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Sunday, July 20, 2003

It’s A Ghetto Thang

Its a struggle to provide magical places for people to live without having Toronto sprawl all the way to the Yukon Territory. Everyone should have a magical place to live though. A home unique to each unit of persons; reflecting light, space, greenery and movement more than prestige or money.
Homes these days are built as products for sale, just like running shoes or bubble gum. The so called features of a new home are a reflection of market research and demographics. In this way we create ghettos. A ghetto for the old with Bungalofts and golf coarse views. A ghetto of mean narrow Semis hiding behind garages for the our young families. For the young hipsters there are whole colonies of condominiums and lofts with extra high ceilings and seldom more than one window for the entire home.
Perhaps the worst example of product building is the so called Master Suite. The name comes form pre-civil war days. The master of the house not only had slaves he had a suite of rooms within his mansion. Today the Master suite is a home within itself with massive sleeping rooms, huge closets and of coarse the bathroom ensuite. Entire homes are designed around these massive spaces. One seldom sees a shower and tub combined to save space. Instead each feature is given it very own space. Even the toilette has its own room nowadays.Its baffling that no one has considered how unsanitary these little rooms are. There are never sinks to wash hands in toilette rooms. One has to exit the room, contaminating the door handle and everything else on the way to sink which could well be many yards away.
Typically, the Master suit is equal to the square footage of 31/2 secondary bedrooms. Here is a ghetto within a home already in a ghetto. The master and spouse (its never called a Mistress's suit) are isolated form the other persons in their home. Huge rooms are filled with entertainment centers, computer stations and exercise machines, solely for the Master's use. Some suits include a study accessible only from the bedroom suite. A newer trend even has kitchenette's in the Master suit. This way the master needn't share any activities with his minions, not even breakfast.
Make no mistake; these homes have a clear hierarchy. There are features for the whole group to share ( usually one of each). One Bathroom, one media room, one kitchen and one dining space. But these rooms seldom allow for the same square footage per person as is available to the Master And NO spaces, save tiny bedrooms, are designated as off bounds to the Master.

Parents are separated form their families as if by quarantine. Children grow up with a fractured and elitist views of their homes. It is noteworthy that in an era when our definition of family is more inclusive then ever ,we have homes designed like slave plantations.

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