• epicstove@lemmy.caEnglish
    27·
    2 天前

    1. As a kid I would play street hockey with my friends although nowadays I don’t see kids outside much. Sometimes kids are unlikely and live in an area with no other kids their age around.

    2. Yes. Lobbying by oil and car companies

    3. see above.

    4. See above.

    5. See above.

    • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
      8·
      2 天前

      A lot of it also has to do with racism, and these days, people don’t even know why zoning ordinances are the way they are. They can’t defend them. They just assume that it’s what people want and there must be some good reason for the zoning being the way it is (spoiler alert: nope, actually). This is one of the ripest, and probably lowest-hanging fruits in terms of achieving QOL improvements in North America.

  • rekabis@lemmy.ca
    111·
    2 天前

    My own property is being extensively reworked to produce a majority of our vegetables. We have already put about 185m² 2,000ft²) under direct cultivation in the back yard, and intend to wrap that garden around the entire property to the full 400m² (4.300ft²) available.

    In the end, I don’t expect to have a single blade of grass on the property. It’ll all be flowers, fruiting trees and canes and bushes, and vegetables. All done in a modified Ruth Stout method, with a variation of flat-ground Hügelkultur thrown in.

    Let’s just say that Bylaw is already pissed off with me, and I’m not even halfway done yet.

  • SektorC@discuss.tchncs.deDeutsch
    25·
    2 天前

    Since I found out about the neighborhood association, I’ve been rather suspicious of this land of the free.

  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
    38·
    2 天前

    The front and back yards are there to increase pervious cover. That’s it.

    I work in municipal development and have worked in dense areas, suburbs, and now work in an enclave for the ultra-rich (average new house is about 7 million dollars in the city where I work). Every single developer wants to level all the trees and build as much on the lot as possible with zero pervious cover anywhere, and they don’t give the smallest fuck about flooding the downhill neighbors.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
        8·
        2 天前

        It’s never, ever maintained properly and the inlets or “permeable” pavement gets plugged up and effectively gets turned into 100% IC almost every installation. My last city’s engineering team went from encouraging it to recommending it be banned when they saw what happens when it isn’t maintained.

        • potpotato@lemmy.world
          2·
          2 天前

          There’s some pervious asphalt at my office that has over 10 years of fines in it and infiltrates <1”/hr. If you hit it with a vacuum it quickly clears to >50”/hr.

  • شاهد على إبادة@lemm.ee
    32·
    2 天前

    I moved to a suburb in a country with unbearable heat yet because of how the suburbs are designed, I still walk more than when I did in the US. Everything from barbershops and grocery stores, to pharmacies and bakeries are within a 10 minute walk. Though I usually wait until night fall to do so.

  • SandmanXC@lemmy.world
    911·
    2 天前

    As a non driving eastern European, living a few months in a Colorado suburb was literally one of the most depressing times of my life.

    • NeuronautML@lemmy.ml
      91·
      2 天前

      I drive but i wasn’t going to stay working in Texas long enough to justify the costs of buying my own car and transferring my license there, but same situation.

      I was in Houston which has some buses and decided to use them. To do a 10-15 ish km ride, it took over 2 hours because there was just one bus that way and it stopped in every street corner. An uber took the same route in about 20 minutes.

      I really disliked the way Texas looked, too much sprawl, cheap falling apart houses and whole blocks of abandoned houses and businesses. Definitely not enough trees. Also how it’s organized, but the people were fairly nice. Like 60% of the time.

      There’s a lot of racism but i already was expecting that. I thought the racism would be whites vs everyone else, but honestly I’ve witnessed and experienced racism there from every race, towards everyone else. People also treat you better when they think you’re their own race, so being Mediterranean i had random acts of kindness from Arabs, Latinos and white people who thought i was from their respective race. I also met some Brazilian people who hated Europeans for some reason and were not shy to show it.

  • Snowclone@lemmy.world
    1197·
    2 天前

    The answer to all questions is racism. We don’t have public transportation because it became illegal to forbid African Americans access, we don’t have public parks and services, because you can no longer have ‘‘whites only’’ signs up, we don’t have stores in these areas because you can’t stop immigrants from owning stores that whites see as ‘beneath them’ to work in, farming your own yard is trashy, because slaves were only allowed to farm food for themselves in small plots right next to the shacks they were allowed to sleep in, and why do we have remote single housing areas you can only access with cars that are over priced? To get away from the black people they could no longer red line to prevent living near them, and to create school districts non whites couldn’t be zoned for as they were priced out of the districts, and then they adjusted school funding so it was based on land value effectively creating whites only schools with high funding. As the white racist mom in the 70s who was upset about bussing said ‘‘if you let your kids grow up around theirs, eventually they’ll all start to mix’’

    • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.eeEnglish
      412·
      2 天前

      America spent so long cutting off its own nose to spite its face that it’s no wonder it believes today that its shit doesn’t stink.

      For fucks sake why can’t there be a place that’s basically identical to america EXCEPT without the racism, homophobia, transphobia, and fascism. What the fuck is humanity doing, god damn.

      • Snowclone@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 天前

        Spain looks pretty good. Their sociological statistics at least paint a good picture, and many parts of Spain have been multi ethnic for centuries, and they are open to immigration.

        • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.eeEnglish
          72·
          2 天前

          So many mixed feelings.

          It’s less of an option for me and my ilk because of language barrier. But Americans’ inability to speak the various languages of Europe are a personal failing on the part of basically all Americans; our “education” system made us dependent, and our arrogance made us unwilling to accept both that we are stupid and that it is incumbent upon us to fix our own stupidity.

          And now that I can’t afford groceries, medical care, AND utility bills at the same time, I neither have the time to learn a new language nor the mental space to do so.

          Maybe it’s for the best that Americans can’t just casually flee to Europe. Europe is already struggling to suppress a resurgence of fascism even WITHOUT a massive influx of braindead center-right neoliberal mouth-breathers from Jesusland.

          • joel_feila@lemmy.world
            8·
            2 天前

            Well the lack of second language is not just a usa. In other mostly English as a first language countries you have the lowest rates of bilingualism

    • Kilgore Trout@feddit.it
      243·
      2 天前

      Of course, racism is the source of every problem.

      Let’s forget the power that oil conglomerates and the automotive industry have on the government.

    • joel_feila@lemmy.world
      11·
      2 天前

      I grew in a town with lots of parks. Yes the smallest and shitest used to be black only. Basically just look for park in lower area. And we started building suburbs with redlines on day one the raciam didn’t need to wait for redlines to go away. The school district thing. That’s a bit more region based. Up North they mosrohad mono ethnic neighborhoods so they was less need to make seperate racial schools. The south although they had redlines and other housings policy creating black and white neighborhoods they also just went fully into making blackand white only schools.

  • priapus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    7·
    2 天前

    tbf I do know many suburban families that grow a lot in their backyard, although I’m sure there are places with more strict rules around that.

    otherwise very valid questions.

  • RedDoozer@lemmy.zip
    261·
    2 天前

    The more resources you waste publicly, the better. It indicates that you can afford it and brag about it.

    Think about jewelry, expensive purses, sneakers, flashy cars, unused lawns, Halloween/Christmas/whatever decorations, etc.

  • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.worldEnglish
    493·
    2 天前

    Can’t grow anything but grass because they stripped off all the topsoil from the land that used to be a farm.

    If you want a garden you need to buy soil

    • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
      206·
      2 天前

      edit: looks like I’m wrong.

      Do people in this thread really think the developer took the topsoil and sold it to someone else?

      Bitch, please. Topsoil isn’t valuable enough to strip and truck somewhere. The tiny layer we humans can grow food in is just that thin in a large part of North America.

      Deal with it.

      • Seleni@lemmy.world
        26·
        2 天前

        They do though. They rip it all up and sell it off when they’re doing construction.

        Source: used to work in commercial landscaping. Which on new jobsites involves bringing in new soil to replace the soil that’s gone.

        That being said, there are places in the US where there isn’t much topsoil to begin with, it’s true.

        • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          72·
          2 天前

          Yeah but they don’t cart it off as part of some nefarious scheme to deprive home owners of the ability to grow their own produce.

          Construction regulations dictate requirements for hardness and consistency. They test these metrics before construction can begin. The regulations have these requirements so peoples houses don’t… you know… fall over?

          If you just bulldoze whatever and make the ground flat it’s going to be full of organic material that will decay and slump over time.

          They have to remove that top soil, and of course it has some value so it can be sold rather than dumped.

      • baines@lemmy.cafeEnglish
        13·
        2 天前

        jokes on you, here in the south the top soil is old swap and sometimes actual farm top soil, it is indeed bagged and sold off sometimes

    • em2@lemmy.ml
      11·
      2 天前

      Exactly. When I resodded our front lawn I kept finding building materials. I guess it’s common for construction workers to bury the trash when building a house rather than dispose of it correctly.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
          6·
          2 天前

          Unfortunately you may need someone with a disc harrow or tiller to help the first time. It’s not preferred but I’ve no other ideas. Maybe Solar Punk does?

          • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.worldEnglish
            51·
            2 天前

            Which I would totally do if I had more than a 1/4 acre, most of which is taken up with a house and other structures. Getting a tractor and harrow out here for an 800 sq ft garden doesn’t make sense. I’ll probably do raised beds this year.

            I can’t wait until I can move back to the country. The suburbs are the absolute worst.

            • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialEnglish
              2·
              1 天前

              Straw bale gardening sounds nifty, too. I’d try it if the previous owners of my place hadn’t already put in a couple of raised beds.

            • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
              9·
              2 天前

              Alternate take, fix your 1/4 acre the natural way if you’re gonna be there a while.

              Start a compost pile.

              Aerate, plant clover, spread compost every year, plant a native tree or two and native plants underneath.

              No need to till, just slowly amend.

              • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.worldEnglish
                12·
                2 天前

                I’m not planning on being here in four years so it doesn’t make sense to do anything that would make the house look “weird” and make it harder to sell.

                • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
                  3·
                  2 天前

                  it doesn’t make sense to do anything that would make the house look “weird” and make it harder to sell.

                  My guy you’re complaining about a problem you’re part of the cause of then.

                  Trees are weird? A healthy lawn is weird?

                  Why complain if you have the environment you want 🤷

            • Maeve@kbin.earth
              3·
              2 天前

              I mean paying someone to borrow their/ till may be less expensive? That said, I like raised bed too. Easier to manage. Right now I’m looking at permaculture but not sure if I’m cut out for it.

    • Jajcus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      2 天前

      Grass (the trimmed always green lawn type) is more demanding than many other crops. If the grass is growing there, then the topsoil is good enough for some other things too. Also the topsoil is something you can develop, especially on such small scale as personal garden. Make compost, grow less demanding plants first nad your soil will get better. You can grow things on sand mixed with a bit of compost.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zipEnglish
      91·
      2 天前

      Even if you have soil, in a whole lot of cities/municipalities/counties… there are zoning restrictions on growing certain amounts and kinds of plants/vegetables.

      And HOAs. They all have their own restrictions as well.

      Wanna collect rainwater?

      Regulations on that too.

      Wanna start a compost bin?

      Well your neighbor can complain it smells bad in the summer. Might attract dangerous critters.

      Hell, probably just laying down a sufficient amount of top soil might be enough to get a visit from an HOA rep or a county zoning wonk.

      • dkc@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 天前

        I’m not denying this happens in some places, but it’s not universal. I live in the suburbs and grow veggies during the summer. The state I live in has “right to garden” laws that prevent a lot of HOA restrictions. My city also has a rain barrel program to encourage their use and offers discounts on barrels.

      • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
        21·
        2 天前

        Bad smells are a reasonable point though.

        Imissions of all kind (noise, smell) should be regulated. If you put a compost bin at the edge of your property, your neighbor should have a right to demand its removal.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
      5·
      2 天前

      Compost helps, storage is the issue. I’m ok with it open but not okay with the timber rattlers, cotton mouths and copperheads different scavengers would attract.

      • baines@lemmy.cafeEnglish
        4·
        2 天前

        raised beds, kinda silly like a fridge in a heated house in a snow storm kinda way but they do work

        • angrystego@lemmy.world
          3·
          2 天前

          Once you start growing plants, you’ll have much more compostable material than just the kitchen waste. You can also compost grass and tree leaves.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
          1·
          2 天前

          Yes, I’ve been discussing it with a neighbor. Storage is the current challenge. We need an old freezer with the coils gutted (snakes love coils, anyone with a boa or python for any length of time and a sofa can tell you!) or something. We’re looking.

          • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.worldEnglish
            5·
            2 天前

            snakes love coils, anyone with a boa or python for any length of time and a sofa can tell you!

            That’s actually adorable (when it’s not wild/poisonous) and reminds me of how Odo’s quarters had interesting objects he liked to take the form of

    • GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      2 天前

      I figured they took the soil from digging the foundation and spread it around the yard in order to grade it and that’s why the street is lower than the yard.

      • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        2 天前

        They do, but after they strip most of the good stuff off the top. Which kind of makes sense because it’s gonna be ruined by the construction. Top soil is only about 5-10 inches deep in most places and pretty compressible so any foundation is going to be deeper.

        The real crime is plowing up farmland for tract housing.

  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
    22·
    2 天前

    Out where I live there are whole neighborhoods built and owned by rental companies. Rows of duplexes, blocks of single family residences built through the 70s and 80s. All rentals for decades, with some houses being sold off variously. And even then many of the buyers in the last 20 odd years were landlords themselves.

    The guy I bought my house off of still owned 150 some houses in his direct name in my county, not counting what his business owned or his partners and associates owned directly in their network.

    Tenants don’t exactly have a whole lot of choices of what they can do on the property, and many can only stay a year or so. It isn’t like they invest in the land: so grass.

  • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
    121·
    2 天前

    Like really. Besides a lot of these things we have no control over, I want to at least plant things in the yard but I heard there’s this thing called HOA and you can’t do that either depending on where your house is. It’s really sad