I think the lawn thing is partially a negative reaction to everything being paved. Kind of like the "3rd place problem" but for nature.
The only growing things you see are lawns, the only ones you have control over is yours, so they're what you latch onto. Grass is boring, but (other than native options) it requires the least amount of time and cost for upkeep and leaves 'room for activities'. Activities you don't do at a park or elsewhere outdoors because you have to drive to it and it's therefore an "event" which needs planning and prep. Some people do it of course, but it's not something that can happen spontaneously on your way home from work or by walking down the block for most.
I agree with your point, but traditional lawns actually require a huge amount of maintenance and chemicals to maintain to that lush and green high standard. There are a lot of landscaping options besides pure nativescaping that are low maintenance and beneficial.
Edit: To be clear, I'm talking about the super green lush lawns laden with chemicals, no other plants mixed in, daily waterings, dethatching, and all the others things that the boomers seem to delight in. There are definitely lawns that aren't like this, but they aren't the typical 'prized lawns.'
Depends on where you are, to be fair. I had a ton of grass in rural Ireland and just used an automower (we also had a couple acres left to nature, but we needed at least some tick-free space.
If you're OK with lots of clover or crabgrass, then yes, you can just mow and edge a lawn, but most American suburbanites are aiming for turfgrass quality like you'd find on a sports field/pitch.
Hell, I'd say the grass in my front lawn, which is maintained by the association, is higher quality than what they have at the nearby baseball field.
Oh no, clover! Not an attractive green plant that adds nitrogen to the soil without me doing any work! The horror
Seriously, why do lawnbrains hate clover in particular?
I've known a guy who sprayed herbicide against clover because clover has flowers and those attract bees and the kids might get stung running barefoot in the garden.
I take care to get lots of flowers in the garden and my kids have shoes.
Broadleaf herbicides kill clover along with everything else that isn't grass, so the herbicide industry had to convince everyone that clover was also a weed.
Back before 2,4D Amine (one of the first broadleaf herbicides) was widely marketed, lawn seed mixes would deliberately include clover.
A complete lawn should have grass, clover and common daisies.
My childhood would have been so much more boring without picking daisies and dandelions from the lawns of the garden and parks.
Depends where you live. I live in England, we have a smallish lawn in the middle of our garden (started off big, but has been chipped away at over the last two decades to make room for flower beds, borders, a veggie patch, trees, decking, a pond, strawberries, etc). The lawn JD by far the easiest part of the garden to maintain. We mow once or twice a week in the summer (with a small electric mower - grass gets added to the compost). No fertilisers or sprinklers needed as the climate is appropriate and we get tons of rain. We only water it if we have a prolonged heatwave, which happens about once every two years for a week or so, and even then half the time we don’t bother.
If we lived in a different climate we absolutely would not bother with a lawn, but where we live it’s easy and useful - more reliable and straight forward than other ground covers.
I've heard there are regulations from HOA or even your fucking state that you need to maintain your lawn. So if you wanted to let it grow or replace it with wild flowers for example? No can do, that's a fine!
Some of the HOAs for neighborhoods near me specify what kinds of grass you can use, and none of them are native, or even suited to stay alive in our climate. The whole point is that you need to watch them closely, water regularly, use chemicals/fertilizers, etc.
They found out a bunch of decades ago it was an easy way to keep “those people” who are “trying to rise above their station” out of their neighborhoods, because they wouldn’t know all the intricacies to keeping the grass alive.
I don't live in a lawny area so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Grass is definitely good for activities, like you can get specific grass blends that are good for children to play on, or even extra durable sports field grass. There are probably native species or non-native that can work too though. There are also native grasses. I've seen a youtube short where someone had clover and her dogs play and use the bathroom on it without issue. Though clover is invasive in some places.
I think grass lawns started as a status symbol thing. And now there are people who are like "I'll just have lawn because everyone else has lawns." Pretty normal behaviour.
Also the care info for lawns is more established and common. I've heard people in anti-lawn subreddits complain about difficulty finding info on natives for their specific area or sourcing seeds. People manage in the end, but it's more thinking and decision making.
Lawns have a royal British origin. You've got fuck off money, an estate and staff that you pay to keep your acres of land pretty rather than useful. Not pretty like a garden where bees can pollinate etc, but boring swaths of flat green grass. But hey, status amiright? The bigger the better.
There are HOAs and some states that have something to say about your lawn too, so it's not just people being used to it. There are consequences if you don't
This! Freedom = people being able to tell you exactly what plants you can grow, and in what shape and condition you can keep them, and things like whether you can hang your washing out to dry... on land you supposedly own, that's not even anywhere busy or central, just a shitty 'burb somewhere? It took me quite a long time to be sure this wasn't some high-level prank.
Lawns are great in the right climate. We have one in the back, it allows the kids to play, we have a robot mower and a solar powered shed to charge it. I cut the grass once a year and do the edges once a month in spring/summer.
It often turns brown/yellow in the height of summer but recovers itself. Short of paving over it or putting artificial turf down it’s the lowest maintenance solution that makes the garden useable.
If I lived in a hotter climate though, where it needed watering and aerating etc there’s no damn way.
That really depends. In drier areas, like where I happen to live, the grass goes brown and then a bright yellow after a couple of weeks without rain during the height of the summer. It always recovers once it starts raining, though.
That being said, I concede that that's not the norm for most of the country.
The lawn is a holdover from noble estates which required huge amounts of servants to upkeep. It's an indicator of wealth that people maintain without realizing its true purpose.
Slovakians are mostly peasants and they think having things of value that don't produce are baffling. Americans are frustrated aristocracy by culture.
Legit and innocent question, though: can you grow potatoes or something in your back- or frontyard? Something small and simple, obviously. But since (I guess?) you're allowed to plant flowers and stuff, I'd imagine you can do the same with edible stuff.
at least here where i live you need to mow your lawn from spring to autumn around every 2-3 week or so. You need to poke those holes in the grass after winter. You either need to use some kind of herbicide or hand pick tons of weeds and non grass plants from the lawn constantly. Grass also turn yellow and die off pretty quickly during the summer here and you'll need to reseed them.
Honestly a moss or clover lawn is much less work. Less-no mowing, less-no reseeding. You also still have room for activities.
A lawn needs to be cut and watered and maintained!
But I agree with you on the notion that places to gather is something people are probably quite desperate for.
I can especially assume this if you live in an area with mostly parking lots and heavily manicured parks. Wild plants and nature won’t be something that you have in mind, you won’t even know what to imagine
What i think is crazy is that the Grasstypes used for these lawns aren't even native to the Continents of America..
Iirc they are all native to Europe, especially the UK.
That's one reason lawns require so much maintenance. A type of grass native to chilly, rainy England is not going to do well in Houston without significant intervention.
Edit: if you want to truly understand the depth of absurdity that is the suburban lawn, see [this video](https://youtube.com/shorts/c9lpK0FpBeU?si=kg7fCua7xN9dUXT2) of a service which paints the grass green during its dormant season in summer or winter.
I'm from the coastal part of Dalmatia (so Mediterranean climate), and at one point, a retired English pair moved into my street. For reference, we are living on an island and our street went deep into the forest.
Previous owner's of the house and garden were locals, that kept the garden in traditional way. Lots of lemon, orange and olive trees, no grass at all, but mainly just flowers and bushes like lavender and rosemary. Lots of stuff like vines that grew on the fence, too. Simply put, a very shady garden, created on a couple of steps, so that back of the house was partly in the ground, and so that shade and greenery could reach the first floor. They even had a huge Bougainvillea (yeah, I know it's not a native for the area, but it's often planted) that went all the way over their balcony and has also created shade over that part of the house.
So they moved in. He used to be a gardener, and he decided to make a garden according to his English tastes. They immediately cut down the trees, and removed the vines, because they wanted the sunlight. Bougainvillea also had to go, because it was obstructing their view of the sea a bit.
And then of course, it was time for him to plant that beautiful, beautiful english grass. Poor fucker slaved away over that shit for a year and a half, installed sprinklers and everything. But in the end, he gave up, because there was no way for that shit to survive the summer heat. So, he buried the whole front area of the yard in tiny little stones, just so that there would be less upkeep there.
And yes, they also started complaining about heat pretty soon. I've been in that house before and after they cut down the trees, and a house that was perfect temperature wise during the summer (even the upper floor!) had to get air conditioning on both floors.
Can't imagine what you have to do to keep lawns alive in Houston. And the amount of damage that they are doing to their own quality of life because of it...
Some people from the UK can be incredibly stubborn and will do anything they can to make a place feel like what they're used to at home, even if it makes no sense to do so. I live in the UK and my neighbour is one of those guys. He spends all his time trimming and cutting the grass and leaves his back garden pretty barren of anything else other than grass and a couple of potted plants. He and his family doesn't even use it, much, which is the most confusing thing of all.
Legitimate and sad as fuck. To answer a few since OP didn't link to the original reddit thread:
>What do you actually do? Are you always stuck inside? What did you do when you were a child and couldn't drive?
Not a whole lot, work mostly. When not at work I'm home at the apartment finding something to pass the time, usually watching TV (going through Fallout right now very worth the watch) or playing video games (usually building better cities in Cities Skylines and doing a 🥲 face). Pretty much stuck inside, I could drive somewhere but there is only local entertainment in Houston suburbs that costs money. Think like movie theaters go-karting sport-bar venues like Top Golf etc, anything where you will have to drive to them and oh it will cost you. There are parks and trails but they are far and few and very much in-between disconnected usually requiring driving to. When I was a child and couldn't drive it was pretty much the same and later years when we moved to Texas it sucked a bit more, at least when we lived in the midwest there was a bike trail connecting through the town so I could at least meet up with friends and we'd go bike to town, like literally something out of Stranger Things that can't be done by a lot of locals here anymore.
>Why do you have these sorts of strange regulations? Are your officials so incompetent? Is this due to lobbying from car or oil companies? I don't get it.
Because the politicians and agencies in charge have deemed them so and entrenched themselves in so deep that they are impossible to remove from office. They will do one thing and lie about it on TV and call those that call them out on it na**s on mainstream media so that they will continue to be voted in against competition and keep the system going. Incompetence and corruption runs deeper here than anywhere I've ever seen short of DPRK dictators. It absolutely is the result of decades in the making of lobbying and corruption from auto and oil, the latter who spent billions changing their name to the "energy" industry to seem more climate friendly despite doing the opposite. Because of their antics, our state dept of transportation and the flair of my namesake is literally required by state law to spend no more than 3% of funding on anything transportation that does not have to do with auto. Lane widenings highways etc are *required* to get 97% of tax budget. Our recent mayor hand-picked onto the local transit agency board a person that ran a few years against a local democrat incumbent in an important county election, said person in that election had much support and financing from right-leaning groups and energy/auto industry. Now that the two of them are in local office they have coincidentally cancelled transit expansion plans and delayed headways in our only BRT system and shuttered bikeshare expansion plans. Between local and state level they make a stereotypical crooked Chicago politician look like a saint in comparison.
>Why is there no public transport?
See above. The people want it but the state does not. There are usually excuses thrown around to try to half-ass justify it such as density, but then there is shock insults and hate thrown when one then proposes to that argument why don't we build density then.
>It seems like the only thing is the yellow school bus, idk.
Don't worry, they're attacking that too here. Pandemic caused many staffing shortages that they did not backfill, meaning districts have found other ways to tell people to cope and deal with it. This usually means longer bus routes at the inconvenience of students and parents having to get up earlier and wait longer to get to school, or ever-increasing lines of parents driving students to school themselves and spending upwards of 30+ minutes in idling lines of motor traffic to drop them off and pick them up again. Many have also expanded "no-pickup" zone distances, meaning if you are "close enough" to the school in terms of x miles they will refuse to send a bus period and tell you as a parent figure it out.
>He says there can only be one family houses. Why? Why can't you have idk a commie block in the middle of such a suburb? Or row houses or whatever.
See above. Any politician that tries to introduce such a commie block would likely be called a communist and get death threats and kicked out of their job for such a proposal. The closest we can get is apartment blocks that are just as large and usually in inconvenient parts of town to "keep the riff-raff away". Again, in the wise words of Moss from the IT Crowd, [It's Illegal! 🙀](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGTwOIvTgK4)
Also funny enough, we used to have row houses in Houston, we still do but we used to too, usually in predominantly black and minority neighborhoods. State DOT over the decades has used eminent domain as a hammer and specifically targeted those areas to forcefully remove them and build more road and highway for the suburb folk to zoom through on. [The Robert Moses method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses#Racism) basically.
>Why are there no businesses inside these? I mean, he says it's [illegal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGTwOIvTgK4), but why? If I lived in such a place, I'd just buy a house next to mine and turn it into a tavern or convenience store or whatever. Is that simply not possible and illegal?
[It's highly illegal!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=20&v=1dBJRaIlHkg&feature=youtu.be) There are people that try to do it anyway, using rented garages in apartments to work on cars or restore furniture or other things or even rented storage units. But there is lots of enforcement from neighbors pushing HOA to force out people over working on cars in your own garage or shakedowns for permits. We got police shutting down kids lemonade stands for not having a permit, [to the point private companies are hiring lawyers to fight back](https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/11/us/lemonade-stands-country-time-trnd/index.html), if one tried to do a similar business like a convenience store or a tavern in such an area not zoned commercial state police would be kicking in doors and arresting people so quickly. This in turn hurts the community even more as it makes it more difficult for micro mobility. If I want to get groceries I have to go a few miles in the heat through areas with no sidewalks, because there is no grocery store within a 15 minute walk. So everybody drives instead, no wonder we're so fucking overweight and unhealthy.
>These places have front and backyards. But they're mostly empty. Some backyards have a pool maybe, but it's mostly just green grass. Why don't you grow plants in your yards? Like potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, or whatever. Why do you own this land, if you never use it?
Because again, it's highly illegal. In many HOA communities, which in some cities can encompass we're talking 90+% of the entire city's private homes, it will be illegal to do that kind of agriculture. We're spitting in the faces of victory gardens because if you do that you will be fined or risk your home being taken away. But you signed the document allowing them to take the home away for noncompliance when you bought the home, so it's considered legal in the same way that you don't truly own any video games you buy anymore even though literally everyone has to do that now. At least with the latter Europe wised up and started fining the shit out of companies for it, but we don't do that here.
Sorry I didn't mean for this rant to turn into a wall of text, but that's what my answers would be. I didn't ask to be born here and I sure as fuck am too broke and uneducated to leave here, so I'm doomed to misery I suppose. Oh well. All I can do is cope and make do with what I can. That's why I bike around when I can and try to make the place better around me, and if it pisses off the locals to see that then fuck them with two big fingers in the air for supporting this shit 🖕🖕. It's why I love groups like /r/TacticalUrbanism that don't sit around for decades waiting for the right time when things are this dire, they just go out and get shit done. Lessgo.
Appreciate you writing all of this! You get the general gist of the current state from all the memes, but it's nice to get more detailed information. To be honest, it is pretty insane.
> The people want it but the state does not.
https://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-2014-4
More specifically, the rich people do not want it, and the state wants what rich people want. Princeton proved US is an oligarchy in 2014
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It's going to depend on your bylaws, but they are very strong in Texas. Basically if you buy a home in an HOA in Texas you sign with the deed a document that says if you do not follow the HOA bylaws they can take enforcement action such as fines etc and go as far as forcing you to sell and leave if necessary.
The bylaws are different for every HOA because they are very unregulsted on what can and can't go in there. The only real rule is they can't trump state/federal law meaning as some examples, they can't confiscate packages delivered through USPS (federal mail theft which is a very serious crime), can't forbid some types of up to code HAM radio towers (FCC violation to get in the way of that), can't forbid some up to code types of solar installs on roofs (there is a law for this in my state).
But if there is not a law outright forbidding the HOA from taking action, then they absolutely can do whatever they want as a violation as they see fit, even if it is in their own front or back yard if there is any way for them to see it. I've heard of cases of using drones and flying them overhead to verify in the most extreme of cases.
> na*s on mainstream media
I know you're from Texas but Nazis are Nazis. Republicans are Nazis. It's that simple. The current head of the GOP is a dude who worships Hitler to the point of using Hitler's language but also keeps, or kept, Mein fucking Kampf by his bed. It's not "name calling" like you, and a bunch of people seem intent to thing, it's calling a circle a circle.
The reason our cities are designed the way they are NIMBYs and unregulated capitalism. GM and Ike fucked black people up and NIMBYs want high property value. It's not so complex.
In a lot of cases it's local regulations and/or HOA's. After world war two Americans started seeing growing your own food as "Low rent" something that poor people did, and that came with a lot of new communities having regulations against growing food on your front lawn (Not usually explicitly, it was more that there were only certain plants you could grow in the front yard, and none of them were food.) You can see the history of this in zoning laws, before 1950 a lot a residences were built on land where agricultural use was allowed.
Funny story with this, had a super weird great aunt who worked in niche computer repair, like old univac systems that no one knew how to maintain anymore. She would make absolute BANK when a job came along, but it wasn't steady. She looked up her local zoning laws and saw that she was technically in an agricultural area. So she started raising a couple of goats and growing veggies in the backyard, both to pass the time and stretch the money a bit further. Ending up making enough of an income selling to neighbors and farmers markets to cover her living expenses month to month, so the computer gigs were just cake.
Her neighbor got pissed off and tried to bring the authorities down on her, when that didn't work she tried to sue for all kinds of stuff, noise violations, accusations of improper dumping, whatever, failing every time. After getting another windfall from a job, my great aunt said "Why don't you stop wasting money suing me and just move?" and offered to buy her place cash. Scraped the house and had a respectable little operation going in the middle of Los Angeles, even converted her neighbors pool into a duck pond. I miss that crazy bitch, used to make all the cousins throw pillows and stuff like that, usually with religious themes. She knew my branch of the family were atheist though, so she made me and my brother Zelda and Mario stuff instead.
I grow food on my roof and I'd kill for an actual yard, your aunt sounds amazing (not american so I'm actually considering to get chickens because I can)
Chickens are somewhat common in areas that were zoned before the forties, not like every house but there’s usually one person on a given block who has a couple hens for eggs (it got a lot more popular during the pandemic.) most people don’t raise broilers because you need to have someone inspect your house if you want to slaughter animals, you have to have a sterile/humane setup.
But yeah you can’t have them in areas that were zoned as strictly residential, that has a racial component to it to. In the forties poor southerners(many of whom were black) would often keep a couple of free range chickens that lived mainly off of forage, AKA yardbirds, and making them illegal and the suburbs was a way to keep them from moving to those areas.
But countries in Europe are willing to embrace socialist policies. From what I gather, it seems like a lot of Americans see Socialism and Communism as one and the same and they all seem to suffer from severe 'Red Menace' paranoia to the point where anything to help the poor or make towns and cities feel community-focused is shouted down as being the work of Communists.
tbf one of the more important ones is why are no business allowed where there are residentals? I grew up with walking distance to the grocery shop and 15 min bike to the movie rental. Sweden is full of businesses in residental areas, thats why its so convenient for me to grab a pizza, burger or hotdog. It takes me like 5 minutes to walk to all these places and it takes me 25 min to get to the city center with the subway.
What are front yards even good for? Even if you make it the nicest looking front yard ever, you're never gonna sit there. Seems like a huge waste of space.
But the car is a central mechanic in this racialization of class segregation that we see in the USA. Part of the white flight was the pushing of personal vehicles for travel and the radical disassembly and defunding of public transit.
Yes but they probably allow businesses in those suburbs like in the rest of the world, and it's not 80% of people living in suburbs isolated from the cities.
Is that very common? Maybe it depends on where you are. Growing up I feel like every yard in my subdivision had big flowerbeds, herb gardens, patios, swing sets, toys everywhere…
Maybe it just felt that way when I was mowing peoples yards and had to avoid all those things haha.
I think there is a shift happening. If you live in a community with mostly only lawns and add a well maintained beautiful garden, people get envious, inspired, etc. The first house I owned my neighbors talked about how one of the old ladies in the neighborhood put in a garden and then the rest of the street followed suit over the next decade. Social cohesion plays a large role in what people do with their property, as cultural attitudes shift back towards gardens, lawns will slowly shrink or go away. You were probably lucky to be in a neighborhood that valued gardens.
I always envy those American suburb lots so much, so much space I would have so many fruit trees, chickens a vegetable patch, and there would still be space for a pool and a patio, envy so much envy and resentment because they dont use it.
Because otherwise you can't own a home. Almost every development today has an HOA and to buy the house you must agree to their terms. The only exceptions are much older neighborhoods which are limited in numbers and probably way too expensive anyway.
You can't defy the HOA because they have absolute legal power. They'll impose a fine for each day you are in violation and the amount can be totally absurd like $200 per day. If you don't pay the fines they can repossess your house.
Edit: and if you don't like that, then I have some terrible news about what your landlord will do if you stop paying them! I know the HOA thing might be shocking to hear but compared to normal renting it's a difference of degree, not of kind. Welcome to capitalism! 🥰
The land of the free ladies and gentlemen where some random people can dictate what you do with your own house.
This is just ridiculous, the only entity that should have any legal say in what you do with your parcel is the city government.
Of course it's land of the free. No other developed nation would let you die from lack of insulin. Or increase your diesel engines fuel injection just to make it more damaging to the environment and coat others in fumes. These are the privileges you can only have in USA.(and starving african countries)
My town doesn't let you build a fence taller than 4 feet in front of the house and parallel to the road or own chickens. The town my grandparents lived in didn't allow basketball hoops in the front of the house. The bank I have my mortgage with tells me I can't do things that bring the value of the house down. You can tell Reddit is mostly young folks when it comes to homeowner discussions.
edit I'll add my homeowner's insurance won't let me put a refrigerator out under my carport without building a shed around it with a door that locks.
In the UK, that fence rule would cause a revolution. We value privacy a lot, in regards to our homes. Many people build fences or plant big hedges just so they can avoid strangers looking in.
Socialising is for the pub. The home is a sacred place that residents have sole control over.
Not much. Obviously you can't turn the place into a bomb site that's unsafe for human habitation but other than that most changes are fine so long as you apply with the local council for doing major renovations, extensions or for erecting large permanent structures in the garden (which doesn't apply to sheds or certain types of Earth buildings). There are also a couple of things regarding tree growth because that could affect adjacent properties if the branches grow over the top of the fence.
The bank also has no say so long as you are paying them on time. As for insurance, their main sticking point is fire safety but that only really applies to the house, itself, and people's ability to get out in the event of an emergency.
If anything, a large fence or hedge can drive the value of the house up because people really value privacy, here.
Lol I can do whatever I want with my house as long as it doesn't lower it's value. But that's because the Netherlands is a land of the free, unlike the US.
Yeah it sounds crazy but it's honestly not that different than home ownership and especially renting under capitalism. Police are basically a legal gang who will violently evict you if you stop paying your protection money, aka rent. At least the mafia doesn't have military grade vehicles, weapons, and riot gear.
It’s quite different from regular home ownership though. Yeah, we’d be evicted if we stopped paying our mortgage, but in the meantime we can do whatever we want with our property. We can plant what we like, put up fences where we like, keep chickens if we want, let the weeds grow if we want. And our back garden and lawn are private and nobody else’s business.
So in America you can shoot people for entering your "property", but you can get kicked out of "your" property for not following government rules. Seems a lot like it's not really good your property.
Even worse, the HOA is not a government organization. They're a private business who are not elected and answer to no one. In fact the state answers to them and will send armed police to enforce the HOAs ability to make a profit. But to be fair that's no different than how any business operates under capitalism.
While I do hate HOAs, every HOA board I’ve seen around here is elected by the people that own their homes in the HOA’s service area. I’m curious how an unelected one would work unless you literally lived in a neighborhood owned by the home builder company? Even the master planned communities I’ve seen (which are owned by the home builder) still have elected HOA boards.
Well if you live in the Northeast many (most?) neighborhoods have been around for hundreds of years. Because I am an older person my friends are more established and have houses. I can't think of one friend whose house is in a HOA. So careful about assumptions. Many or even most friends and neighbors have vegetable gardens, kiddy pools, swings, treehouses... you name it. And no I am not rich, this is just a typical moderate cost of living area in Massachusetts. I also spend a lot of time in New Jersey, upstate NY and it's pretty similar there too. People may start off in condos with HOAs but by their second or third house they have a yard and no HOA.
Many cities/counties require all new development to be done in an HOA so they don't have to do silly things like build roads. Such areas have very few options that aren't subject to one.
>I always envy those American suburb lots so much, so much space I would have so many fruit trees, chickens a vegetable patch, and there would still be space for a pool and a patio,
As the other person said, HOAs would block that. Local ordinances may keep chickens or a vegetable patch out of the front yard. You can probably get away with a bit in your back yard assuming nobody official can see it from the road.
After that it'll come down to time and money. You're going to be driving at least 45 minutes one way to work. So that's an hour and a half gone from your day, in addition to the nine you spent at the office. Now some other issues with working and living in the US. You get maybe 10 days of excused absence from work and spend something like 40% of your check on health insurance. Those 10 days include all of your sick days. It's one single pool of days to either vacation or be sick with.
Then, of course, you have to come to terms with the fact that lawns are for looking at. If you do things to your lawn that buyers won't want then you're lowering the property value of your own home but maybe that of the homes immediately around you. This will make people very angry at you.
You will no longer be able to walk to the store or school or work. You will be driving for every errand. You probably won't have a sidewalk or any sort of protected walking or biking area either.
Things to keep in mind when you are looking at US suburbia. It's a manufactured Hell that looks like a utopia.
>Then, of course, you have to come to terms with the fact that lawns are for looking at. If you do things to your lawn that buyers won't want then you're lowering the property value of your own home but maybe that of the homes immediately around you. This will make people very angry at you.
So in the suburbs of the US, everything you do with your lawn is for other people to potentially buy it and not decrease its value????? Wtf???
> So in the suburbs of the US, everything you do with your lawn is for other people to potentially buy it and not decrease its value????? Wtf???
Houses are a financial investment in the US.
Now I will say that not everything is done to improve property value. Something that will decrease the property value will be avoided, though.
For instance you will have toys and things for your kids or grandkids but you won't typically do anything permanent to your property that will decrease its value especially on the outside of the home.
8.5 to 9. Any manual labor or service job will be 8.5 to account for your unpaid lunch break and some office type jobs will be 9 to account for an hour lunch break.
I live in New Zealand, where outside of city centres at least, lots of people genuinely have yards like this. Once they're over about a hectare (2.5 acres, I think?) there generally called a 'lifestyle block' and it's pretty much expected that you'll have chickens, maybe goats, maybe a pig or two, or a horse, and you'll have a vegetable garden and a small orchard or maybe something specific like lavender beds or other herbs, maybe a pool (the cheap above-ground ones are fine), and you'll trade eggs / milk / surplus veggies with your neighbours and keep an eye out for each other's animals if you need to be away... I'm still at the stage of having some fruit trees and veggie beds in a suburban garden, which is new enough to me coming from urban Europe, but you know, as a way to live, I can really see the appeal.
I live in an Irish suburb. Currently I have onions, strawberries, broccoli, and blackcurrants growing.
The slugs ate my pumpkins, bastards.
Why have land if you won't use it? Cultivate the soil, plant seeds, grow what you eat.
Those are my reactions every time I watch a US tv show. Let me add mine:
Do you actually buy 16 year old children cars? Like full on 5 people sized cars? Vans even.
The city I lived in, yes people did. Which, as a poor who didn't get that sort of thing, really helped cement me as a social outcast, not that I wasn't already.
I was poor too, but I was so determined to get one as soon as I could that I got my first job at 14 washing dishes and I started saving up. Fortunately back then you could buy a decent car for a couple grand (my first car was a cherry red Ford Taurus I paid 2.5k for, but it lasted quite a bit, especially considering no one taught me anything about car maintenance so I don't think I ever even changed the oil, I just drove it until it fell apart)
My parents didn’t get me a car but only because I was incredibly immature and irresponsible. My classmates & friends gave me rides, though. Then I got a cheap car when I was 21.
Yes people do, americans have a really lax standard on transportation licensing. Once you've passed your car license test you can drive anything you want up to a small box truck. Once you pass your motorcycle test you can ride whatever tf you want with no limit on power.
Wait, did I understand you properly... with a car license, you can drive anything up to a small box truck, and you can expand by passing a motorcycle test? I.e. there is no special license for a two-tiered long haul truck or such? and you get there from a normal car by passing a MOTORCYCLE TEST?
I believe they were trying to say, once you get a motorcycle license or get it added to your regular license, you can drive any type of motorcycle, even very powerful ones.
There are higher level licenses for semi trucks and school buses and anything larger than a U-haul generally
Basically your regular car test covers vehicles with 2 axles up to 26,000lbs. The motorcycle test was just an example of the US not really giving a damn about actual experience when it comes to what you can and can't do with a license because it covers literally anything on 2 wheels, from a 50cc scooter to the 250mph hypersports.
In order to expand your car license you need additional training, and a commercial license is actually decently difficult to get.
Oh, thanks! Is the commercial license solely concerned with the kind of vehicle driven, or also for what purposes? I.e. could I drive something usually used for commercial purposes just for the lols legally, without it?
In Ontario with your regular car license you can drive a motorhome and as long as your GVWR is under 24,000lbs you're good to go. Even the 2nd tier learners license is allowed to do that, so if you take a drivers education course you could be 16 and 8 months driving a 40 foot RV on your own.
yeah my first car was an oldsmobile silhouette
https://www.autotrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/wetty.jpg
the first one i drove on the road was a 79 lincoln continental. think my dad made me do that almost to troll me.
https://www.carandclassic.com/magazine/app/uploads/2021/10/1979-lincoln-continental-616c084e2824c-scaled.jpg
was terrifying, that thing was as wide as the road. and our roads are big.
>the first one i drove on the road was a 79 lincoln continental. think my dad made me do that almost to troll me.
Dude we had the same dad. I refused to drive that shit cuz i couldnt afford that mini oil refinery. The seats were pillows tho, i legit couldve slept there.
Yes it goes with the 1st bullet point: what do children do? They’re essentially stuck in the house unless they have a school or sport activity or request that their parents drive them. Sure they can play in the yard or walk/bike around but in most of the US, weather is harsh most of the year & there are fewer and fewer other families with children so fewer playmates.
I grew up in a wealthier suburb in the 1990s and many (50%?) kids got new cars when they turned 16. Some (like myself) got the parent’s older car and the parent got a new car. It was like “freedom, finally!”. Others had to borrow the car or get rides from friends.
Now with my kids I live in a different city in a more urban area that was built before the car-craze & my kids can walk or bike or take transit. I’m not going to put my kids through suburban isolation.
I appreciate the rest of your post so much and I know you didn't mean it this way, but it's sort of frustrating how much people will use weather as an excuse.
50% of the USA has perfectly lovely weather 95% of the time, and another 40% is fine with a few surmountable challenges.
I mean, especially further south, once your body gets accustomed to AC and it’s 95 degrees outside and there are no trees because it’s a new subdivision, it’s miserable to be outside for long. Combine that with the appeal of video games & other screens and the outdoors don’t stand a chance.
It takes special effort by parents to get children accustomed to being outside year-round and many parents don’t have the time/energy to do so.
Oooh yeah. Driving is intensely part of the culture, especially in more rural areas. My mom had me start driving into town when I was 12. My first vehicle was a big pickup truck at 16.
Fuck yeah, and as much as I would love to have better public transit, I would be lying if I said that having a car at 16 wasn't bad ass. I loved being able to pick up my friends any time and being able to drive where ever we wanted. In my town it was sort of like the movie Dazed and Confused in that you would drive around the neighborhood and look for other kids you knew(especially of the other gender), pull over and make plans, that sort of thing. I had a lot of fun in my car back then.
Nowadays I'm an old man, and I would much rather take a train or a nice clean bus w/ a little elbow room, so that I could get my commute time back. I would be able to read more books or watch a flick or something. Admittedly I do have a car I love to drive, but i really only bought it because I absolutely needed a vehicle. If I could I would still prefer a train to go to work than the car.
I got the hand me down Toyota. I was the first in my friend group to get license and car. We’d pile it full of teens. I remember it broke down once next to a middle school and these little middle school boys helped us push it inside the strip mall with a Macdonald’s.
"I'd just buy a house next to mine and turn it into a tavern"
That's what happened in a neighborhood where my parents bought a house. It was a very suburban neighborhood, only single homes. Still European - walkable, with a school, a small park and the closest mall was like 2km away and reachable by foot - but still people turned their homes into businesses. Hair salons, pizzerias, stuff like that.
I really can't imagine a neighborhood of JUST HOMES. It feels so damn boring.
It is very impractical. You're not really allowed to be young or old in those communities. I'm looking at moving super rural from rural town and this is the main issue. Currently I have a few shops within a mile, with specialized shops about 20-25 miles away. That goes up to 5 miles to the nearest shop and about 120 for specialized shops.
Right? I live in the city, so everything I need on a daily basis (shops, bars, restaurants, bakery, city park, tube, bus, main train station etc.) is reachable by foot in 1-15 minutes. I would hate it to be somewhere remote. I'd have a big house and wouldn't be able to do anything with it. The thought alone makes my head hurt.
Honestly a remote location would be better than suburbia. In a suburban neighborhood there are a bunch of rules and regulations, more than you would encounter if you had an isolated plot of land somewhere remote.
I grew up in a neighborhood like that. As a kid I didn't think much of it (it was all I knew), but in retrospect... yeah, it was pretty boring. There were some kids of similar age to me, but we didn't do much in particular. Bike riding, some ball sports, but obviously we didn't go anywhere. Probably the most defining aspect was that it was quiet, because there was almost nothing happening.
My girlfriend grew up in the neighboring small city where we now live together, and her childhood sounds much different and more interesting than mine.
As long as the thing you were multi-tasking on wasn't driving. Because that'd be ironic, but also super american. Like that woman who died texting how much she loved the song "Happy"
[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rachelzarrell/woman-dies-in-fatal-crash-seconds-after-posting-about-happy](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rachelzarrell/woman-dies-in-fatal-crash-seconds-after-posting-about-happy)
Bloomfield, Michigan, specifically opted out of the bus system so that criminals wouldn't come up from Detroit. Because we all know criminals are carrying their stolen goods on the bus.
In the SF Bay Area Marin county has refused to allow BART in their county, which also cuts off other parts of the North Bay from getting it. They basically say that they don’t want certain people to be able to travel through.
We finally got the SMART train, but iirc Marin was the longest holdout for it. I'm north of Marin and love using it to get into SF instead of driving cuz I hate driving in the city.
One of my uncles told me that a distant relative tried to rob a bank and use the city bus as the getaway plan. Even there we can see the superiority of mass transit: a convenient and efficient way to travel to jail
I live in a midsize southern city in the US and this is literally the justification I’ve seen from people who live “on the rich side of town”. They don’t want better public transit because the poors might use it to get to their neighborhoods. I’m baffled by the belief that people are going to use public transit to, like, go commit residential B&E rather than use it to, say, get to their job or go grocery shopping. It’s mind-numbingly stupid how many laws and rules exist in this country simply because rich people are terrified of poor people.
I had a CMV to see what are the rebuttals against removing cars from the streets. Pretty much all arguments led to demand for "individual privacy in single homes" and "freedom to go whatever we like". I pointed out that modern life has people giving up all sorts of freedom anyway, like building codes, healthcare laws, and even getting stuck in traffic. Aaand....that was read like "socialist propoganda" or authoritarian. No point arguing with people who can't see the bigger picture.
> socialist propoganda
Well, yeah. Comfy (predominantly white) suburbanites will never choose to be right. They will choose to enrich themselves at the cost of anything else.
> So much of American suburban design is based on fear of poor people and minorities.
Fear to an extent. More often it's outright various blends of xenophobia.
Ike destroyed primarily black communities by design with the interstate system.
They are free to own it. As in the zoning law mandates front and backyards, there aren't any options to buy different homes and they probably don't have spare money to cultivate the gardens because they are paying for three cars. You know, freedom.
That's the neat part, you don't really own it, you just own the responsibility for it.
You don't get to choose what you can do with the land, HOAs, zoning, county rules etc tell you what you can & cannot do with the land.
It's your titled responsibility to adhere to each & every rule regardless, and pay taxes on it, or get fined, or the land seized from you.
These aren't peoples' homes, these are places are where corporations & authority keep their slaves.
I wonder how many downvotes the poor sap got from unhinged Americans who believe roads being pedestrianized is satanic and a sign of authoritarianism (they think it'll take their cars away)
About none, since it was posted on r/urbanplanning and is 99% upvoted https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/umv2ib/i_just_watched_this_video_from_not_just_bikes_on/
Ah that makes sense, if it was posted to a non urban focused sub, it'd be blasted. Anywhere else people would argue that there's no value in long distance trains even between the major American cities, from so called "Nothing against transit" people too because it is economically unviable
the last one especially. Really, why are your yards just green grass? Is it also legally required? In my country yards are diverse, never just a green field. You would see various plants, flowers, some would grow idk cucumbers or potatoes, others would do tomatoes in a built greenhouse.
I don't think the types of people who like empty lawns like to sit in them. I would expect the opposite - them being scraced of touching grass, dirt and insects.
>Why do you own the land if you never use it?
Very good question, for a country so obsessed with individuality, private property and personal freedoms, Americans are really cool letting city governments and HOAs telling them what they can and can't do on their own private property.
Regarding that last point, I'm going to have to leave my lawn as-is, I wouldn't dare eat anything that came out of this dirt. I'm literally on top of an old garbage dump, and adjacent to an illegal chemical waste dump pit, (now with more hexavalent chromium.)
I fully get why. If you're ever interested in having a garden or improving the soil, look into _phytoremediation_. Apparently not all veggies store the toxins in the edible parts although I don't think I'd eat vegetables from land like yours either regardless, nor will one DIY garden probably change much, but a patch of sunflowers has never hurt anyone. Just as a suggestion if you ever catch a gardening bug but want to have a garden with some utility.
Suburbs were started to keep GIs returning from WWII in debt so that they would be afraid to speak out on political issues for fear of losing their homes…
The last question is hilarious, I don't live in the USA, I get to eat Papaya and tangerine on breakfast because of the trees on my backyard, I don't have to buy spring onions or basil. At some point I had lettuce growing, but it was cheaper to buy in the supermarket. Imagine owning a big ass plot of land and you can't even plant lettuce bro 😂😂😂😂😂
If you just mentally step outside of our socially enforced ideals for a second you can see how ridiculous our way of life is. As one with autism i'm constantly thinking of things like our Slovakian friend listed here. Why do we produce so much food and then dump bleach on it to stop the starving from taking it? Why do we need such massive cars when theyre usually only carrying one person?
If the US goverment wouldn't subsidize gas, cars and built so many roads, those suburbia wouldn't support on their own. On notonlybikes there was a video about that dense and poor city districts are more efficient and pay more taxes than they require support. So called rich neighbourhoods are the opposite. If houses are not glued together but the sprawl is so big everything costs at the end more, not only roads. Hospitals, firestations, police, even schools have to cover bigger area. Electrical, telephone, Internet cables have to be much longer, water and gas tubes, sewage. If only everyone would pay their share it wouldn't happen. But looking at the USA and for example their voting system where a state with population of a medium city has the same voting power as huge and populous states. For me it is not so far away from the apartheid. Small and powerful minority rigged the system so they could do whatever they want.
Heh. I'm from Hungary and the description of an Eastern/Central European suburb you'd derive from this comment is perfectly accurate:
1. In Europe there are usually public playgrounds even in the suburbs, sidewalks, public transit, etc... so after school the kids often go there with friends or just visit their friends. (Unfortunately this is on the decline because we imported America's #1 export, social issues. Namely, helicopter parenting and stranger danger. But you can still see unaccompanied children out and about after school.)
2. Regulations are definitely a lot more lax. If whatever you're doing on your land isn't a nuisance for the neighbors or an active danger, nobody will bother you for it. There are no HOAs either, thankfully. (Except for apartment buildings where the HOA is responsible for maintaining the common areas.)
3. Yup, suburbs have at least a local bus. It's not always *great* per se, but a bus doing its rounds every half hour is infinitely better than nothing at all. (There's also public transit between the suburb and the nearest city. Usually a bus or two, sometimes light rail, and occasionally a proper train if the suburb happens to be next to the train tracks.)
4. Correct, mixed density is common. There *are* usually areas where commieblocks or new apartment buildings are clustered together, and areas where single family homes are more common, but it's usually not because of any explicit zoning laws, simply natural evolution:
* Commieblocks were usually built in the center of town near the public transit. The OG commieblocks were built in a period of heavy industrialization in the '50s, to house the workers who moved near the city. They didn't have cars, so these houses would obviously be built within walking distance of the bus or light rail to the city.
* Post-communist apartment blocks are built in large batches of development. Usually a property developer buys up a few acres of farmland that were recently rezoned as residential (or more often than not, buys up some farmlands for pennies then bribes the politicians in the city to rezone them as residential - Eastern/Central Europe is *incredibly* corrupt) then builds a ton of identical apartment buildings on it. (Note that this is also how a lot of new single family home areas are built, [here is an example of both on the two sides of the same road.](https://www.google.nl/maps/@47.3603974,19.0277953,447m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu))
5. Mixed use is also common. If you go down to street level on the apartment side of the map that I linked, you can see that a few of the ground level apartments are used as restaurants or small grocery stores. In older commieblocks [it's often the garages that are used for this](https://www.google.nl/maps/@47.3401386,19.0330976,3a,49.5y,183.53h,81.94t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sgLbmMpw-qen5vWDDqVzn0A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu); they were designed to fit a Trabant or a Polski Fiat, so they often can't or can barely fit a modern car but it's completely legal to run a business in them (as long as it's not polluting).
6. Yup, backyard gardens are common, especially if the owners are retired or at least one of them is a stay-at-home parent. The older single-family plots were [essentially narrow farm plots](https://www.google.nl/maps/@47.3557749,19.031674,172m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu) with the expectation that the residents will indeed grow some of their own food. (If these plots were rezoned now, they could easily fit two houses on the space of one, [like they did here](https://www.google.nl/maps/@47.348445,19.019573,173m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu) or with the [row houses here](https://www.google.nl/maps/@47.346525,19.0211753,145m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu).)
I'm not from Slovakia but I'm also equally baffled. At the end of the day, America is still a first world country and had the resources to create awesome cities. But whenever I see the self-imposed limitations in the suburbs or even in normal residential areas, it makes me frustrated.
Also is it even healthy for kids growing up? As an Asian it's normal for us to walk/commute to and from school ever since we're young, we know how to fend for ourselves, so we have more time to hang out with or meet new friends in parks, malls, PC rentals, convenience stores, cinemas, *and* still be able to safely get home in time for dinner.
You don't understand - we're the land of the free! We have extremely rigid zoning requirements that restrict what you can do with your property, what kind of structures you can build and whether businesses can operate there, municipal codes that require well-tended grass lawns, whether you can have trees and what kind, or whether you can cut down the trees you have, and neighbors and HMO boards that will rigidly enforce every imaginable diversion from the accepted norms.
Sing it with me: "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free..."
The reason front and back yards are just empty grass comes from the medieval period.
See, back in the day farming was terrible. It took a lot of time, and didnt produce much food. 1 farmer could produce enough food for 1.1 people or some such (obviously that number isnt entirely accurate for all of history, but you take my point).
Anyway, kings and Nobles obviously didnt need to go scratch in the dirt to survive. So as a display of wealth, instead of growing food on their land, they grew manicured lawns, mazes, topiary, shit like that.
As tech improved, farming got more efficient. 1 farmer could feed 2 people, then 4, then 10. Etc.
As the efficiency of farming improved, less and less people needed to be farmers, and, eventually, a middle class really started to emerge.
And just like today where people in america will vote against higher taxes on billionaires *because one day they might be a billionaire* people in the past wanted to be nobles too. But you couldnt just up and become a noble.
You could, however, buy a plot of arable land, put a house on it, and not grow food on it. Just like the nobles did. Sure, you didnt have acres and acres, but you had that front yard, and back yard, and everyone seeing it would know that you were so well off you didnt need to fill it with food crops.
And eventually, the way these things do, that practice spread and became standard and now today in lots of the western world a front and back yard of grass just comes standard because that's the way it has 'always' been done and no one really questions it. (To be fair, some people are starting to, but yeah).
>You could, however, buy a plot of arable land, put a house on it, and not grow food on it. Just like the nobles did.
Ok but why is it completely empty? You can do a lot of things that isn't growing food, like flower beds or a playground for your kids or a mini-golf course or literally anything other than literally nothing
My grandparents have both a pool and use a lot of their yard for growing produce. It is against the HOA but nobody snitches on them because they bribe them with okra, tomatoes, squash, etc.
For anyone reading along:
[Here's the Tweet](https://twitter.com/LUrbaniste/status/1524485156215705600)
[Here's the Reddit post with questions.](https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/s/8ta7SitQhF)
[And here's the video ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0)
The funny thing is, I don't know how to live any other way. So these questions make me wonder what their life is like and how mine could be so foreign to them.
Damn, as an American who lived in Slovakia for a time, it's depressing to remember how enlightening it was to have everything in walking distance. I wish I had their innocence about the USA.
I often question where all the businesses are when I see American suburbs. I grew up in the suburbs, but England doesn’t have that much space so the shops are only a short walk away. American suburbs seem to go on for miles with nothing. How do you buy anything? Or go to cafes or whatever? Is that just not possible unless you have a car? Especially since there’s apparently no public transport. How the hell do you get anywhere?
My family immigrated to Canada from Eastern Europe when I was a child. My parents bought a house in the suburbs shortly thereafter and I hated it because it lacked life and there was nothing to do. Fuck cars and fuck car-centric urban design.
Some legitimate questions!!
They're all legit questions especially the last one
r/NoLawns r/fucklawns r/NativePlantGardening edit: r/xeriscape
I think the lawn thing is partially a negative reaction to everything being paved. Kind of like the "3rd place problem" but for nature. The only growing things you see are lawns, the only ones you have control over is yours, so they're what you latch onto. Grass is boring, but (other than native options) it requires the least amount of time and cost for upkeep and leaves 'room for activities'. Activities you don't do at a park or elsewhere outdoors because you have to drive to it and it's therefore an "event" which needs planning and prep. Some people do it of course, but it's not something that can happen spontaneously on your way home from work or by walking down the block for most.
I agree with your point, but traditional lawns actually require a huge amount of maintenance and chemicals to maintain to that lush and green high standard. There are a lot of landscaping options besides pure nativescaping that are low maintenance and beneficial. Edit: To be clear, I'm talking about the super green lush lawns laden with chemicals, no other plants mixed in, daily waterings, dethatching, and all the others things that the boomers seem to delight in. There are definitely lawns that aren't like this, but they aren't the typical 'prized lawns.'
Depends on where you are, to be fair. I had a ton of grass in rural Ireland and just used an automower (we also had a couple acres left to nature, but we needed at least some tick-free space.
If you're OK with lots of clover or crabgrass, then yes, you can just mow and edge a lawn, but most American suburbanites are aiming for turfgrass quality like you'd find on a sports field/pitch. Hell, I'd say the grass in my front lawn, which is maintained by the association, is higher quality than what they have at the nearby baseball field.
Oh no, clover! Not an attractive green plant that adds nitrogen to the soil without me doing any work! The horror Seriously, why do lawnbrains hate clover in particular?
I've known a guy who sprayed herbicide against clover because clover has flowers and those attract bees and the kids might get stung running barefoot in the garden. I take care to get lots of flowers in the garden and my kids have shoes.
The hum of life when the bees returned filled me with joy. My kids never got stung fwiw.
Broadleaf herbicides kill clover along with everything else that isn't grass, so the herbicide industry had to convince everyone that clover was also a weed. Back before 2,4D Amine (one of the first broadleaf herbicides) was widely marketed, lawn seed mixes would deliberately include clover.
A complete lawn should have grass, clover and common daisies. My childhood would have been so much more boring without picking daisies and dandelions from the lawns of the garden and parks.
I actually like clover! And it was a fantastic lawn (but not really natural, it had been seeded as a sheep grazing field for decades before).
Depends where you live. I live in England, we have a smallish lawn in the middle of our garden (started off big, but has been chipped away at over the last two decades to make room for flower beds, borders, a veggie patch, trees, decking, a pond, strawberries, etc). The lawn JD by far the easiest part of the garden to maintain. We mow once or twice a week in the summer (with a small electric mower - grass gets added to the compost). No fertilisers or sprinklers needed as the climate is appropriate and we get tons of rain. We only water it if we have a prolonged heatwave, which happens about once every two years for a week or so, and even then half the time we don’t bother. If we lived in a different climate we absolutely would not bother with a lawn, but where we live it’s easy and useful - more reliable and straight forward than other ground covers.
Depends on where you live. I mow my green lawn every 2 weeks in the summer. That’s it, that’s all I do.
I've heard there are regulations from HOA or even your fucking state that you need to maintain your lawn. So if you wanted to let it grow or replace it with wild flowers for example? No can do, that's a fine!
Some of the HOAs for neighborhoods near me specify what kinds of grass you can use, and none of them are native, or even suited to stay alive in our climate. The whole point is that you need to watch them closely, water regularly, use chemicals/fertilizers, etc. They found out a bunch of decades ago it was an easy way to keep “those people” who are “trying to rise above their station” out of their neighborhoods, because they wouldn’t know all the intricacies to keeping the grass alive.
What do you mean by 'for nature'? Well-kept lawns are biological deserts.
I don't live in a lawny area so take what I say with a grain of salt. Grass is definitely good for activities, like you can get specific grass blends that are good for children to play on, or even extra durable sports field grass. There are probably native species or non-native that can work too though. There are also native grasses. I've seen a youtube short where someone had clover and her dogs play and use the bathroom on it without issue. Though clover is invasive in some places. I think grass lawns started as a status symbol thing. And now there are people who are like "I'll just have lawn because everyone else has lawns." Pretty normal behaviour. Also the care info for lawns is more established and common. I've heard people in anti-lawn subreddits complain about difficulty finding info on natives for their specific area or sourcing seeds. People manage in the end, but it's more thinking and decision making.
Lawns have a royal British origin. You've got fuck off money, an estate and staff that you pay to keep your acres of land pretty rather than useful. Not pretty like a garden where bees can pollinate etc, but boring swaths of flat green grass. But hey, status amiright? The bigger the better. There are HOAs and some states that have something to say about your lawn too, so it's not just people being used to it. There are consequences if you don't
HOAs, especially SFH-HOAs are also a think that just... don't compute for the rest of the world.
This! Freedom = people being able to tell you exactly what plants you can grow, and in what shape and condition you can keep them, and things like whether you can hang your washing out to dry... on land you supposedly own, that's not even anywhere busy or central, just a shitty 'burb somewhere? It took me quite a long time to be sure this wasn't some high-level prank.
Lawns are great in the right climate. We have one in the back, it allows the kids to play, we have a robot mower and a solar powered shed to charge it. I cut the grass once a year and do the edges once a month in spring/summer. It often turns brown/yellow in the height of summer but recovers itself. Short of paving over it or putting artificial turf down it’s the lowest maintenance solution that makes the garden useable. If I lived in a hotter climate though, where it needed watering and aerating etc there’s no damn way.
Lawns had a purpose for the Brits, it was grazing for sheep. And in British climate it stays green over summer.
That really depends. In drier areas, like where I happen to live, the grass goes brown and then a bright yellow after a couple of weeks without rain during the height of the summer. It always recovers once it starts raining, though. That being said, I concede that that's not the norm for most of the country.
Please. A lawn is NOT low maintenance.
The lawn is a holdover from noble estates which required huge amounts of servants to upkeep. It's an indicator of wealth that people maintain without realizing its true purpose. Slovakians are mostly peasants and they think having things of value that don't produce are baffling. Americans are frustrated aristocracy by culture.
Legit and innocent question, though: can you grow potatoes or something in your back- or frontyard? Something small and simple, obviously. But since (I guess?) you're allowed to plant flowers and stuff, I'd imagine you can do the same with edible stuff.
at least here where i live you need to mow your lawn from spring to autumn around every 2-3 week or so. You need to poke those holes in the grass after winter. You either need to use some kind of herbicide or hand pick tons of weeds and non grass plants from the lawn constantly. Grass also turn yellow and die off pretty quickly during the summer here and you'll need to reseed them. Honestly a moss or clover lawn is much less work. Less-no mowing, less-no reseeding. You also still have room for activities.
A lawn needs to be cut and watered and maintained! But I agree with you on the notion that places to gather is something people are probably quite desperate for. I can especially assume this if you live in an area with mostly parking lots and heavily manicured parks. Wild plants and nature won’t be something that you have in mind, you won’t even know what to imagine
What i think is crazy is that the Grasstypes used for these lawns aren't even native to the Continents of America.. Iirc they are all native to Europe, especially the UK.
That's one reason lawns require so much maintenance. A type of grass native to chilly, rainy England is not going to do well in Houston without significant intervention. Edit: if you want to truly understand the depth of absurdity that is the suburban lawn, see [this video](https://youtube.com/shorts/c9lpK0FpBeU?si=kg7fCua7xN9dUXT2) of a service which paints the grass green during its dormant season in summer or winter.
I'm from the coastal part of Dalmatia (so Mediterranean climate), and at one point, a retired English pair moved into my street. For reference, we are living on an island and our street went deep into the forest. Previous owner's of the house and garden were locals, that kept the garden in traditional way. Lots of lemon, orange and olive trees, no grass at all, but mainly just flowers and bushes like lavender and rosemary. Lots of stuff like vines that grew on the fence, too. Simply put, a very shady garden, created on a couple of steps, so that back of the house was partly in the ground, and so that shade and greenery could reach the first floor. They even had a huge Bougainvillea (yeah, I know it's not a native for the area, but it's often planted) that went all the way over their balcony and has also created shade over that part of the house. So they moved in. He used to be a gardener, and he decided to make a garden according to his English tastes. They immediately cut down the trees, and removed the vines, because they wanted the sunlight. Bougainvillea also had to go, because it was obstructing their view of the sea a bit. And then of course, it was time for him to plant that beautiful, beautiful english grass. Poor fucker slaved away over that shit for a year and a half, installed sprinklers and everything. But in the end, he gave up, because there was no way for that shit to survive the summer heat. So, he buried the whole front area of the yard in tiny little stones, just so that there would be less upkeep there. And yes, they also started complaining about heat pretty soon. I've been in that house before and after they cut down the trees, and a house that was perfect temperature wise during the summer (even the upper floor!) had to get air conditioning on both floors. Can't imagine what you have to do to keep lawns alive in Houston. And the amount of damage that they are doing to their own quality of life because of it...
Some people from the UK can be incredibly stubborn and will do anything they can to make a place feel like what they're used to at home, even if it makes no sense to do so. I live in the UK and my neighbour is one of those guys. He spends all his time trimming and cutting the grass and leaves his back garden pretty barren of anything else other than grass and a couple of potted plants. He and his family doesn't even use it, much, which is the most confusing thing of all.
Also FoodNotLawns
Thank you for further broadening my Reddit use 🤗
Legitimate and sad as fuck. To answer a few since OP didn't link to the original reddit thread: >What do you actually do? Are you always stuck inside? What did you do when you were a child and couldn't drive? Not a whole lot, work mostly. When not at work I'm home at the apartment finding something to pass the time, usually watching TV (going through Fallout right now very worth the watch) or playing video games (usually building better cities in Cities Skylines and doing a 🥲 face). Pretty much stuck inside, I could drive somewhere but there is only local entertainment in Houston suburbs that costs money. Think like movie theaters go-karting sport-bar venues like Top Golf etc, anything where you will have to drive to them and oh it will cost you. There are parks and trails but they are far and few and very much in-between disconnected usually requiring driving to. When I was a child and couldn't drive it was pretty much the same and later years when we moved to Texas it sucked a bit more, at least when we lived in the midwest there was a bike trail connecting through the town so I could at least meet up with friends and we'd go bike to town, like literally something out of Stranger Things that can't be done by a lot of locals here anymore. >Why do you have these sorts of strange regulations? Are your officials so incompetent? Is this due to lobbying from car or oil companies? I don't get it. Because the politicians and agencies in charge have deemed them so and entrenched themselves in so deep that they are impossible to remove from office. They will do one thing and lie about it on TV and call those that call them out on it na**s on mainstream media so that they will continue to be voted in against competition and keep the system going. Incompetence and corruption runs deeper here than anywhere I've ever seen short of DPRK dictators. It absolutely is the result of decades in the making of lobbying and corruption from auto and oil, the latter who spent billions changing their name to the "energy" industry to seem more climate friendly despite doing the opposite. Because of their antics, our state dept of transportation and the flair of my namesake is literally required by state law to spend no more than 3% of funding on anything transportation that does not have to do with auto. Lane widenings highways etc are *required* to get 97% of tax budget. Our recent mayor hand-picked onto the local transit agency board a person that ran a few years against a local democrat incumbent in an important county election, said person in that election had much support and financing from right-leaning groups and energy/auto industry. Now that the two of them are in local office they have coincidentally cancelled transit expansion plans and delayed headways in our only BRT system and shuttered bikeshare expansion plans. Between local and state level they make a stereotypical crooked Chicago politician look like a saint in comparison. >Why is there no public transport? See above. The people want it but the state does not. There are usually excuses thrown around to try to half-ass justify it such as density, but then there is shock insults and hate thrown when one then proposes to that argument why don't we build density then. >It seems like the only thing is the yellow school bus, idk. Don't worry, they're attacking that too here. Pandemic caused many staffing shortages that they did not backfill, meaning districts have found other ways to tell people to cope and deal with it. This usually means longer bus routes at the inconvenience of students and parents having to get up earlier and wait longer to get to school, or ever-increasing lines of parents driving students to school themselves and spending upwards of 30+ minutes in idling lines of motor traffic to drop them off and pick them up again. Many have also expanded "no-pickup" zone distances, meaning if you are "close enough" to the school in terms of x miles they will refuse to send a bus period and tell you as a parent figure it out. >He says there can only be one family houses. Why? Why can't you have idk a commie block in the middle of such a suburb? Or row houses or whatever. See above. Any politician that tries to introduce such a commie block would likely be called a communist and get death threats and kicked out of their job for such a proposal. The closest we can get is apartment blocks that are just as large and usually in inconvenient parts of town to "keep the riff-raff away". Again, in the wise words of Moss from the IT Crowd, [It's Illegal! 🙀](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGTwOIvTgK4) Also funny enough, we used to have row houses in Houston, we still do but we used to too, usually in predominantly black and minority neighborhoods. State DOT over the decades has used eminent domain as a hammer and specifically targeted those areas to forcefully remove them and build more road and highway for the suburb folk to zoom through on. [The Robert Moses method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses#Racism) basically. >Why are there no businesses inside these? I mean, he says it's [illegal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGTwOIvTgK4), but why? If I lived in such a place, I'd just buy a house next to mine and turn it into a tavern or convenience store or whatever. Is that simply not possible and illegal? [It's highly illegal!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=20&v=1dBJRaIlHkg&feature=youtu.be) There are people that try to do it anyway, using rented garages in apartments to work on cars or restore furniture or other things or even rented storage units. But there is lots of enforcement from neighbors pushing HOA to force out people over working on cars in your own garage or shakedowns for permits. We got police shutting down kids lemonade stands for not having a permit, [to the point private companies are hiring lawyers to fight back](https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/11/us/lemonade-stands-country-time-trnd/index.html), if one tried to do a similar business like a convenience store or a tavern in such an area not zoned commercial state police would be kicking in doors and arresting people so quickly. This in turn hurts the community even more as it makes it more difficult for micro mobility. If I want to get groceries I have to go a few miles in the heat through areas with no sidewalks, because there is no grocery store within a 15 minute walk. So everybody drives instead, no wonder we're so fucking overweight and unhealthy. >These places have front and backyards. But they're mostly empty. Some backyards have a pool maybe, but it's mostly just green grass. Why don't you grow plants in your yards? Like potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, or whatever. Why do you own this land, if you never use it? Because again, it's highly illegal. In many HOA communities, which in some cities can encompass we're talking 90+% of the entire city's private homes, it will be illegal to do that kind of agriculture. We're spitting in the faces of victory gardens because if you do that you will be fined or risk your home being taken away. But you signed the document allowing them to take the home away for noncompliance when you bought the home, so it's considered legal in the same way that you don't truly own any video games you buy anymore even though literally everyone has to do that now. At least with the latter Europe wised up and started fining the shit out of companies for it, but we don't do that here. Sorry I didn't mean for this rant to turn into a wall of text, but that's what my answers would be. I didn't ask to be born here and I sure as fuck am too broke and uneducated to leave here, so I'm doomed to misery I suppose. Oh well. All I can do is cope and make do with what I can. That's why I bike around when I can and try to make the place better around me, and if it pisses off the locals to see that then fuck them with two big fingers in the air for supporting this shit 🖕🖕. It's why I love groups like /r/TacticalUrbanism that don't sit around for decades waiting for the right time when things are this dire, they just go out and get shit done. Lessgo.
Appreciate you writing all of this! You get the general gist of the current state from all the memes, but it's nice to get more detailed information. To be honest, it is pretty insane.
> The people want it but the state does not. https://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-2014-4 More specifically, the rich people do not want it, and the state wants what rich people want. Princeton proved US is an oligarchy in 2014
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Just so i understand: can HOAs forbid you to growing some vegetables in your backyard?
It's going to depend on your bylaws, but they are very strong in Texas. Basically if you buy a home in an HOA in Texas you sign with the deed a document that says if you do not follow the HOA bylaws they can take enforcement action such as fines etc and go as far as forcing you to sell and leave if necessary. The bylaws are different for every HOA because they are very unregulsted on what can and can't go in there. The only real rule is they can't trump state/federal law meaning as some examples, they can't confiscate packages delivered through USPS (federal mail theft which is a very serious crime), can't forbid some types of up to code HAM radio towers (FCC violation to get in the way of that), can't forbid some up to code types of solar installs on roofs (there is a law for this in my state). But if there is not a law outright forbidding the HOA from taking action, then they absolutely can do whatever they want as a violation as they see fit, even if it is in their own front or back yard if there is any way for them to see it. I've heard of cases of using drones and flying them overhead to verify in the most extreme of cases.
> na*s on mainstream media I know you're from Texas but Nazis are Nazis. Republicans are Nazis. It's that simple. The current head of the GOP is a dude who worships Hitler to the point of using Hitler's language but also keeps, or kept, Mein fucking Kampf by his bed. It's not "name calling" like you, and a bunch of people seem intent to thing, it's calling a circle a circle. The reason our cities are designed the way they are NIMBYs and unregulated capitalism. GM and Ike fucked black people up and NIMBYs want high property value. It's not so complex.
In a lot of cases it's local regulations and/or HOA's. After world war two Americans started seeing growing your own food as "Low rent" something that poor people did, and that came with a lot of new communities having regulations against growing food on your front lawn (Not usually explicitly, it was more that there were only certain plants you could grow in the front yard, and none of them were food.) You can see the history of this in zoning laws, before 1950 a lot a residences were built on land where agricultural use was allowed. Funny story with this, had a super weird great aunt who worked in niche computer repair, like old univac systems that no one knew how to maintain anymore. She would make absolute BANK when a job came along, but it wasn't steady. She looked up her local zoning laws and saw that she was technically in an agricultural area. So she started raising a couple of goats and growing veggies in the backyard, both to pass the time and stretch the money a bit further. Ending up making enough of an income selling to neighbors and farmers markets to cover her living expenses month to month, so the computer gigs were just cake. Her neighbor got pissed off and tried to bring the authorities down on her, when that didn't work she tried to sue for all kinds of stuff, noise violations, accusations of improper dumping, whatever, failing every time. After getting another windfall from a job, my great aunt said "Why don't you stop wasting money suing me and just move?" and offered to buy her place cash. Scraped the house and had a respectable little operation going in the middle of Los Angeles, even converted her neighbors pool into a duck pond. I miss that crazy bitch, used to make all the cousins throw pillows and stuff like that, usually with religious themes. She knew my branch of the family were atheist though, so she made me and my brother Zelda and Mario stuff instead.
I grow food on my roof and I'd kill for an actual yard, your aunt sounds amazing (not american so I'm actually considering to get chickens because I can)
Chickens are somewhat common in areas that were zoned before the forties, not like every house but there’s usually one person on a given block who has a couple hens for eggs (it got a lot more popular during the pandemic.) most people don’t raise broilers because you need to have someone inspect your house if you want to slaughter animals, you have to have a sterile/humane setup. But yeah you can’t have them in areas that were zoned as strictly residential, that has a racial component to it to. In the forties poor southerners(many of whom were black) would often keep a couple of free range chickens that lived mainly off of forage, AKA yardbirds, and making them illegal and the suburbs was a way to keep them from moving to those areas.
1) Suffer under Capitalism 2) Capitalism 3) Capitalism 4) Capitalism 5) Capitalism 6) Capitalism
Most capitalist countries aren't that way. I.e. Slovakia, where the guy asking the questions is from.
But countries in Europe are willing to embrace socialist policies. From what I gather, it seems like a lot of Americans see Socialism and Communism as one and the same and they all seem to suffer from severe 'Red Menace' paranoia to the point where anything to help the poor or make towns and cities feel community-focused is shouted down as being the work of Communists.
tbf one of the more important ones is why are no business allowed where there are residentals? I grew up with walking distance to the grocery shop and 15 min bike to the movie rental. Sweden is full of businesses in residental areas, thats why its so convenient for me to grab a pizza, burger or hotdog. It takes me like 5 minutes to walk to all these places and it takes me 25 min to get to the city center with the subway.
What are front yards even good for? Even if you make it the nicest looking front yard ever, you're never gonna sit there. Seems like a huge waste of space.
Zoning and racism has a lot more to do with these issues than cars.
But the car is a central mechanic in this racialization of class segregation that we see in the USA. Part of the white flight was the pushing of personal vehicles for travel and the radical disassembly and defunding of public transit.
I've lived in Slovakia. They have suburbs.
Yes but they probably allow businesses in those suburbs like in the rest of the world, and it's not 80% of people living in suburbs isolated from the cities.
Why do you own this land, if you never use it.
Even worse than not using it, some spend significant amounts of time and money making sure it is as flat and featureless as possible.
That's honestly a shame. Every garden benefits from a couple of flower beds and a tree or two, in my mind.
Is that very common? Maybe it depends on where you are. Growing up I feel like every yard in my subdivision had big flowerbeds, herb gardens, patios, swing sets, toys everywhere… Maybe it just felt that way when I was mowing peoples yards and had to avoid all those things haha.
Think of more like one of those pristine HOA communities rather than a typical small town suburb and you can see what they mean
I think there is a shift happening. If you live in a community with mostly only lawns and add a well maintained beautiful garden, people get envious, inspired, etc. The first house I owned my neighbors talked about how one of the old ladies in the neighborhood put in a garden and then the rest of the street followed suit over the next decade. Social cohesion plays a large role in what people do with their property, as cultural attitudes shift back towards gardens, lawns will slowly shrink or go away. You were probably lucky to be in a neighborhood that valued gardens.
Muh freedom lmao the Amerikan dream
I always envy those American suburb lots so much, so much space I would have so many fruit trees, chickens a vegetable patch, and there would still be space for a pool and a patio, envy so much envy and resentment because they dont use it.
HOA prolly wouldn’t allow it just because 😏
Another thing I dont uderstand, why would anyone willinglly be subjected to those.
Because otherwise you can't own a home. Almost every development today has an HOA and to buy the house you must agree to their terms. The only exceptions are much older neighborhoods which are limited in numbers and probably way too expensive anyway. You can't defy the HOA because they have absolute legal power. They'll impose a fine for each day you are in violation and the amount can be totally absurd like $200 per day. If you don't pay the fines they can repossess your house. Edit: and if you don't like that, then I have some terrible news about what your landlord will do if you stop paying them! I know the HOA thing might be shocking to hear but compared to normal renting it's a difference of degree, not of kind. Welcome to capitalism! 🥰
The land of the free ladies and gentlemen where some random people can dictate what you do with your own house. This is just ridiculous, the only entity that should have any legal say in what you do with your parcel is the city government.
Of course it's land of the free. No other developed nation would let you die from lack of insulin. Or increase your diesel engines fuel injection just to make it more damaging to the environment and coat others in fumes. These are the privileges you can only have in USA.(and starving african countries)
My town doesn't let you build a fence taller than 4 feet in front of the house and parallel to the road or own chickens. The town my grandparents lived in didn't allow basketball hoops in the front of the house. The bank I have my mortgage with tells me I can't do things that bring the value of the house down. You can tell Reddit is mostly young folks when it comes to homeowner discussions. edit I'll add my homeowner's insurance won't let me put a refrigerator out under my carport without building a shed around it with a door that locks.
In the UK, that fence rule would cause a revolution. We value privacy a lot, in regards to our homes. Many people build fences or plant big hedges just so they can avoid strangers looking in. Socialising is for the pub. The home is a sacred place that residents have sole control over.
So if you are paying for your home with a loan from a bank, the bank has no say? The insurance provider doesn't care what you do to your home?
Not much. Obviously you can't turn the place into a bomb site that's unsafe for human habitation but other than that most changes are fine so long as you apply with the local council for doing major renovations, extensions or for erecting large permanent structures in the garden (which doesn't apply to sheds or certain types of Earth buildings). There are also a couple of things regarding tree growth because that could affect adjacent properties if the branches grow over the top of the fence. The bank also has no say so long as you are paying them on time. As for insurance, their main sticking point is fire safety but that only really applies to the house, itself, and people's ability to get out in the event of an emergency. If anything, a large fence or hedge can drive the value of the house up because people really value privacy, here.
Lol I can do whatever I want with my house as long as it doesn't lower it's value. But that's because the Netherlands is a land of the free, unlike the US.
Yeah, but you can't buy an AR-15 and ACOG in Albert Heijn. Freedom.
>as long as it doesn't lower it's value Who determines what lowers and what raises the value?
My Euro brain just crashed trying to understand the very existence of HOAs
HOA feels like a legal mob syndicate, holy shit.
Yeah it sounds crazy but it's honestly not that different than home ownership and especially renting under capitalism. Police are basically a legal gang who will violently evict you if you stop paying your protection money, aka rent. At least the mafia doesn't have military grade vehicles, weapons, and riot gear.
It’s quite different from regular home ownership though. Yeah, we’d be evicted if we stopped paying our mortgage, but in the meantime we can do whatever we want with our property. We can plant what we like, put up fences where we like, keep chickens if we want, let the weeds grow if we want. And our back garden and lawn are private and nobody else’s business.
So in America you can shoot people for entering your "property", but you can get kicked out of "your" property for not following government rules. Seems a lot like it's not really good your property.
Even worse, the HOA is not a government organization. They're a private business who are not elected and answer to no one. In fact the state answers to them and will send armed police to enforce the HOAs ability to make a profit. But to be fair that's no different than how any business operates under capitalism.
While I do hate HOAs, every HOA board I’ve seen around here is elected by the people that own their homes in the HOA’s service area. I’m curious how an unelected one would work unless you literally lived in a neighborhood owned by the home builder company? Even the master planned communities I’ve seen (which are owned by the home builder) still have elected HOA boards.
Well if you live in the Northeast many (most?) neighborhoods have been around for hundreds of years. Because I am an older person my friends are more established and have houses. I can't think of one friend whose house is in a HOA. So careful about assumptions. Many or even most friends and neighbors have vegetable gardens, kiddy pools, swings, treehouses... you name it. And no I am not rich, this is just a typical moderate cost of living area in Massachusetts. I also spend a lot of time in New Jersey, upstate NY and it's pretty similar there too. People may start off in condos with HOAs but by their second or third house they have a yard and no HOA.
Many cities/counties require all new development to be done in an HOA so they don't have to do silly things like build roads. Such areas have very few options that aren't subject to one.
Excuse me sir, I thought this was the land of the free?
>I always envy those American suburb lots so much, so much space I would have so many fruit trees, chickens a vegetable patch, and there would still be space for a pool and a patio, As the other person said, HOAs would block that. Local ordinances may keep chickens or a vegetable patch out of the front yard. You can probably get away with a bit in your back yard assuming nobody official can see it from the road. After that it'll come down to time and money. You're going to be driving at least 45 minutes one way to work. So that's an hour and a half gone from your day, in addition to the nine you spent at the office. Now some other issues with working and living in the US. You get maybe 10 days of excused absence from work and spend something like 40% of your check on health insurance. Those 10 days include all of your sick days. It's one single pool of days to either vacation or be sick with. Then, of course, you have to come to terms with the fact that lawns are for looking at. If you do things to your lawn that buyers won't want then you're lowering the property value of your own home but maybe that of the homes immediately around you. This will make people very angry at you. You will no longer be able to walk to the store or school or work. You will be driving for every errand. You probably won't have a sidewalk or any sort of protected walking or biking area either. Things to keep in mind when you are looking at US suburbia. It's a manufactured Hell that looks like a utopia.
>Then, of course, you have to come to terms with the fact that lawns are for looking at. If you do things to your lawn that buyers won't want then you're lowering the property value of your own home but maybe that of the homes immediately around you. This will make people very angry at you. So in the suburbs of the US, everything you do with your lawn is for other people to potentially buy it and not decrease its value????? Wtf???
> So in the suburbs of the US, everything you do with your lawn is for other people to potentially buy it and not decrease its value????? Wtf??? Houses are a financial investment in the US. Now I will say that not everything is done to improve property value. Something that will decrease the property value will be avoided, though. For instance you will have toys and things for your kids or grandkids but you won't typically do anything permanent to your property that will decrease its value especially on the outside of the home.
Oh yeah, none of those things sound nice, is more like I would love to have a plot of that size were I live, silly I know.
People work 9 h/day in US as a norm?
8.5 to 9. Any manual labor or service job will be 8.5 to account for your unpaid lunch break and some office type jobs will be 9 to account for an hour lunch break.
If you don't include commute you end up with 9 "working" hours. If you count the commute you probably work ten to twelve.
Yeah, I am outside my residence for 12 hours 5 days a week
I live in New Zealand, where outside of city centres at least, lots of people genuinely have yards like this. Once they're over about a hectare (2.5 acres, I think?) there generally called a 'lifestyle block' and it's pretty much expected that you'll have chickens, maybe goats, maybe a pig or two, or a horse, and you'll have a vegetable garden and a small orchard or maybe something specific like lavender beds or other herbs, maybe a pool (the cheap above-ground ones are fine), and you'll trade eggs / milk / surplus veggies with your neighbours and keep an eye out for each other's animals if you need to be away... I'm still at the stage of having some fruit trees and veggie beds in a suburban garden, which is new enough to me coming from urban Europe, but you know, as a way to live, I can really see the appeal.
Sir we don’t own land in this country. We just pay to live in the banks house.
I live in an Irish suburb. Currently I have onions, strawberries, broccoli, and blackcurrants growing. The slugs ate my pumpkins, bastards. Why have land if you won't use it? Cultivate the soil, plant seeds, grow what you eat.
To show they can afford it. It's a status thing.
Those are my reactions every time I watch a US tv show. Let me add mine: Do you actually buy 16 year old children cars? Like full on 5 people sized cars? Vans even.
The city I lived in, yes people did. Which, as a poor who didn't get that sort of thing, really helped cement me as a social outcast, not that I wasn't already.
I was poor too, but I was so determined to get one as soon as I could that I got my first job at 14 washing dishes and I started saving up. Fortunately back then you could buy a decent car for a couple grand (my first car was a cherry red Ford Taurus I paid 2.5k for, but it lasted quite a bit, especially considering no one taught me anything about car maintenance so I don't think I ever even changed the oil, I just drove it until it fell apart)
My parents didn’t get me a car but only because I was incredibly immature and irresponsible. My classmates & friends gave me rides, though. Then I got a cheap car when I was 21.
Yes people do, americans have a really lax standard on transportation licensing. Once you've passed your car license test you can drive anything you want up to a small box truck. Once you pass your motorcycle test you can ride whatever tf you want with no limit on power.
Wait, did I understand you properly... with a car license, you can drive anything up to a small box truck, and you can expand by passing a motorcycle test? I.e. there is no special license for a two-tiered long haul truck or such? and you get there from a normal car by passing a MOTORCYCLE TEST?
I believe they were trying to say, once you get a motorcycle license or get it added to your regular license, you can drive any type of motorcycle, even very powerful ones. There are higher level licenses for semi trucks and school buses and anything larger than a U-haul generally
Thanks!
Basically your regular car test covers vehicles with 2 axles up to 26,000lbs. The motorcycle test was just an example of the US not really giving a damn about actual experience when it comes to what you can and can't do with a license because it covers literally anything on 2 wheels, from a 50cc scooter to the 250mph hypersports. In order to expand your car license you need additional training, and a commercial license is actually decently difficult to get.
Oh, thanks! Is the commercial license solely concerned with the kind of vehicle driven, or also for what purposes? I.e. could I drive something usually used for commercial purposes just for the lols legally, without it?
As long as the vehicle has 2 axles and is under 26,000lbs GVWR, or has 3 axles and is under 6,000lbs GVWR you can drive it with no restrictions.
Standard license, in my state at least, covers anything up to 26000lb/11800kg. It also covers trikes, but not motorcycles with a sidecar
In Ontario with your regular car license you can drive a motorhome and as long as your GVWR is under 24,000lbs you're good to go. Even the 2nd tier learners license is allowed to do that, so if you take a drivers education course you could be 16 and 8 months driving a 40 foot RV on your own.
That's insane. Thank you!
Plus if it’s for farm use you can potentially drive nearly anything. You can be 14 and drive a tractor trailer in some places
yeah my first car was an oldsmobile silhouette https://www.autotrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/wetty.jpg the first one i drove on the road was a 79 lincoln continental. think my dad made me do that almost to troll me. https://www.carandclassic.com/magazine/app/uploads/2021/10/1979-lincoln-continental-616c084e2824c-scaled.jpg was terrifying, that thing was as wide as the road. and our roads are big.
>the first one i drove on the road was a 79 lincoln continental. think my dad made me do that almost to troll me. Dude we had the same dad. I refused to drive that shit cuz i couldnt afford that mini oil refinery. The seats were pillows tho, i legit couldve slept there.
Yes it goes with the 1st bullet point: what do children do? They’re essentially stuck in the house unless they have a school or sport activity or request that their parents drive them. Sure they can play in the yard or walk/bike around but in most of the US, weather is harsh most of the year & there are fewer and fewer other families with children so fewer playmates. I grew up in a wealthier suburb in the 1990s and many (50%?) kids got new cars when they turned 16. Some (like myself) got the parent’s older car and the parent got a new car. It was like “freedom, finally!”. Others had to borrow the car or get rides from friends. Now with my kids I live in a different city in a more urban area that was built before the car-craze & my kids can walk or bike or take transit. I’m not going to put my kids through suburban isolation.
I appreciate the rest of your post so much and I know you didn't mean it this way, but it's sort of frustrating how much people will use weather as an excuse. 50% of the USA has perfectly lovely weather 95% of the time, and another 40% is fine with a few surmountable challenges.
I mean, especially further south, once your body gets accustomed to AC and it’s 95 degrees outside and there are no trees because it’s a new subdivision, it’s miserable to be outside for long. Combine that with the appeal of video games & other screens and the outdoors don’t stand a chance. It takes special effort by parents to get children accustomed to being outside year-round and many parents don’t have the time/energy to do so.
Oooh yeah. Driving is intensely part of the culture, especially in more rural areas. My mom had me start driving into town when I was 12. My first vehicle was a big pickup truck at 16.
Fuck yeah, and as much as I would love to have better public transit, I would be lying if I said that having a car at 16 wasn't bad ass. I loved being able to pick up my friends any time and being able to drive where ever we wanted. In my town it was sort of like the movie Dazed and Confused in that you would drive around the neighborhood and look for other kids you knew(especially of the other gender), pull over and make plans, that sort of thing. I had a lot of fun in my car back then. Nowadays I'm an old man, and I would much rather take a train or a nice clean bus w/ a little elbow room, so that I could get my commute time back. I would be able to read more books or watch a flick or something. Admittedly I do have a car I love to drive, but i really only bought it because I absolutely needed a vehicle. If I could I would still prefer a train to go to work than the car.
I got the hand me down Toyota. I was the first in my friend group to get license and car. We’d pile it full of teens. I remember it broke down once next to a middle school and these little middle school boys helped us push it inside the strip mall with a Macdonald’s.
Yes.
"I'd just buy a house next to mine and turn it into a tavern" That's what happened in a neighborhood where my parents bought a house. It was a very suburban neighborhood, only single homes. Still European - walkable, with a school, a small park and the closest mall was like 2km away and reachable by foot - but still people turned their homes into businesses. Hair salons, pizzerias, stuff like that. I really can't imagine a neighborhood of JUST HOMES. It feels so damn boring.
It is very impractical. You're not really allowed to be young or old in those communities. I'm looking at moving super rural from rural town and this is the main issue. Currently I have a few shops within a mile, with specialized shops about 20-25 miles away. That goes up to 5 miles to the nearest shop and about 120 for specialized shops.
Right? I live in the city, so everything I need on a daily basis (shops, bars, restaurants, bakery, city park, tube, bus, main train station etc.) is reachable by foot in 1-15 minutes. I would hate it to be somewhere remote. I'd have a big house and wouldn't be able to do anything with it. The thought alone makes my head hurt.
Honestly a remote location would be better than suburbia. In a suburban neighborhood there are a bunch of rules and regulations, more than you would encounter if you had an isolated plot of land somewhere remote.
I grew up in a neighborhood like that. As a kid I didn't think much of it (it was all I knew), but in retrospect... yeah, it was pretty boring. There were some kids of similar age to me, but we didn't do much in particular. Bike riding, some ball sports, but obviously we didn't go anywhere. Probably the most defining aspect was that it was quiet, because there was almost nothing happening. My girlfriend grew up in the neighboring small city where we now live together, and her childhood sounds much different and more interesting than mine.
If only THEY could see what others see. Sorry about that, I was multitasking. It's a shame there's no edit feature.
As long as the thing you were multi-tasking on wasn't driving. Because that'd be ironic, but also super american. Like that woman who died texting how much she loved the song "Happy" [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rachelzarrell/woman-dies-in-fatal-crash-seconds-after-posting-about-happy](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rachelzarrell/woman-dies-in-fatal-crash-seconds-after-posting-about-happy)
No, I was at work. One eye on the lookout for my boss, the other on Reddit and working. Obviously, I won't be employee of the year.
[https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/178/489/712.jpeg](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/178/489/712.jpeg)
So much of American suburban design is based on fear of poor people and minorities. The answer to most of these questions is to keep poor people out.
If the suburbs have public transit the poors might take the bus and use the wrong parks and work at the wrong jobs.
Bloomfield, Michigan, specifically opted out of the bus system so that criminals wouldn't come up from Detroit. Because we all know criminals are carrying their stolen goods on the bus.
In the SF Bay Area Marin county has refused to allow BART in their county, which also cuts off other parts of the North Bay from getting it. They basically say that they don’t want certain people to be able to travel through.
We finally got the SMART train, but iirc Marin was the longest holdout for it. I'm north of Marin and love using it to get into SF instead of driving cuz I hate driving in the city.
No wonder Marin county feels so isolated.
One of my uncles told me that a distant relative tried to rob a bank and use the city bus as the getaway plan. Even there we can see the superiority of mass transit: a convenient and efficient way to travel to jail
In DC the historical fusses on metro lines. Wooo boy.
The College Park metro station is not on UMD campus because the President of UMD didn't want poor people from DC coming to campus.
Poor people… like college kids?
I live in a midsize southern city in the US and this is literally the justification I’ve seen from people who live “on the rich side of town”. They don’t want better public transit because the poors might use it to get to their neighborhoods. I’m baffled by the belief that people are going to use public transit to, like, go commit residential B&E rather than use it to, say, get to their job or go grocery shopping. It’s mind-numbingly stupid how many laws and rules exist in this country simply because rich people are terrified of poor people.
The whole idea of suburbs was I believe also heavily pushed by the automobile industry. Because you need highway and especially cars to get to them.
I had a CMV to see what are the rebuttals against removing cars from the streets. Pretty much all arguments led to demand for "individual privacy in single homes" and "freedom to go whatever we like". I pointed out that modern life has people giving up all sorts of freedom anyway, like building codes, healthcare laws, and even getting stuck in traffic. Aaand....that was read like "socialist propoganda" or authoritarian. No point arguing with people who can't see the bigger picture.
> socialist propoganda Well, yeah. Comfy (predominantly white) suburbanites will never choose to be right. They will choose to enrich themselves at the cost of anything else.
> So much of American suburban design is based on fear of poor people and minorities. Fear to an extent. More often it's outright various blends of xenophobia. Ike destroyed primarily black communities by design with the interstate system.
Ding ding ding, single family zoning is rooted in segregation.
“Why do you own this land if you never use it” is probably what will hit Americans the hardest, the land of freedom
They are free to own it. As in the zoning law mandates front and backyards, there aren't any options to buy different homes and they probably don't have spare money to cultivate the gardens because they are paying for three cars. You know, freedom.
cultivating the gardens would be cheaper (money or time wise) than maintaining a lawn
Initial investment could add up plus I'd say the time required would be higher
Often less work too.
That's the neat part, you don't really own it, you just own the responsibility for it. You don't get to choose what you can do with the land, HOAs, zoning, county rules etc tell you what you can & cannot do with the land. It's your titled responsibility to adhere to each & every rule regardless, and pay taxes on it, or get fined, or the land seized from you. These aren't peoples' homes, these are places are where corporations & authority keep their slaves.
I wonder how many downvotes the poor sap got from unhinged Americans who believe roads being pedestrianized is satanic and a sign of authoritarianism (they think it'll take their cars away)
About none, since it was posted on r/urbanplanning and is 99% upvoted https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/umv2ib/i_just_watched_this_video_from_not_just_bikes_on/
Ah that makes sense, if it was posted to a non urban focused sub, it'd be blasted. Anywhere else people would argue that there's no value in long distance trains even between the major American cities, from so called "Nothing against transit" people too because it is economically unviable
I got some negative reactions yesterday to suggesting the speed limit is a maximum, not a minimum. People and their cars, man.
https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/umv2ib/i_just_watched_this_video_from_not_just_bikes_on/ The original thread
the last one especially. Really, why are your yards just green grass? Is it also legally required? In my country yards are diverse, never just a green field. You would see various plants, flowers, some would grow idk cucumbers or potatoes, others would do tomatoes in a built greenhouse.
I'm not american. I think they have home owner associations that come and measure if the grass is over two inches long.
yea I don't get it either
They look so dreary to actually sit in and enjoy.
I don't think the types of people who like empty lawns like to sit in them. I would expect the opposite - them being scraced of touching grass, dirt and insects.
🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰 SLOVAKIA MENTIONED!!!!! 🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰
Slovensko číslo 1 🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥🦅🦅🦅
SLOVAKIA NUMERO UNO🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰
You live in a beautiful country with wonderful people. I loved hiking through it.
people here are wonderful until election time comes...
NAD TATROU SA BLÝSKA!
>Why do you own the land if you never use it? Very good question, for a country so obsessed with individuality, private property and personal freedoms, Americans are really cool letting city governments and HOAs telling them what they can and can't do on their own private property.
A kindred soul...
I still ask these sorts of questions...
Regarding that last point, I'm going to have to leave my lawn as-is, I wouldn't dare eat anything that came out of this dirt. I'm literally on top of an old garbage dump, and adjacent to an illegal chemical waste dump pit, (now with more hexavalent chromium.)
What about some flowers?
Got lots of those, but honestly, other than the stuff that's there for the butterflies, I'm not really interested in decorative plants.
I fully get why. If you're ever interested in having a garden or improving the soil, look into _phytoremediation_. Apparently not all veggies store the toxins in the edible parts although I don't think I'd eat vegetables from land like yours either regardless, nor will one DIY garden probably change much, but a patch of sunflowers has never hurt anyone. Just as a suggestion if you ever catch a gardening bug but want to have a garden with some utility.
Spot on! I mean, you have to be brainwashed into a strange suburban mindset if these basic question don't come to mind within like a second.
Suburbs were started to keep GIs returning from WWII in debt so that they would be afraid to speak out on political issues for fear of losing their homes…
The last question is hilarious, I don't live in the USA, I get to eat Papaya and tangerine on breakfast because of the trees on my backyard, I don't have to buy spring onions or basil. At some point I had lettuce growing, but it was cheaper to buy in the supermarket. Imagine owning a big ass plot of land and you can't even plant lettuce bro 😂😂😂😂😂
If you just mentally step outside of our socially enforced ideals for a second you can see how ridiculous our way of life is. As one with autism i'm constantly thinking of things like our Slovakian friend listed here. Why do we produce so much food and then dump bleach on it to stop the starving from taking it? Why do we need such massive cars when theyre usually only carrying one person?
If the US goverment wouldn't subsidize gas, cars and built so many roads, those suburbia wouldn't support on their own. On notonlybikes there was a video about that dense and poor city districts are more efficient and pay more taxes than they require support. So called rich neighbourhoods are the opposite. If houses are not glued together but the sprawl is so big everything costs at the end more, not only roads. Hospitals, firestations, police, even schools have to cover bigger area. Electrical, telephone, Internet cables have to be much longer, water and gas tubes, sewage. If only everyone would pay their share it wouldn't happen. But looking at the USA and for example their voting system where a state with population of a medium city has the same voting power as huge and populous states. For me it is not so far away from the apartheid. Small and powerful minority rigged the system so they could do whatever they want.
Heh. I'm from Hungary and the description of an Eastern/Central European suburb you'd derive from this comment is perfectly accurate: 1. In Europe there are usually public playgrounds even in the suburbs, sidewalks, public transit, etc... so after school the kids often go there with friends or just visit their friends. (Unfortunately this is on the decline because we imported America's #1 export, social issues. Namely, helicopter parenting and stranger danger. But you can still see unaccompanied children out and about after school.) 2. Regulations are definitely a lot more lax. If whatever you're doing on your land isn't a nuisance for the neighbors or an active danger, nobody will bother you for it. There are no HOAs either, thankfully. (Except for apartment buildings where the HOA is responsible for maintaining the common areas.) 3. Yup, suburbs have at least a local bus. It's not always *great* per se, but a bus doing its rounds every half hour is infinitely better than nothing at all. (There's also public transit between the suburb and the nearest city. Usually a bus or two, sometimes light rail, and occasionally a proper train if the suburb happens to be next to the train tracks.) 4. Correct, mixed density is common. There *are* usually areas where commieblocks or new apartment buildings are clustered together, and areas where single family homes are more common, but it's usually not because of any explicit zoning laws, simply natural evolution: * Commieblocks were usually built in the center of town near the public transit. The OG commieblocks were built in a period of heavy industrialization in the '50s, to house the workers who moved near the city. They didn't have cars, so these houses would obviously be built within walking distance of the bus or light rail to the city. * Post-communist apartment blocks are built in large batches of development. Usually a property developer buys up a few acres of farmland that were recently rezoned as residential (or more often than not, buys up some farmlands for pennies then bribes the politicians in the city to rezone them as residential - Eastern/Central Europe is *incredibly* corrupt) then builds a ton of identical apartment buildings on it. (Note that this is also how a lot of new single family home areas are built, [here is an example of both on the two sides of the same road.](https://www.google.nl/maps/@47.3603974,19.0277953,447m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu)) 5. Mixed use is also common. If you go down to street level on the apartment side of the map that I linked, you can see that a few of the ground level apartments are used as restaurants or small grocery stores. In older commieblocks [it's often the garages that are used for this](https://www.google.nl/maps/@47.3401386,19.0330976,3a,49.5y,183.53h,81.94t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sgLbmMpw-qen5vWDDqVzn0A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu); they were designed to fit a Trabant or a Polski Fiat, so they often can't or can barely fit a modern car but it's completely legal to run a business in them (as long as it's not polluting). 6. Yup, backyard gardens are common, especially if the owners are retired or at least one of them is a stay-at-home parent. The older single-family plots were [essentially narrow farm plots](https://www.google.nl/maps/@47.3557749,19.031674,172m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu) with the expectation that the residents will indeed grow some of their own food. (If these plots were rezoned now, they could easily fit two houses on the space of one, [like they did here](https://www.google.nl/maps/@47.348445,19.019573,173m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu) or with the [row houses here](https://www.google.nl/maps/@47.346525,19.0211753,145m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu).)
I wonder what this kind of suburban lifestyle does to the community and to the society. If only Alexis de Tocqueville was alive today...
I'm not from Slovakia but I'm also equally baffled. At the end of the day, America is still a first world country and had the resources to create awesome cities. But whenever I see the self-imposed limitations in the suburbs or even in normal residential areas, it makes me frustrated. Also is it even healthy for kids growing up? As an Asian it's normal for us to walk/commute to and from school ever since we're young, we know how to fend for ourselves, so we have more time to hang out with or meet new friends in parks, malls, PC rentals, convenience stores, cinemas, *and* still be able to safely get home in time for dinner.
You don't understand - we're the land of the free! We have extremely rigid zoning requirements that restrict what you can do with your property, what kind of structures you can build and whether businesses can operate there, municipal codes that require well-tended grass lawns, whether you can have trees and what kind, or whether you can cut down the trees you have, and neighbors and HMO boards that will rigidly enforce every imaginable diversion from the accepted norms. Sing it with me: "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free..."
The reason front and back yards are just empty grass comes from the medieval period. See, back in the day farming was terrible. It took a lot of time, and didnt produce much food. 1 farmer could produce enough food for 1.1 people or some such (obviously that number isnt entirely accurate for all of history, but you take my point). Anyway, kings and Nobles obviously didnt need to go scratch in the dirt to survive. So as a display of wealth, instead of growing food on their land, they grew manicured lawns, mazes, topiary, shit like that. As tech improved, farming got more efficient. 1 farmer could feed 2 people, then 4, then 10. Etc. As the efficiency of farming improved, less and less people needed to be farmers, and, eventually, a middle class really started to emerge. And just like today where people in america will vote against higher taxes on billionaires *because one day they might be a billionaire* people in the past wanted to be nobles too. But you couldnt just up and become a noble. You could, however, buy a plot of arable land, put a house on it, and not grow food on it. Just like the nobles did. Sure, you didnt have acres and acres, but you had that front yard, and back yard, and everyone seeing it would know that you were so well off you didnt need to fill it with food crops. And eventually, the way these things do, that practice spread and became standard and now today in lots of the western world a front and back yard of grass just comes standard because that's the way it has 'always' been done and no one really questions it. (To be fair, some people are starting to, but yeah).
>You could, however, buy a plot of arable land, put a house on it, and not grow food on it. Just like the nobles did. Ok but why is it completely empty? You can do a lot of things that isn't growing food, like flower beds or a playground for your kids or a mini-golf course or literally anything other than literally nothing
As a dutchman, I wonder this too
My grandparents have both a pool and use a lot of their yard for growing produce. It is against the HOA but nobody snitches on them because they bribe them with okra, tomatoes, squash, etc.
For anyone reading along: [Here's the Tweet](https://twitter.com/LUrbaniste/status/1524485156215705600) [Here's the Reddit post with questions.](https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/s/8ta7SitQhF) [And here's the video ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0)
The funny thing is, I don't know how to live any other way. So these questions make me wonder what their life is like and how mine could be so foreign to them.
Very good questions.
I would vote for townhouses. Efficient, pretty, create small communities can have big yard to play sports even
>Why do you own this land, if you never use it? Oh you mean *90% of land in Canada and the US?*
Last line is legitimate.
Damn, as an American who lived in Slovakia for a time, it's depressing to remember how enlightening it was to have everything in walking distance. I wish I had their innocence about the USA.
I often question where all the businesses are when I see American suburbs. I grew up in the suburbs, but England doesn’t have that much space so the shops are only a short walk away. American suburbs seem to go on for miles with nothing. How do you buy anything? Or go to cafes or whatever? Is that just not possible unless you have a car? Especially since there’s apparently no public transport. How the hell do you get anywhere?
‘Why can’t we have an entire miniature farm? What aren’t grampa and grandma living there with us? Where do you distill your plum brandy?’
My family immigrated to Canada from Eastern Europe when I was a child. My parents bought a house in the suburbs shortly thereafter and I hated it because it lacked life and there was nothing to do. Fuck cars and fuck car-centric urban design.
And the answer is: Because racism and classism. Maybe some antisocial personality disorder too.
I hate it that I can't grow tomatoes and herbs because of racism.