Why Are There So Many Suburban Homes in SL?

Is it because of the influence of The Sims Online?

Is it because most people on SL dream of a house with a yard and a picket fence?

Is it because triangles and cubes are default prims?

What do you think?

*Please note I'm not disparaging those who buy or build these houses at ALL.

When I joined SL I lived in a tiny one bedroom apartment in the city. I had no yard and little space.

So when i built my SL home I chose a suburban layout that reflected all the things I didn't have.

Hmmm Homes...

Well I can't say I had any homes in SL, I view a parcel more as a home a personal sanboxes etc.

as far as a home in SL, I dont get why builds tend towards the mundane. if you are going to have a normal looking house at least give it a twist, put the furniture on the wall or cieling or something.

If you look at the catchphrase "Your World. Your imagination." Think about what you are telling the rest of SL about your imagination.

I would like to see homess that make me say wow that's creative. Not homes I fly over without thinking a single thing because I drove past 20 or 30 of them on my way to the RL grocery store 15 mins ago.

Break the mold.

I've had a few villas, some grounded, some floating way up... with teleporters for access...

I've had a castle (complete with keep, bailey, portcullis and canon)...

I made the warehouse from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"...

and for about a year, I lived in Stonehenge...

How suburban is that, lol...

Ah but remember we have Prim limits and land borders that can limit what one can build. Reason I think alot of homes are burbs? They're relatively low prim and small enough to fit on smaller plots giving people enough space to decorate. My home is a bit more creative because I own a bunch more land. Approx 700m above my club, The Core, is my Noir Skylife skybox home that I pieced together from the various modules available. Granted its pretty much a bacholar pad until I can purchase a few extra prim spots, but I call it home.

In SL, many people riff on their idea of "the dream life". For a lot of folks, that's the traditional 2 bedroom home with the white picket fence and 3 cars in the garage.

Some even go so far as to roleplay families and get babies and all that.

The reasons people have these suburban homes is the same reason they have a full kitchen set with 30-prim forks: because it's familiar, and it looks like they're "well-off". It's keeping up with the Joneses in the virtual space.

Personally I find it all a bunch of garbage, but then my American Dream is a lot different than most other folks', so my opinion matters little here.

However, I have to say that people will live in these houses anyway; American attitudes towards home ownership has given rise to endless tracts of cookie cutter suburbia in RL, and there's little stopping it, thanks to lax zoning laws, greedy townships, and eager developers.

Sounds kinda like SL.

LF

Coz thats the way, uhuh, uhuh, we like it, uhuh uhuh.. Sorry this IS off topic isn't it?

I blame Ingrid.

Our instructions to our builder were: Make it look like something you would see in the Black Hills (South Dakota)...err, our builder is Dutch, lol. But we like it.

What would you have there be instead, Lo?

I'm not sure exactly what you are contrasting these to.

Homes of a different style?
Space stations?
Bridges?
Treehouses?
Stores?
Clubs?
Amusement parks?
Prisons?
Libraries?
Zoos?

It would also help if you defined "surburban" a bit better. Do you mean homes of any kind, or homes of a particular style?

coco

I can relate to that. When I used to own property it was a sea plane base with of course a airplane parked next to it. In real life I have a house. A airplane and a place to park it is my dream house

Rox

Personally I am working on a cave on my land. Do not understand why people want houses with bathrooms and kitchens and dining rooms. Too weird.

Alexa

my first land wasn't even a 512, I had like 384 meters that worked out to something like 75 prims. What I built was a rotating space station with a diner bench seat and table, I had a bed and a hot tub (the freebie hot tub Siggy made where the water follows the tub... this is handy when your build rotates, and oh yeah... it LAGGED )

-----
Interesting story:

I was once (only once) in a kitchen in SL... this kitchen had a roll of paper towels in it... I pointed and clicked to draw attention to it so a friend could join me in my absolute confusioun when suddenly the act of clicking it gave me a full mod hollow cut cylinder... labled... yes... paper towel.....



Did it clean up spills? was it scripted to clean up a particle spill?!?!

NO!

It was just a textured with some white fabric from the library folder, no script, and it attached to skull by default

does a roll of paper towells signify being well off, living the high life?? If so those fancy cloth napkin resturants have some learnin to do.

There are a number of reasons you see suburban landscapes in SL:

As has been mentioned already, there is a wish fulfillment element. We can have what we are denied in RL.

Houses are a popular choice for buildings on personal property.

Prefabs are often houses.

In SL, as in RL, suburban environments are often the results of planning by one person, or a very small group of people. Given an established aesthetic, it's easy for a new resident in a suburban sim to "plug 'n' play."

Suburban order makes a strong contrast to the jumble and/or desolation of the "ordinary" sim.

Land barons can assemble a suburbia very easily using stock parts. Attractive to non-landowners.

What's less real or more imaginative about a space station . . .

. . . than about a paper towel? Or an animated scrub bucket?

That is the question.

coco

Your banner is very clever and non-annoying. It is my favorite sig image.

As a reader I'm sort of annoyed by signature images, but as a designer I could not resist their siren call.

Maybe you can write a tutorial on "How Not to Have a Butt Ugly Signature Image."

I would read it!

hahaha certainly have what NOT to do covered....


oh btw post 666

*giggle* You know Ferran, that's kind of how I imagined you to look in RL...

How big is your monitor?? Im much taller really.

oh, small... only a 6'x8' plasma on this machine

Mm, what I mean is, a boxy triangle-roofed house with a green yard, or roughly that. I have noticed a lot of these. I guess I find it interesting that -- in a world of the insane (like Second Life) there is also very much the everyday and routine.

I'm not really contrasting them to anything, though I do think that I'd rather have a gigantic peach with a little rickety house on the top as opposed to a sensible lawn.

For me, I'd love to look at the peach house! But I wouldn't want to live in it. I figure it's all variety, and variety is good. I figure if it CAN be made in SL, it will be made!

For those for whom the mundane holds no charm, I gotta say, I'm charmed all to HECK and back by that animated scrub bucket.

coco

I built a small waterfront dive, in one of the most commercial, laggy, and unattractive parts of Kojin. You can almost smell the rotting sealife at lowtide, and the breeze wafts in the crackling sounds of a Slingo barkers calls to Tom Waits blaring on the streaming url.

I absolutely love my little home!