaise

Australia has long prided itself on being an equal society, and for most of the 20th century our housing was a mirror of that value or belief. Almost all houses were single-storey detached and, with the exception of the Tooraks and Vaucluses, the dwellings of the affluent were not greatly larger than those of people on more moderate incomes. But in the last decade of the twentieth century a new housing product began to emerge: the very large two-storey dwellings now labelled McMansions. How has a dwelling form which cuts across all good principles of environmental sustainability come to dominate the growth suburbs of Australian cities? What does it say about us?