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They are not if you care to make honest comparisons and to look at the data.19th century Swedish anti-emigration propaganda poster warning that the idyllic American life was all a lie and that in truth America was a brutal and terrible place.[1] People have been frantically telling themselves “America is shit” for a long time.First, this is a false equivalence, since the vast majority of Americans live in houses, including the poor, while far more Europeans live in apartment buildings, particularly the poor. Let’s talk about making honest comparisons.In the US, only 17% live in apartments, and outside of New York and other heavily urbanized states, that rate sometimes drops into the single digits,[2] while in Europe, the breakdown is nearly 50/50, and a majority of people live in apartments even in some rich countries, such as Germany.[3] If one wants to be pedantic, as of this writing the balance has tipped and now the majority of people in the EU live in flats. This is because the UK, which has the second highest rate of people living in houses in Europe, has official said “so long and thanks for all the fish” to the EU. But arguing that point may be a bid pedantic, and certainly rubs salt into some rather fresh wounds. Returning to the subject at hand, the composition of who lives where is different in Europe compared to the US.While it is difficult to get good data on this, the general rule that many of the poor in the US live in houses and most of the poor in Europe live in apartments is extremely important, as it skews the data immensely. In Europe, if someone does live in a house, they generally can afford a nice house. As consequence, the average quality of house in Europe does not have much downward pressure from houses owned by the poor (there are exceptions country by country though, e.g. the UK and Ireland have much more American-style housing markets). While in the US the large market for cheap single-family houses pulls the average American house down on the spectrum of quality. However, saying the average house in the US is poorer quality because of this is essentially using statistics to lie. A better form of analysis would be that distribution of house quality is much broader in the US, with not only a deeper bottom, but a higher top. Nice houses in the US are very nice and there are a lot of them. Perhaps the best way to explicate this is to point to the fact that the average house size. Even though fully half of the poor in the US live in, ostensibly smaller, houses, the average house size in the US is very nearly double that of many European countries.Source.[4]But regardless of the whole picture, because many of the poor in America live in houses, those houses, that is, cheaper, poorer-quality houses, exist. And if something exists, Europeans will find a way to look down on it. Before that criticism, however, it may be helpful to get an idea of what those houses look like. These sorts of houses are a common feature of less well-off parts of cities and towns in the US. (pictures from google maps):And:In more economically-depressed neighborhoods, we see:AndOr this, though it is worth noting that only one in ten people classified as poor live in mobile homes, per the graph above, so while infamous, mobile homes are not necessarily universally pervasive:These are homes that are around 1000 square feet or less, are closely packed together (from an American perspective), are behind on maintenance, and are often built with inferior material and methods (mobile homes in particular) or more often, outmoded and dated materials and methods. Most of these homes were built in the housing boom of the 1950s, though some date back earlier and a good many are also from the 1960s and 1970s. Interestingly, many of these neighborhoods were trendy when first built, as they are the remnant of the first wave of American suburbanization—a point that brings me hope, since it implies that in a generation, the poor will be enjoying the more spacious and comfortable homes of today’s middle class. And for full disclosure, these are all pictures from my hometown. All of them are from “bad” neighborhoods where only the poor live (an interesting aside: notice that the worst house of them all, the mobile home on the right in the last picture, has a relatively nice and quite large pick-up truck parked in the drive way. Status symbols in America are a whole other discussion but well worth the interest).Finding an equivalent of these houses in Europe is difficult. Again, the poor tend to live in these:Admittedly, this was more of a middle-class building (I should know, I lived there, second floor, third window from the left) but it was in a poorer region of Europe, so I think it fits the bill.The question of “which is better for the poor, single family or multi family homes?” is an interesting discussion, but off-topic. The fact remains that criticizing American houses is made easier by the fact that the poor in America like living in houses, have the option of living in houses, and make that choice and live in houses. Thus, we have large quantities of poorer quality houses for Europeans to criticize. For that criticism to be fair, however, Europeans would need to judge the houses of the American poor against the cramped apartments of the European poor, not against the houses of the European middle class. More on that in a bit.Now, some qualifiers for these pictures, because pictures are not data. With the selection I provided, I have tried as best I could to avoid “poverty porn” exploitation, i.e. pictures of phenomenally poor homes that are exceptionally run down and very clearly so. While pictures of abandoned buildings in Detroit and refuge camps in France are great for click-bait, VOX, and National Geographic, they are hardly what I would consider truthful representations of America or Europe. Beyond that, I suspect an objector is already fast at work in the comments, “that last picture is clearly eastern Europe you idiot.” I shall point out that eastern Europe, much like western Europe, is what geographers and scientists would call “in Europe.” Additionally, my hometown, which is majority African American and has a large and growing Hispanic presence, is in the rural South, and not only that, but is in the poorest region of my home state. That is, my hometown is in the poorest part of the a state that is in the poorest region of the US and its demographics slant heavily towards some of the poorest minorities. Perhaps comparing my hometown with Stockholm or Brussels would be something of a unfair comparison, seeing at it is part of what is more accurately the Romania of America?As I noted above, of course, those houses constitute only the bottom tier of American housing. It is only fair to consider the whole picture.To continue the theme, a few years after the real estate bubble in 2008, one of my family members was able to get a good deal on a foreclosed house in a recently built exurb near my hometown. This is that exurb:These are solidly middle class American homes. My family member, who is not especially wealthy, bought one of these in his late 20s. Here is a similar middle-class neighborhood within city limits closer to where I live:Most of these houses are considerably newer than the ones from the poor neighborhoods. They tend to be less than 40 years old, and many are brand new. They are around 2000 square feet, some much more, always have a garage, large front and back yards, and modern high-efficiency utilities. And there are lots of them, so much so that it is a common refrain in left-wing circles, particularly from the environmentally-minded, that these housing developments, with their endless numbers of big, modern houses sitting in massive yards on either side of extra-wide suburban streets, are swallowing up what’s left of the American wilderness (whether that line of analysis is correct is another discussion). This is what the American dream looks like for most people.But not all. By the iron laws of mathematics, there are those who are wealthier than average. My hometown, to build on what we have, is both not particularly wealthy (as we already established) and not particularly large (~50,000 residents, ranking as the 802nd largest “city” in the US). We nevertheless have enough fancy houses to shake a proverbial stick at.This is how the rich in my town live:Around the cornerAnother, slightly less fancy one being builtThus far, all of these houses are worth less than a million dollars—I checked the tax maps to be sure. Here is one—this is a 20 year old, million dollar, 10,100 square foot house for sale in the same neighborhood:In another neighborhood in the historic district of town is another mansion that I particularly like, though this one is “only” worth a half million:And this lake front house on the edge of town is slightly more expensive, but still under a million dollars:One of the older Plantation-style houses in town, just under a half million:I wish I could get a better view of it, but here is a lovely, 5000 square foot house in the French provincial style. The neighborhood this one is in is very pleasant, there are a few dozen similarly sized houses on large, thickly forested lots. Some are Italianate, some more modern, but most are fairly typical, but nevertheless impressive, vernacular. I used to go for walks here when I lived nearby.A few minutes outside of town, this a new million dollar house that was built just out past an old boy scout camp I used to hike to. These estate-type houses are getting more popular and seem to be springing up all over the place. I remember when this house was just a cow pasture.And now to my personal favorite, though one I have never actually seen myself. These two homes in the center of the picture, which combined are worth just under a million dollars, are 5600 and 4000 square feet respectively, and sit on their own personal lake inside of city limits, just 8 minutes’ drive from downtown, perfectly secluded with a nice 20 acre wooded lot buffering them from the surrounding suburbs, streets, and high school/sports complex.It is worth pointing out that these home prices are a bit low by American standards, as, again, I live in a town that, by American standards, is fairly poor, and which is in a region that, by American standards, is fairly poor. Were these houses in or nearer to a major metropolitan area, they would be double or even triple the what they are, though I submit that salaries would be (almost) correspondingly higher as well.These homes have been, as the astute reader will notice, a mixture of the infamous McMansions of the newly rich so commonly mocked on the internet in “intelligent and learned” circles, and more comely and authentic homes of the true upper class. I am less sure about the worth of deriding the former, however. Certainly, I am not as sure as the aforementioned “intelligent and learned” are of themselves. While plenty of those sorts of houses are tacky, unsophisticated, and even poorly built, I would be hard pressed to call it a rule. Moreover, I would venture to guess that the similarly newly wealthy of Latin America, Canada, India, China, Australia, Russia, etc, display equally poor taste (I have seen as much myself). What sets (some) European countries aside is their deep aristocratic roots. The truly high class have always had good taste, but what is America, bereft of the plenitude of nobility and royalty one finds in stuffy old Europe, but a country built by immigrants and slaves? And let’s not mention the one country that builds larger houses than the US (it is Australia, a country entirely populated by criminals). A larger point would be, to what extent is the criticism of McMansions motivated by an opposition to or even disgust at the idea that extremely large, luxurious homes have been made accessible to not only the uber-wealthy, but to the the average lawyer, doctor, and insurance agent (just like fine wines, sports cars, classical music, international travel)? Is it really so wrong for the upper middle class to be able to enjoy the excessive material wealth of the high class, even if they fail to pick up on the finer points of class and taste? Regardless, it is counterproductive to allow one’s disdain towards the newly rich and their tastes blind one to the full richness of American vernacular architecture. Would it be wise to dismiss California wine on account of Gallo and Franzia? I think not.Criticizing American middle and upper class homes for being unsophisticated is one thing. Ignoring them outright and focusing on the houses of the poor, the homes I listed first, when making comparisons to houses in Europe is a trick which ranges from disingenuous to willfully ignorant. A fair comparison between American and European houses requires looking at minutiae, not well-plucked cherries.In any event, I think the point is made: the question is based on a false equivalence.Returning to a more qualitative approach, we need to ask, by what standards exactly are American houses so much worse?I have heard the argument that the amenities in European houses (ductless mini-split AC, tilt and turn windows, etc) are better, but I find this argument difficult to take seriously. The biggest issue with that argument is it mistakes preference for quality. Ductless mini-split air conditioning, for example, is more energy efficient than forced air systems, yes, but is vastly less effective at controlling air quality. Preferring efficiency at the cost of stuffy air or preferring fresher air at the cost of higher costs are just that, preferences. Tilt and turn windows are, again, more energy efficient, and also quite nifty, but are considerably more expensive. Most Americans, so the market suggests, prefer to put that money towards a kitchen island or a bigger garage—an especially poignant point since Americans actually have the space in their home for a kitchen island and actually have a garage, fully enclosed and climate controlled. By and large, these things are the result of preferences. That, and the notoriously high energy costs one sees in Europe of course.And we know that size is not the standard. While eclipsed by the Aussies, Americans can boast houses that are, depending on the source, from 50% larger[5] to twice as large[6] as those in Europe (Que comments of “lol big fat americans need big houses lol” I get it—it’s hard to compensate for having a smaller domicile). Beyond that, if we consider dwelling space per person regardless of housing type, the average American home is more than twice as large as those of Europeans, and even poor Americans have more living space than the average European. This is due to the fact that, in addition to the houses being smaller, far more Europeans live in apartments, which are always more cramped than houses.Remember, even among the poor in America, half live in houses.In addition to the size of the house itself, American houses tend to have enclosed garages and be fully detached. A full third of all houses in Europe are semi-detached whereas in the US, the ratio is less than half that. This leads to the next point, American yards. American houses are well known for their spacious and often meticulously tended yards. As mentioned before, the size of American houses, plus the adjoining yard, is often pointed to with derision, with environmental impact being the justification. We can dismiss this criticism out of hand when the exact same Europhiles will in their next breath exalt the cement and brick construction of European houses. Do they not know the massive environmental impact of masonry buildings?On the subject of environmental impact, it is entirely unclear which approach to home-building is overall superior, to say nothing of the already existing homes. Though perhaps it is best to say something of it, since the majority of European housing units are not energy efficient. Yes, Europe has strict energy efficiency requirements, and the majority of European housing units are not energy efficient. These two statements do not contradict each other. The first energy efficiency regulations, both in the US and in Europe, were codified in the 1970s. The majority of housing stock in the EU, and in particular in rich EU countries like France and Germany, was built before those efficiency regulations were passed. So, it is accurate to say that European building regulations stipulate that houses be energy efficient. It is not accurate to say that European housing is energy efficient.Source.[7]The US, whose energy efficiency regulations differ by region, could be said to have both stricter and looser regulations than the EU, depending on the region. American housing units on average, however, are newer than those in the EU, with more built after the 1970s. Going by the most recent statistics, almost exactly half of American houses were built after 1980,[8] and unlike in Europe, which generally has had a low growth housing market since the 1990s, the US had a huge construction boom in the 2000s (a housing boom that most of us remember more for its spectacular demise right around 2008). As consequence, a solid 15–20% of the American housing market is comprised of fully modern, energy efficient houses. Of those new houses, two million of them are certified Energy Star, and to date, just under another million more houses have been retrofitted to meet Energy Star certification.[9] The fact that so many retrofits have been completed speaks to the building approach used for houses in the US, but that will be covered further on.On a sociological level, it is worth noting that energy efficiency, and environmentalism more broadly, is quite in vogue in Europe. This adds to the image of “Europeans” being eco-friendly, wine sipping, well-dressed sophisticated people. That image, stereotype though it may be, does accurately describe many a denizen of Copenhagen, Paris, or Rome. To infer that such people, and thus Europeans at large, must then all live in passivhaus minimalist abode-places, however, would be a mistake. The popularity of passivhaus in Europe does mean that many new homes in Europe are hyper-efficient. It does not mean that many homes in Europe are efficient. But it does make people more easily believe the notion that homes in Europe are efficient. But that is plenty on the mostly useless subject of perceptions. Data is better. And lacking.Looking at gross figures only, I will concede that the average American home uses more energy than the average European home (though that analysis ignores the fact that more homes in Europe are masonry-built, which makes them less inherently less energy-efficient—a minus countered mainly by Europe’s far milder climate—and entails a massive energy cost when first built and when repaired.) As of yet, however, I have no seen those numbers normalized by climate and home size, or broken down by residential building type. Remember, most of Europe has a maritime temperate climate, while the US, aside from the West coast, has a far more continental climate. Consider this: New York, a coastal city, is as hot as Madrid in the summer and nearly as cold as Stockholm in the winter (the record high in New York is actually higher than that in Madrid, actually); Chicago is as cold as Minsk in the winter time, but has a record high higher than Rome; in the summer Houston is hotter than Tunis; Milwaukee is as cold as Moscow in the winter and hotter than Paris in the summer, and of course Miami is literally tropical.[10] [11] [12] [13] So yes, American houses use more energy overall. Given the preponderance of small houses, apartment buildings, and gentle, cloudy weather in Europe, then, I will have to maintain that while Americans use more energy than Europeans, until proven otherwise, anyone claiming that European houses are the reason and are thus superior has no idea of what they are talking about.A complicating factor in this is the land use of American houses. Now, here I will depart from Green Party dogma, so bear with me.I am not fully convinced that suburbs are more harmful to the ecosystem than more dense urban areas. I will concede that suburban sprawl leads to more land being developed (it should be noted that that land is essentially never wilderness. It is farmland, pasture, timberland, not pristine natural areas). On the balance of it, however, we have to also account for the fact that suburbs, particularly the more spaced-out ones and older ones where thicker plant cover and trees have had time to grow, are wildlife habitats of their own, something no dense housing development could ever claim to be. Indeed, it could be argued that some suburbs are more bio-diverse and bio-dense than the mono-crop farmland they replaced. As a bit of anecdotal evidence, consider this: at my previous home, a duplex in a development inside of city limits, I set up a trail cam on a tree that was growing along a drainage ditch that ran along the backside of the subdivision before crossing under a street into another suburb, and from this trail cam I captured pictures of raccoons, opossums, a fox, three deer, numerous squirrels, and, regrettably, some feral cats. After a particularly rainy night, I also saw and nearly caught a decent sized alligator snapping turtle. Again, an alligator snapping turtle in my back yard, in a suburb, in city limits. This is to say nothing of the various songbirds, hummingbirds, hawks, etc. that made my home their home and the coyote and wild turkeys I saw just outside city limits.But that is anecdotal. For more formal evidence of the biological richness of the American suburban habitat, I suggest looking into the growing numbers of suburban geese,[14] turkey,[15] deer,[16] and coyote;[17] even the occasional black bear takes to the suburbs.[18] The population of Canada geese is thought to have reached and possibly passed its historical records, thanks in large part to suburban geese, much to the chagrin of many a golf course manager, and deer, in particular, have become so common in the suburbs as to pose a serious management challenge. Car crashes involving deer, a huge proportion of which happen in and around suburbs, cause $4 billion in damage annually and kill around 200 people a year,[19] making deer the single most economically destructive and deadly animal in the US, bar none. Many smaller municipalities have even opened up deer hunting within city limits to try and get a handle on the numbers.[20] So yes, I depart from the typical dogma: I think the suburbs are indeed a wildlife habitat onto itself, and one that is in desperate need of attention, study, and management. Are they as rich as pristine wilderness? Certainly not. Are they actually inferior to the agricultural lands they replaced? Perhaps not. But the concrete jungle of high density urban housing certainly is a ecological desert. That, I would consider a point for the suburbs. As a corollary, we often hear about sustainable farming practices and creating more wildlife habitats on farmland, yet no mention is made of the suburbs. Are the suburbs somehow unworthy of hosting wildlife, and of what plants and animals do live there, we are not supposed to let flourish?In sum, I propose that it is difficult if not impossible to compare the sum total environmental impact of houses in the US verses that of those in Europe. Indeed, it is my suspicion that with a few improvements in building codes, and with some effort to make the suburbs even more inviting and productive ecologically (more native plants, more flowering, fruiting, seed bearing, or other wise beneficial plants native or otherwise, more small parks, fewer lawns or at least taller grass in those lawns with thick shrubbery around, fewer feral cats—o gods, just kill the feral cats already! Kill them all![21] [22] [23] —plenty of tree and brush cover along ditches and other near zero human traffic areas, etc), American houses could even prove to be a model for how to prosper man and nature on the same land, but that is both simply my opinion and off-topic, as well as a subject that would take an answer far longer and more complex than this one. What is more to the point is, it is very much an open question whether American or European models of home building are more environmentally beneficial.So the standard by which we are judging houses is not size, even though having a lager home has such an impact on quality of life as to be blindingly obvious; nor can it be the amenities, since most differences are the result of preference, and beyond that far more American houses have garages and spacious yards, both things that should be self-evidently good; nor can we make a compelling argument that European houses are more environmentally friendly, since the reality is much more complicated. What argument remains, except for some idea along the lines that maybe literal stuff that the houses are physically made of is somehow inherently superior? As it turns out, this is indeed a common, very common, line of argument. It is also, largely, a myth, a large myth.The typical argument, in a nutshell, is that American houses are made of sticks wrapped in cardboard, and European house are made of stone, brick, and concrete. The insinuation here being that American houses are cheap, flimsy, poorly insulated, and a few years away from simply rotting and burning away, while European homes are tough, reliable structures built to last and wonderfully comfortable and efficient. American houses are built like flaky peanuts and Europeans like solid walnuts. Again, so goes the stereotype. It is best we send the stereotype packing.First, it should be noted that masonry construction is not alien technology in America. The Northeast, for instance, has a long history with brick and stone buildings, homes in the desert Southwest are often built with adobe or concrete styled as adobe, and red brick has long been a common building material in the deep South, and was particularly common during the 50s, 60s, and 70s when single storey brick bungalows were in style. The perception that American houses are not built with masonry is merely an artifact how few modern American houses use pure masonry construction. And they do not because, quite frankly, pure masonry construction is ill-suited for homebuilding in the modern world. The mechanical properties of masonry and the economic and environmental costs of masonry construction are generally inferior to more modern techniques and materials.Proving this point will require a fair bit of myth-busting. I will focus here on concrete mostly as it is the material of choice, has a certain mythos to it, and because the data on other materials is hard to come by.Concrete is dense, hard, and not strong. People are always surprised, incredulous even, to learn that something as tough as concrete is quite weak, but the data really says exactly that. There are several measures of the strength of a material, and concrete, while scoring well or average in a few measures, scores lower than most everyday materials surprisingly often.We know concrete is quite rigid. The modulus of rigidity, or shear modulus, of concrete is 21 GPa, which is more than that of wood, roughly twice as much, but is only half to quarter that of most metals.[24] A point here for concrete, though no first or third place prize.Concrete is known to be strong in compression. Indeed, most casual discussions of concrete I have seen note this as its best attribute. That is quite interesting, since the compression strength of concrete is about the same as wood.[25] Concrete is often graded according to its MPa of crush strength, and ranges from about 20 up to 70 for high-grade concretes.[26] Pine has a crush strength of 33 to 49 MPa, depending on the species.[27] Some tropical hardwoods have crush strengths exceeding 80 MPa[28] and even just shy of 100 MPa.[29] Concrete is sturdy, but a similar volume of solid wood will hold its own. And in most other measures of strength, concrete fares poorly.Rigid and sturdy, but brittle. Concrete has worse fracture toughness than wood both parallel and perpendicular to the grain.Source.[30]This weakness to fracture is due to the low strength of concrete, as well as its poor splitting resistance.[31] Measured in the abstract, the specific strength (kN*m\kg) of concrete is 5.2, for rubber it is 16.3, and for pine it is 223. That is no typo. The specific strength of pine is forty times that of concrete.[32]A related metric is tensile strength, typically measured in MPa. Concrete has a tensile strength of 2–5 MPa. Glass is 33 MPa. Pine is 40 MPa. Not quite forty times as strong, but pine is still still an order of magnitude stronger than concrete in tension. It is worth noting that, while it has a lower specific strength than pine due to its weight, oak has a better tensile strength, 90 MPa; that is, oak is forty times stronger than concrete.Indeed, wood has proven itself to be a remarkably resilient material. In particular, wood resists sudden impacts and repeated stresses better than concrete and, in certain situations, better even than steel.[33] In sum, that is a point for concrete, a crushing draw, and two, possibly three points for wood. Which material was the stronger one again?In truth, the main attractiveness of concrete is not its strength or even its compression strength. The usefulness of concrete comes from it having a combination of hardness, compression strength, low thermal and moisture expansion ratios, and low cost. Concrete is not strong. Concrete is dense and hard, does not move much, and is relatively cheap. How is it, then, that really solid buildings are made of concrete, and areas with natural disasters other than earthquakes tend to build with concrete or other forms of masonry, if it has such middling mechanical properties? What you lack in quality, you make up with in quantity. Wood construction is cheaper than concrete construction not because wood is cheaper than concrete. It is because you need far less wood to built the same sized building. Wood, having superior mechanical properties in almost every way (lighter, stronger, more elastic) can be used sparsely and still result in a wall that is quite strong while being mostly air. Masonry is relatively cheap and somewhat weak, but if you use enough of it, and reinforce it with an actually strong material like steel, you will have a solid structure.An interesting thought experiment is, say one were to build a structure as one would with masonry, with thick, solid walls, but do so with wood. How strong would such a building be and how tall could one build it? As it turns out, we are just now starting to figure that out.An all timber high-rise in Vancouver. Source.[34]Massive, prefabricated softwood beams and panels are just now gaining popularity as a more wholesome, environmentally friendly, and potentially cheaper alternative to concrete. Lord knows they are certainly better looking than concrete buildings.Even cold modernist designs look good in wood. Source.[35]To date, we know a wooden building can be at least 300 feet tall,[36] and there are plans for taller buildings and even actual skyscrapers.[37] Wood is stronger than most people realize.Beyond its mixed mechanical properties, masonry construction has economic costs due to its poor insulation values, especially compared to wood. Concrete, while far less conductive of heat than metals, is still much more conductive than wood, a fact made worst by the necessity of masonry walls being solid (because of their terrible tensile strength), while stick frame wood walls are mostly hollow—air being an excellent insulator.Source.[38]One inch of plywood has the same thermal insulation as twelve inches of concrete, and a mere half inch of fiber board sheathing has better R-values than either of them.[39] Thermal bridging is a major issue for masonry construction in modern houses.Thickness of material needed to reach R-22. Source[40]A similar topic, but one that is not so much an issue, is sound insulation. Masonry can be highly reflective of sound as anyone driving inside a parking garage or walking on tile with shoes can attest, and masonry walls, since they have to be more or less solid all the way through, tend to have poor noise reduction for their volume (even though on a technical level, the sound absorption on concrete at least is better than that of wood. This is not the case for brick however) while wood and panel walls, which are mostly hollow, both have better noise reduction for a given thickness and are far easier to insulate with sound absorbent material. Stick-framed walls can be filled with fiberglass, foam, or similar materials, while masonry walls, already thicker than stick-frame walls, have to have any sound or thermal insulation applied on their face, making them even thicker, not to mention the additional layer of sheathing that will need to go over the insulation.Source.[41]The coefficient values above for concrete block are for coarse textured, unpainted block. Surprisingly, smoothed, painted block has an absorption coefficient only marginally higher than that of solid wood, and brick and plaster have values below those of solid wood and are more comparable to plywood.[42] Truth be told, this is not generally a terrible issue, especially when compared to the thermal insulation problems that come with masonry. My point here is more that there not much in masonry construction that is objectively superior to wood construction when it comes to noise, and that certain trade-offs are involved. Something that can be a very real issue, though, is water, specifically leaks and moisture vapor transmission.In the case of moisture vapor transmission, the issue is not that concrete wicks water and wood does not, since wood does wick water just as well. The issue is that the standard methods of construction with wood on modern homes always involve an impermeable moisture barrier in the building envelope, and such a barrier is easily accommodated into the design, whereas that is not always the case with masonry construction. In particular, masonry facades and stucco walls lend themselves very easily to water transport through the building envelope and even to leaks. This, combined with the abysmal thermal insulation offered by pure masonry construction, can leave houses either hot and dry or cold and damp, depending on the climate. And since masonry construction often requires the use of steel stayings to physically hold the structure together, water penetration can have disastrous consequences in masonry just as it can in wood structures. I do not think either method is inherently superior here, since wood, while easier to waterproof, is more likely to be damaged by water intrusion if it occurs. Once again, my point is there are trade-offs and neither methods is objectively superior.So, we have seen how masonry does not offer much real benefit in terms of mechanical strength, involves trade-offs in terms of water permeability and noise, and is objectively worse in terms of thermal insulation. That is hardly what I would call a superior building material.But there is something that is superior in American houses to that in European houses. I hate to say it, but American natives are just better than European ones.I am of course not talking about people or any such rubbish, but about the species of trees found in each place, and the quality of the wood they provide. In Europe, most softwood production comes from a handful of spruce and pine species, with some fir and larch. In particular, Norway spruce and Scots pine predominate. The mechanical properties of the timber from these trees is respectable. Norway Spruce has a Janka hardness of 380 lb/ft, a modulus of rupture of 63 MPA, and an elastic modulus of 9.7 GPa,[43] while Scots pine has a hardness of 540 lb/ft, a MOR of 83 MPa, and an EM of 10 GPa.[44] These values compare quite favorably to a weaker hardwood like poplar (460 lb/ft, 63 MPa, 7.2 GPa).[45] In America similar species do show up, particularly with lumber on the West Coast and lumber imported from Canada. However, on the West coast, another common construction lumber is Douglas-fir, which has mechanical values that are simply better, and is generally revered as an excellent timber both in America and abroad. Its hardness is 620 lb/ft, its MOR is 86 MPa, and is EM is 12.2 GPa,[46] roughly the same as the premier European softwood, larch. Far less celebrated, but in my opinion deeply underappreciated, are the southern yellow pines from the southeast, which make up the largest single source of timber in the US. Depending on the species, the timber from these pines has a hardness between 690 and 870 lb/ft, a MOR between 88 and 112 MPa, and an ER between 12.1 and 13.7 GPa.[47] [48] [49] That is a strong wood. In fact, while oaks are all harder than southern yellow pine, only a few oak species are actually stronger than the strongest southern yellow pines. In fact, longleaf pine and slash pine are both stronger in terms of MOR and ER than the majority of oak species, with only unusual species like live oak being significantly stronger.[50]Think about that. Many of those much-derided “terribly built” stick frame American houses are constructed from a material as strong as oak.On a certain level, this is all besides the point anyway, because beyond being a false equivalence, beyond being contradicted by the data, the question is based on a false assumption. The sorts of people who claim that houses are built better in Europe also tend to be the sort of people who think the Nordics have basically perfected the human art of existing. I fear to tell them that the Nordics, much like the Canadians and the Americans, build their houses from wood. And it is those same sophisticated Europeans, the Nordics and the Austrians in particular, who are pioneering building not just houses, but office buildings and dorms and high rises out of wood. Mass timber, the technique of building with solid wood beams and panels mentioned above, was developed in Austria and is most widespread in Europe, Norway in particular, and Canada, Vancouver in particular.More importantly, the reason the Nordics build their homes from wood has very little to do with wood being superior or inferior to concrete. No, wood is simply available there, and has been historically as well. The construction industry is very much two things, conservative and practical. Lumber was historically the primary building material in the Nordic countries, just as it was in the US and Canada. The default, the tradition in these countries, is to build with wood. The construction industry is very conservative. Similarly, when lumber is plentiful and cheap, as it is in Nordic countries, Canada, and the US, people build their houses with it. When it is more scarce, as it is around the Mediterranean, or just more expensive, such as in many areas in Western Europe, people will look to other materials to build with, something else like masonry. Coincidentally, the traditional, conservative way of building in those places is to build with masonry.Sometimes, that is all there really is to it.Having looked at the data then, I think some interesting conclusions are to be had. None of those conclusions ought to be that European houses are superior to American ones, though, much less the material and means of building them. And that finishes the second half of our answer.Thank you for giving my $0.02 your time and consideration.Footnotes[1] Image on wikimedia.org[2] 2011 Community Preference Survey[3] House or flat: where do you live?[4] Get Used To Living In Smaller Homes, Canadians[5] Average home size globally 2017 | Statista[6] Average House Sizes Around the World[7] EU Buildings Factsheets - Energy European Commission[8] Here’s why America’s houses are getting older[9] What is ENERGY STAR[10] New York, NY - Detailed climate information and monthly weather forecast | Weather Atlas[11] Års- och månadsstatistik[12] Wetter und Klima - Deutscher Wetterdienst - Startseite[13] http://clima.meteoam.it/AtlanteClimatico/pdf/(235)Roma%20Urbe.pdf[14] Do Canada geese still fly south for winter? Yes, but it's complicated[15] Wild Turkeys Invading Suburban U.S.[16] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/08/03/oh-deer-what-should-we-do-addressing-the-suburban-deer-dilemma/[17] Metro Coyotes[18] Asheville Urban/Suburban Bear Study Phase 2 focuses on human-bear interactions[19] Car and Deer Collisions Cause 200 Deaths, Cost $4 Billion a Year[20] Why Many American Suburbs Welcome Urban Deer Hunters[21] Feral Cats Kill Billions of Small Critters Each Year[22] Why feral cats are such a threat to Australian wildlife[23] U.S. Faces Growing Feral Cat Problem[24] Modulus of Rigidity[25] Steel, Wood and Concrete: A comparison[26] Compressive Strength of Concrete[27] Wood, Panel and Structural Timber Products - Mechanical Properties[28] The Wood Database[29] The Wood Database[30] Fracture Toughness: Measurement, Types and Typical Values[31] Fracture toughness - Wikipedia[32] Specific strength - Wikipedia[33] https://www.hunker.com/13401408/strength-of-steel-vs-wood[34] The Future is Wood! Using CLT Panels for Better, More Eco-Friendly Construction - Naikoon[35] Peek inside the tallest cross-laminated timber building in the US[36] Mjøstårnet in Norway becomes world's tallest timber tower[37] World's tallest timber tower proposed for Tokyo[38] Thermal conductivity - Wikipedia[39] R-values of Insulation and Other Building Materials[40] EGEE 102: Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection[41] Room Sound Absorption - Sound Absorption Coefficient[42] Room Sound Absorption - Sound Absorption Coefficient[43] The Wood Database[44] The Wood Database[45] The Wood Database[46] The Wood Database[47] The Wood Database[48] The Wood Database[49] The Wood Database[50] The Wood Database