Is “outside” overrated?

People are going to read this as a kind of #Slatepitch but as I live my life I see that despite all the talk about how great it is to be outside, people don’t really put their money where their mouth is. Property owners are much more likely to build an addition to their house (thereby increasing the inside/outside ratio of their property) when they’re feeling flush than to orchestrate a subtraction in order to get more open space. Even in places like Southern California where there’s really great weather all the time, the landscape is covered with buildings and people spend a very large sum of their income on purchasing or renting inside space in which to live over and above the inside space in which they work.

Here is much more, from Matt Yglesias, who explains why “inside” has “crucial advantages.”  For a useful discussion on this matter I thank also Claire Hill.