Sign Value V Use Value Vis A Vis Manufactured Housing

By the time Thorstein Veblen appeared on the scene late in the 19th century, the free market free enterprise system had transformed the United States from a poor agrarian backwater into the preeminent industrial society. The accumulated wealth of Americans was sufficient to support a large, broad luxury goods economy. Veblen was among a class of economists, the 'Institutionalist School of Economics', who began to argue that under 'capitalism', an important consideration in making a purchase was the status it conferred. Simply put, one buys a Mercedes rather than a Honda the better to flaunt his higher level of affluence. Most of us are familiar with the term 'Conspicuous Consumption', coined by Veblen, but he also coined the term 'Conspicuous Leisure' - both terms being introduced in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). Now the first great suburb built in the US was Llewellyn Park, just outside Newark NJ, the silicon valley of its day. Llewellyn Park set the tone for the suburbs to follow where the house serves to advertise the owner's wealth and status as much as to provide shelter and provide for life's utilitarian needs. This was expressed in the hulking, ornate, Queen Anne / Tudor style homes which populate the posh, leafy neighborhoods found in every American city of any size. Veblen sees what he terms an 'invidious' motive in this - the affluent using architecture to publicize their superior social ranking. Now such invidious motivation is not lost on the marketing industry. That people are all too willing to scrape together funds they don't really have to purchase an oversized, ostentatious builder's house they don't really need is all too apparent, a phenomenon borne out in the housing crisis of 2008. This then is what Veblen has in mind when he speaks of conspicuous consumption. And so what of his sister term conspicuous leisure ? By this he means purchases the intent of which is to publicize the fact that one has attained a level of affluence permitting him ample time for engaging in pursuits other than productive work. Interestingly, the mobile home first appears under the conspicuous leisure rubric, allowing those wealthy enough to buy a car to also buy a portable home to attach to it. The first trailer parks were posh, leafy micro neighborhoods where the wealthy with car and trailer converged as depicted in this postcard and in this one.

L is for Leisure. L shaped leisure area around the side and back of a manufactured house in a manufactured subdivision.

As mentioned previously, the housing crunch of 2008 shows that if given any opportunity, even the least affluent will jump at the chance to own a showy, outsized builder's house they don't need and can't afford in preference to a manufactured house amply meeting their utilitarian needs while keeping well within their budget. And yet we mustn't forget that the manufactured home first appears as a leisure class accoutrement. And so I would like to give a diagnosis as to how, why, and where the manufactured home industry has gone astray. In attempting to sell the manufactured home, one hears over and over that it is the great answer to the problem of affordable housing. Perfectly true. But as we have seen in Veblen's analysis, it is precisely such a truth that puts off so many potential manufactured home buyers. The French Postmodernist philosopher Jean Baudrillard reworked Veblen's idea to say that in the modern era, the 'sign value' of an object has displaced its 'use value' as the criteria by which so many purchasing decisions are made. That is to say that so many of those who would most benefit from manufactured housing are the ones openly hostile to it precisely because it is the 'economy class' offering. Ironically the more the manufactured home industry advertises its benefits in terms of affordability the more it alienates much of its potential customer base. Now where manufactured advertising puts such a heavy emphasis on frugality, conversely, little if any appeal is made to Veblen's concept of 'Conspicuous Leisure'. From this diagnosis it follows that the proper prescription is to take up the challenge laid down in Veblen's concept of conspicuous leisure. That is, the 'packaging' of the manufactured home must connote a sense of leisurely living, meaning in the US that the house ably affords pleasant, private outdoor living. I propose bringing into the manufactured home the sense of leisurely life by packaging, by siting each home with its own private, garden-like courtyard, in subdivisions dedicated to the cause. Late in his career Frank Lloyd Wright attempted just such an overhaul of the mobile home park. Lee Ackerman approached Wright requesting Wright work up plans for a trailer park of one half mile on each side. Wright produced two drawings for this project viewable here, and here. Now Wright's proposal calls for lots of 80' wide, 100' deep with privacy hedges along the border. I propose somewhat smaller lots for greater efficiency, around 50' x 110', with high fencing for both privacy and to support awnings to foster pleasant, private, courtyard leisure.

In builder's home subdivisions, house size seems to grow as lot size shrinks. The result is the virtual elimination of side yards and the tiny back yard virtually devoid of privacy. Where builder's homes win on the conspicuous consumption front, manufactured homes must make it a particular priority to win on the conspicuous leisure front. For relatively small additional cost the manufactured home can dominate in conspicuous leisure, organizing outdoor dining, living, kitchen, and spa in an L shaped configuration situated around the manufactured home as illustrated above. Indeed, once conspicuous leisure attains the same significance as conspicuous consumption, courtyard manufactured housing purchases can equalize or overtake site built purchases.