The small house movement advocates living in small homes. Family size is shrinking while homes have grown in size.
There is a very good environmental argument for decreasing home size. Smaller homes take less energy to construct, heat, and cool. Many of the homes proposed in the small house movement are too small for most people. But there are good solid reasons to reduce our footprint on the ground.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_house_movement
http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com
http://tinyhouseblog.com/tag/florida/
No thanks to this Procrustean idea! I speak from being stuck in too-small dwellings all my life, not having the $$ for the size I need, due to long-term peremptory job discrimination. "Small houses" presume the inhabitant doesn't do any productive work at home which can't be done on a computer. There's another need: people who manufacture things at home, for themselves & others; who need more books and binders for their intellectual work; people who engage in outdoor activities such as backpacking or hunting, which also need space to store the "stuff." I can be happy as a clam in a small backpacking tent - but my "stuff" can't. We need space to dedicate to home-based work, that can be left out from day to day. There are passages in the book "A Pattern Language" which support my concept of "the big enough house." I've got scores of preliminary floor plans for "big enough" houses in quite a range.
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