The National Trust for Historic Preservation has taken on the teardown trend. In its online “Teardowns Glossary,” it defines teardowns as “The practice of purchasing a home on a lot, demolishing it, and constructing a new, larger house in its place; the purchased home is typically small and older; the newly built house is oversized for the lot and out-of-character for the neighborhood….” In some cases, these new sprawling houses are referred to as “McMansions.” The problem is so vexing nationwide (as evidenced not only by hard data, but also by websites such as the aptly-named “TeardownsandLand.com”), that the Trust has created a specialized Teardown Resource Center. Trust President Richard Moe has declared, “I believe they represent the biggest threat to America's older neighborhoods since the heyday of urban renewal and interstate highway construction ... The pace of teardowns has amounted to an orgy of irrational destruction."

In Ohio, the problem is perhaps not as overwhelming as it is elsewhere, but it is increasingly making life difficult in some Ohio communities. This excellent coverage of teardowns in the Cincinnati Enquirer demonstrates the fact that the trend is impacting two different types of areas – inner-city neighborhoods where housing is older, smaller and often in need of extensive repair, and affluent inner-ring suburbs, where larger homes are simply “not large enough” for current tastes. As the article also points out, the primary issue tends to be one of compatibility.

This year we have profiled both proposed conservation neighborhood district legislation in Columbus, designed in part to address the issue of compatibility, as well as the ongoing efforts of city leaders in Mansfield to construct new single-family housing in the midst of older, inner-city neighborhoods. Across the country, the end of 2006 is seeing some easing of the teardown trend, as the nation’s housing boom has largely come to an end, but the issue is sure to re-surface when the economy improves.

Photo: Another McMansion rises/Dean Terry/Creative Commons License