I got a dollhouse one year for Christmas, I think maybe when I was 11 or so. I had never asked for one per se, which was why receiving it was great fun: Santa left it in our family room wrapped in newspaper and I had no idea what the huge package could be. It was (is, we still have it) a very nice house, a Victorian style with a front porch, two floors, two bedrooms, a flat roof ideal for tiny barbecues or what have you. It came totally unfurnished, no linoleum or wallpaper or paint or electricity or even people to live in it. I got a lot of accessories for the house that year (there's something very hilarious about receiving a tiny toilet, or a tiny hamster cage, or a tiny salt shaker) but it was up to me to really polish it up. I did a so-so job, I think--my wallpaper, tile and paint were a little haphazard and it never got wiring set up. But it was all mine to inflict my taste upon.

That's why I'm glad I was a child in the late '80's, the "me" generation. Because that dollhouse would not have been nearly as fun had I received this one. The people who lived in my dollhouse lived as I saw fit. Sure, maybe they didn't recycle (I only had a tiny garbage can) but they did save energy by using an ice box instead of a refrigerator (why they had a wooden ice box but had a touch-tone telephone I could never explain.) But the little wooden people who moved in had life free and easy. They didn't have to desalinate their water because it came directly from tiny faucets. They didn't have to use a solar cooker because they had an oven. They didn't have a sail car because they weren't going anywhere--there was no need to travel to tiny Whole Foods because somebody had given me tiny jars of beans and peas, ensuring my family that they'd have food stores forever, unless I lost the jars or they got accidentally swallowed by a family member or pet.

The people in my dollhouse never had any neighbors, but if they did, they'd probably be viewed as good ones, who let people come over and enjoy a tiny cheese tray on the roof or play with the miniature bat and ball in the felt front "yard." They didn't come saddled with the identity as "those crazy miniature hippie neighbors". Maybe my dollhouse wasn't 'sustainable' but nobody gave it to me with a preordained values system. I think it would be fair though if eco-dollhouses were being sold, then so were dollhouses for miniature crazy cat people, fratdollhouses, methdollhouses and so on--and frankly those tiny people are still probably more fun to live near than the ones who harness the wind (which I believe is sold separately anyway.)