The Bigness Complex Revisited in the housing construction industry

The Bigness Complex is the title of a book co-authored by Walter Adams, a retired Michigan State University economics professor. The book:

confronts head-on the myth that organizational giantism leads to economic efficiency and well-being in the modern age. On the contrary, it demonstrates how bigness undermines our economic productivity and progress, endangers our democratic freedoms, and exacerbates our economic problems and challenges.

More and more, the dictates of mass housing production often are counter to the development of community, not to mention that a comparable process to that discussed about the Portland retail space environment compared to other U.S. metropolitan areas occurs with the construction of new, larger housing in the suburbs and exurbs.

What happens for most cities and inner-ring suburbs is a process of value destruction of extant housing. David Rusk discusses this in his work, including cities such as New Orleans and Detroit, where over the past 50 years, the percentage of property value represented by the center cities has dropped precipitously compared to the suburbs of the region. Among other impacts, this process defunds the city's ability to maintain infrastructure and services.

Newspapers from the past few days have a number of troubling articles about this phenomenon:

-- The New York Times Magazine has the story, "Chasing Ground--The House-Building Industrial Complex: How the Mega-Developers Have Transformed What We Call Home";

-- today's Washington Post has this article, "A Big Competitor's Entrance," about the entry of KB Homes, a national residential housing developer, in the Washington market;

-- Friday's Washington Times focuses on "Washington's new suburb" in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania!!!!!!! which is 85 miles from downtown Washington in"Bargain hunters troop to battlefield town" and

-- and of course, the articles previously discussed, about KB Homes and Martha Stewart getting together to build large homes in North Carolina.

Graphic from the Washington Post.