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.
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.