Penna Dexter

On Christmas Day, as I rushed to set my dining room table, I felt a strange sense of gratitude — for the table. And for the dining room. More and more Americans don’t have them and, in my opinion, they’re missing something special.

In an article for The Atlantic, city planner M. Nolan Gray wrote of the disappearing dining room: “Americans now tend to eat in spaces that double as kitchens or living rooms — a small price to pay for making the most of their square footage.” He points to housing scarcity and regulation as reasons many new apartments “lack even a space to put a table and chairs.” Residents are eating on their couches or in their bedrooms, and “hosting a meal has become virtually impossible.” The unfortunate result, says Mr. Gray, is that we’re “designing loneliness into American floor plans.”

For his article, Mr. Gray spoke with real estate developer and floor plan expert, Bobby Fijan who told him, “The reason the dining room is disappearing is that we are allocating [our] limited space to bedrooms and walk-in closets.”

Consumer preference, lack of housing supply, and certainly zoning codes are all behind what Mr. Gray describes as “the death of dining space.”

So is demographics.

“Shrinking household size” is a huge factor. Lower marriage rates and lower birthrates mean fewer people are living together in families. Mr. Gray cites U.S. Census figures showing that “the share of one-person households more than tripled from 1940 to 2020.” Of necessity, or by choice, people are more isolated and often lonelier.

M. Nolan Gray, the urban planner, wants to know “how many more dinners would be shared if we had the space to host guests?

Do you live alone? Invite someone in for dinner. No dining table, no kitchen table? Use the coffee table, an end table or even an electrical spool with a cloth over it.

Voila! You have a dining room.