I’ll never understand why US suburbs like to utterly nuke any kind of nature around their houses and replace it with “lawns”. Like, I’d rip that stuff out and at least plant some potats and shit immediately.
It is actually a anticommunist thing
Also a chem industry lobbying to sell fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides and paint
Don’t they also have these “neighborhood associations” that forbid them to do anything that falls out of line?
HOAs are indeed common in the “land of the free”.
even without HOA. non HOA streets often also maintain a perfect lawn
I don’t get it.
hate lawn maintenance, I find that if you let it run wild and full of local wild vegetation they are so much prettier and fun to look out, look at all those butterflies and bees.
It’s just that much easier for developers to raze all plants to the ground before grading and running other heavy equipment. These are new construction and so those developers aren’t accountable to anyone, and I’m sure the local jurisdiction doesn’t care. That’s not a justification, for what it’s worth, just an explanation.
What I’ve never been sure of is why people don’t eventually realize how much nicer everything would be if they just replanted trees (or left them in the first place) but they seem to be used to suburban hell. If you drive everywhere it’s less of an issue that your environment is shit.
You’re assuming people who are forced to buy into the suburban hell have a choice.
If a person had a choice between a 100k house in a suburban hell or a 100k house in secluded heaven. That they pick the suburban hell.
Have you seen the housing market in the US?
It’s also funny how “Suburban” meaning has changed. It’s supposed to be non-urban.
But with these “suburban” neighborhoods in cities. It has basically became a word for a neighborhood with houses built next to each other and less about where it’s located.
Suburbs use to be an inexpensive option as opposed to urban living.
If a person had a choice between a 100k house in a suburban hell or a 100k house in secluded heaven. That they pick the suburban hell
Because of jobs. Unless you are retired or able to work remotely, jobs are a leash that control where you can live.
And even if you do work remotely, you can’t count on that lasting forever.
One of the primary reasons I actively chose the suburbs was so that I’d be able to get another job if I lost my fully remote job. After ten years, exactly that happened, and I got a job with a commute to downtown.
I’d be able to get another job if I lost my fully remote job
Not having other job options is quite a risk. Small towns that rely on one main employer are usually devastated if that employer relocates or shuts down.
Also big box stores are usually not too far away by design I’d wager. I’ve heard zoning laws caused most of the US to be a complete desert for shopping unless you have a car since everything is so centralized. Depending on the state a “secluded heaven” might very well be dozens of kilometers away from the market, right?
I can’t even imagine this… no matter where I lived so far in Germany, let it be countryside, city or at the city border, there always were small shops, kiosks and/or bakeries nearby (<1km). I can’t fathom having to drive even if I’m just craving some candy while living in what’s supposed to be a proper neighborhood.
Can confirm. I am trapped in suburbia for at least three more years.
I can’t wait to head for the hills.
But why don’t they plant trees?? And I don’t mean the little weeping cherry that will top out at 15’ or those goddamned arborvitaes that cast no shade. Plant an oak, a maple, a willow, a sycamore.
So what I suspect happens is that in newer development communities, the people building them just seem to find it easier to level/bulldoze an entire plot of land to build a neighborhood. Then they just don’t feel like putting plants and trees back in after construction is complete out of pure cost and laziness.
For older neighborhoods in the US, you’ll find a lot more foliage. I love it when I go to an older neighborhood that has large trees that canopy the area. They do exist here…it’s just that they have to be a bit older. My condo complex has some wonderful tall trees and plants everywhere. It’s not a new complex though and they seem to care more about plantife than some others do. They even randomly planted a massive tree last year for some reason lol. Seemed to require some pretty big machinery to haul it and put it in lol.
Before I bought my current place, there was another complex I was looking at. The trees were even larger and provided even more of a canopy across the area. It was gorgeous. And again, the neighborhood was a bit older.
Yeah, it’s impossible to develop a greenfield site without scraping everything off. You have to create and get approval on water runoff management plan for any new development. That means grading everything and often these days it also means managing and impounding water on-site without dumping it all into the (overloaded) storm drain system. When there’s no grass you have to install silt fences to keep silt out of nearby streams while building. You can’t get final approval, and remove the silt fence, until there is some kind of ground cover and that basically means grass since it grows fast and is easy to apply. Even if you somehow left the trees there’s no way they’d survive the process.
Fuck McMansion developers, and fuck lawns, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a reflection of an entire system of land-use policy and not just stupidity, or whatever.
I’m unsure if I’m allowed to have tomatoes growing but so far no one has said anything so places without hoa care a lot less!
Imagine not being able to decide what you grow in your own yard. Wild.
The only laws I’m sure the township has is lawn height. I don’t think it says anything about gardening things. I’m glad to not be in a hoa?
With lawn height you mean they heard the scientists and you need to have a couple square feet of uncut lawn, right?
They don’t care about the backyard if its fenced so…sort of???
OH FUCKING GOD, YOU MEAN I’VE CONSENSUALLY AGREED TO A COMMUNITY SET OF RULES? THE FUCKING HORROR OF THIS SHIT SHOW!!!
If you have to agree to it to buy something as basic as a home then it isn’t truly consensual. Hell, it isn’t even truly consensual for less necessary stuff like cars (you “agree” to surveillance - arguably a necessity in less developed places), digital goods (same - also more or less necessity), games (you agree to not own dogshit) and other things. Hell, you keep “agreeing” to workplace rules supposedly “freely”, but we all know it isn’t.
There are certain basic rules everyone has to agree to (laws) to uphold society, but other than that any agreement like HOAs have to be truly optional if your argument is supposed to work. And no, just “going elsewhere” isn’t a fucking option in the current disastruous market. Especially since that nonsense appears to be so common in the US.
🙄👌 whatever you need to tell yourself
🤡
Beep.
Boop
No wait — boop.
A lawn is generally easier to take care of than a collection of various plants and trees. First thing I do at any new home is plant a fuck ton of edible plants, and my neighbors always talk about not having the time or energy to do the same
My British friend says that Americans don’t have lawns. They have grassed in areas.
In a neighborhood like that, you’d probably end up with a fine and they’d charge you to ‘fix’ it for you.
I would be so excited to be able to own a home and have 6 other friends.
Haha brilliant 👏
None of Friends 1-7 are you
This is the first thing that came to mind when I saw this.
(Ed, Edd & Eddy was sooo good)
YES I loved that show
I also really respect and like the finale, which is rare for a cartoon
“It would get old fast”? Op, I’m afraid you don’t have good friends. When I was a university student, I was in a shared apartment with two friends. It was great: you always had someone to do stuff with and group activities were much easier to schedule.
Now that I’m older it would be nice to easily check who’s up for something, spontaneously grill with everyone or simply sit together in the evening and talk.
My friends group still goes on vacation together from time to time and I love it. If your friends are only enjoyable in small doses… I don’t know… that sounds sad.
Also with a house of your own, everyone would have enough space to retreat if necessary.
Besides from the bad gardening that was mentioned by the other posts, I would love to live like this.
The only problem I see here is the lack of fences, trees, and plants. And the size of the houses is a bit too big for my needs.
At the end of the day it’s not the details of the pic but the concept conveyed. All the homies, within walking distance, with someone probably available to hang whenever.
I have a small friend group and we go on vacations together all the time. There are about 6 of us then I bring my kids too. We go to beaches, cabins, amusement parks, you name it. It’s awesome. I wish we all lived on the same st too. I bet we could even save some money by cooking meals together more often.
I thought when I had kids I would be out of any kind of group like this but my friends are awesome. Occasionally they will do something and I’ll have to turn it down because it would be too hard but they always keep asking and we ask them too.
Man, this. I moved in with a friend to my first apartment like 10 years ago. With two more a couple floors down.
Nowadays all 4 of us live in a big house together and it’s great. Sure there’s some conflict, but at the end we’re still friends and we can reconcile like adults. I’d move more of our close friends in if we had the space. We even briefly had a 5th housemate when he was between apartments and that was cramped, but still actually very nice.
Good friends is the key - to me, this sounds great. I have plenty of friends I’d love to have this close, it might even be hard to pick “just” 6.
This looks like hell
Why would you want a house like that. They are all the same characterless houses
I didn’t give any fucks about what the neighborhood looks like, other than safe.
I do care about property value though.
I do care about property value though.
why?
Because whether you like it or not, it’s tied to retirement and wealth.
How? Are americans so poor that they have to sell their home for retirement?
Home values up until very recently would net 4-5% a year in value when adjusted for things like maintenance, lower mortgage rates vs rent, inflation, and other considerations.
You can buy a moderate sized home to raise a family and grow into while being nearly certain that you’re going to have moderate gains while maintaining a fixed cost over 30 years. If you move you can be nearly certain in most situations to be able to sell or rent. You can invest in improving the property knowing you’ll make back 50% of those costs later.
Get old age don’t need a big house anymore? Sell it and add that 75% of mortgage money you paid directly back into your retirement income.
There are very very few investments as historically safe and as useful as the mortgage in the USA.
Me and the wife befriended the neighbours during lockdown. Hung out all the time, went on several holidays together.
Still pals, was round at one of theirs for dinner the other day.
Lived even closer than this for years. Didn’t get old. Miss it. But had to move on from the communal garden space for the kids.
same.
exactly the same story.
some neighbours (including me) left already and are still in the chat group.
we even had some group drama and solidarity, and even did a Spartacus to the landlord.
miss that so much
Friends 1 and 7 control the choke point and use it to starve the rest of the friends.
Calm down Netanyahu
Friend 4 has the best line-of-sight for machine gun nest and sniper fire.
The thing that would get old is managing all that damn grass. That and presumably having to drive 20 minutes to get anything.
Never personally had issues with living near or even with friends. Only ever had issues with was a rando roommate I had because a friend had to move for work.
presumably having to drive 20 minutes to get anything.
I’ve visited friends in such areas. It is hell.
They say “it’s so nice that nothing is more than 20 minutes away”, while ignoring the fact that nothing is less than 20 minutes away.
They can’t even have a corner grocer (due to shitty zoning laws) and they don’t realize how much of their daily life their car eats.
Suburbian hell aside, noone prohibits you from befriending your neighbors.
I have to move every year because the rent on my basement only goes up.
Where am I gonna get Vietnamese food in this shitty desolate suburb?
Make it yourself
Where does friend 3 park?
Friend 3 subscribes to c/FuckCars.
do you not see the giant cul de sac right in the middle
Lots of places street parking is illegal. It doesn’t allow access for snow ploughs, street cleaners, garbage pickup, busses, etc.
There are dozens of suburbs just like this that ban street parking! DOZENS OF THEM!
Skipping past the overwhelming use case to be pedantic about an edge case is an absolute waste of everyone’s time and energy. It’s entirely unhelpful and painfully prevalent in these parts.
to add to this private driveways make single family homes even worse for cities and the environment by lowering density even farther. before private driveways were the default homes were much closer to the road and you were just expected to park on the side and cities built that way are way nicer to walk around
All of what you said is true, but it’s still odd to see a suburban house with no driveway. Odd enough that I’m curious about it, too.
It’s also the only one without a driveway. Most of the time, these houses are made in batches and are the same or similar to each other. If none of the houses had a driveway, I’d assume they actually were very close to public transit.
“Busses”, lol.
School buses
Do those actually go door to door?
cool
this ain’t that, though
My frat house was like this but with one house. Didn’t get old.
Grove Street, home.
Who is out here with that many friends??
Leave some for the rest of us.
I’m grateful for my collection.
Fuck, yeah, I mean 7 friends seems like a lot to manage.
I’m fine with this considering my house is not in the picture.
