The BBC offers this graphic <a href="http://natureofcollege.org/?attachment_id=691" rel="attachment wp-att-691"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-691" title="home_size" src="http://natureofcollege.org/wp-content/uploads/home_size1-280x315.gif" alt="" width="235" height="264" /></a>to help us compare the relative size of houses in different countries in the world. The United States, of course, is number one, with our average house twice the size of a new house in the UK. But why? Are we twice as important? Are our families twice as large? Are we twice as big (perhaps so, with obesity ballooning)? Or are we twice as stupid, paying to heat and cool twice the space of the average European home?

The single-family home has long been a part of the American Dream, but not always the McMansion. What are your dreams for living space when you graduate from college? Will you do what everybody else does? Or do you have different dreams?