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
Care to elaborate?
I heard of that, I think it was some propaganda piece. Like “look at those poor sovjets, have to grow their own food because the state can’t provide. Meanwhile we’re so civilized and advanced”. (Interesting sidenote: The culture of huge lawns came from the UK I think, rich people in the 1800 and 1900 displayed their wealth that way).
Not saying it wasn’t like that in some places, just that it’s so unfathomably stupid. And now there are US Tiktokers talking about “lifehacks” of growing your own food, with other US Tiktokers calling people who do that libtard commies and whatnot. US culture is a disaster on life support.
I just can’t fathom why seemingly a whole class of US citizens apparently aren’t able to use their damn heads and still do this nonsense.
Coming from the UK is correct, it was literally an artistocratic flex at having literally useless land. I read a dissertation a few years back that also linked this to a Baudrillard style simulationist desire for the upper class not to see land with any practical value immediately besides their homes because they were resistant to accept that their wealth was exercised from any real action, and instead they’d pretend it was just a truth. But beyond the lawns were forests and fields, because they had to exist.
When lawns were adopted by the bourgeoisie, who only had half an acre of property, it was already trendy to have the surrounding acres of the house be only lawn. The bourgeoisie simulation was to have the house surrounded by lawns as if it were to then give way to fields and forests, which of course did not exist, just your neighbours equally ugly plot of land.
What I never understood about all of this though, is that gardens are equally cosmetic vanity. I have fond memories of the garden of my grandmother, which has a small greenhouse and two raised vegetable beds at the back, but everything else was flower beds, a pond, a summer pavillion, a small lawn, a shed and a scattering of trees and bushes. Other than the small sections for growing vegetables, it was all entirely for vanity. But it was beautiful. Hell, the small lawn was even pretty functional as the primary place to set up chairs in the sun and play ball games.
I am British, and once this island was forest and mountains from shore to shore, with meadows and plains being rare. The lawn never made sense here, and caught on less in in the Soviet Bloc as plains become more common in nature. America is a land with far more natural plains, and the lawn is further removed from it’s original status. It’s imitating an imitation of a denial of reality, Baudrillard would have a field day.
But I did mention, in my grandmother’s garden, playing ball games on the lawn. American sport is largely built on the suburban madness that is lawns. I’m not talking about sport born in urban centers like basketball, or sports from true rural areas, which I can only assume is rednecks drink driving, if watching US shows has told me anything, but Baseball, American Football and even golf are sports made for lawns. It’s hard to detangle lawns from middle class America without stopping middle class kids play sports in their gardens.
One day they’ll add vegetable gardening to the Olympics and America will be saved, and Joseph McCarthy will be stuck in hell on his fucking lawn.
sports from true rural areas, which I can only assume is rednecks drink driving
We also hunt deer, go fishing, and throw bean bags into a wooden box called a “corn hole”.
You’re not supposed to tell them about corn holing! You have to wait until they’re at a BBQ to spring it on them and expect them to participate without any explanation.
Every year, my company has a company-wide cornhole tournament at our all-employee bbq shindig. I entered it last year, assuming it was a casual fun thing and everyone there played once or twice a year, like me. I’m from two states away, and it really isn’t as big here. It was not casual. These people brought their own bags, some well over $100 a set. I was embarrassingly outclassed. Out in the first round. This year is corn hole and go karts. I’m going to try that instead this year.
sports from true rural areas, which I can only assume is rednecks drink driving
You know how europeans think that yellow school busses must be a movie trope, but they really are everywhere all the time in America?
Same concept
It’s hard to detangle lawns from middle class America without stopping middle class kids play sports in their gardens.
They still play on the lawn? Thought by now they’re kept mostly indoors (or in cars) for helicopter-parent-reasons, safety or sth. At least that’s what I heard. A german news moderator for the US also mentioned it once, some Karens in the neighborhood thought of child neglect because the kids were playing in the front yard or going to the playground alone (gasp!).
Not really getting the point though. Most lawns are huge, there’s enough space for playtime and some nice flowers or vegetables. Most houses even have a front and back lawn…
You might find an odd scenario of someone calling the cops on kids on a slow news day, but that is not the normal scenario anywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQaMr3UHOWE
“No mam who owns his home and lot can be a communist, he has too much work to do”
- William Levitt
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.
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!
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
Pest control might be part of it.
Pests, like birds, butterflies, bees…
I once had a distant relative react to a worried conversation about the extreme reduction of insects in nature with “but that’s great! Way less moscitos, and a clean windshield!”.
I swear to all higher beings, I never wanted to punch a stupid person more than in that moment.
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.
Everyone’s dream =
I’m not seeing an A/C unit on this thing anywhere.
If you have this, you’re already cool enough.
“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.
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.
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.
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
Who is this “everyone”? Because this ain’t even remotely my dream.
- House needs to be in the mountains
- Fuck lawns
- I don’t have this many friends (by choice)
- If I did, I wouldn’t want to be in this close of proximity to them
- This place probably has an HOA which is a big fat NOPE
Your home can look like this. No HOA needed!
Works for me! I’d love to say I built a house. That’s real accomplishment.
That really would be the bomb!
this would be the perfect place to write a book about how much you hate the industrialised world
Im with you. I’d love my 2 best friends and my sibling to live next to us, but im surrounded by woods and farmers and I very much like it that way. Yall can keep your suburban mcmansion cul-de-sac, life in the holler is much nicer.
I got to play with baby goats all yesterday morning 💜
Your life is a dream. Daily real connection to the world and the creatures that make it great.
Our yard is wild and I let it run loose, with only some control. The southeast is getting old though. I’m a northerner that yearns for the snow and mountains again.
Id tell you to come to the Blue Ridge but the winters already aren’t what they used to be. It’s a damn shame. I grew up in South Florida till I moved here so I LOVED WINTER.
Nowadays February is just gross.
I still love it here but with the sadness of seeing a friend quietly die.
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There’s one guy I want to hang out with regularly. He can have the adjoining 150 acres and we’ll put a shack full of liquor with some comfy chairs on the border.
That’s a valuable thing to hold onto. Everyone needs and deserves companionship.
My wife is my best friend. We both work from home, so we spend like 90% of our time together.
I would be so excited to be able to own a home and have 6 other friends.
Haha brilliant 👏
if you can’t be responsible and respectful with SIX neighbors then you don’t deserve the privilege of owning property.
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.
Well that’s a shitty looking commune.
McCommune
Where am I gonna get Vietnamese food in this shitty desolate suburb?
Make it yourself
Vietnamese food just isn’t the same unless it comes from a far to small kitchen, with some ancient vietnamese couple yelling at each other. Can really taste that passion.
Channel that energy. Become that fighting couple. Fry angry. Chop resentfully.
I call it “method cooking.”
It’s how I make amazing tomato sauce.
Just make more friends?
This looks like hell
Why would you want a house like that. They are all the same characterless houses
They have plenty of character.
Friend 1 is a banjo player. You can tell by the large porch facing the entrance of the cul de sac from where he watches everyone who comes and goes.
Friend 2 owns a large pick up truck. This is because his house has the best view of the agricultural fields to the left, so he identifies as a farmer, even if he works in a call center.
Friend 3 doesn’t have a driveway. He actually thought that he would be able to ride with his friends every day.
Friend 4 lives closest to the forrest so he wears outdoor clothing all the time and pretends to be the alpha male.
Friend 5 is the beta cuck who actually fell for Friends 4’s self proclaimed alpha status.
Friend 6 doesn’t exist. Nobody wants to buy that house. The parked car belongs to the real estate agent who pays regular visits to the house with potential buyers.
Friend 7 is a conspiracy theorist who keeps mostly to himself and sometimes disappear for days. The upper floor is larger than the ground floor and is filled with horded things that he calls his prepping storage. There might even be other people up there.
Look closer - it’s AI.
That’s not too say I haven’t seen some awkward developments (prefab, 55 and over community) where they obviously leveled everything, built, then added back all young trees. Decades later it’s still obvious.
Yeah, I think most people could guess that
Doesn’t change anything though
I didn’t give any fucks about what the neighborhood looks like, other than safe.
I do care about property value though.
No one outside of high school has six friends.
No one makes friends with six random neighbors. And certainly they don’t all consider each other friends.
There’s a reason this is called a “dream”.
No one outside of high school has six friends.
Me, a guy with maybe a dozen friends I hang out with on a weekly basis, whistling past the graveyard of loneliness
There’s a reason this is called a “dream”.
One trick to living in a cul de sac with six of your closest friends is to meet your neighbors and become friends with them. I’ll say that COVID really helped me with this, personally, because during the peak I was just out on the driveway or walking the local trails trying not to go stir crazy and… so was everyone else. Pretty soon we were doing impromptu parties on the driveway and yoga on the lawn and whatever else we could to avoid the isolation of a pandemic.
But you don’t need a killer virus to wave to your neighbors, say hi, and strike up a conversation. And there’s a compounding effect. When two people are out talking, you’re likely to pick up a third. When five people are hanging out at the end of a day, it can quickly become ten or more.
If it’s an instinctual response to wish for this kind of thing, it shouldn’t be hard to imagine people gravitating towards these relationships IRL.
prove it
I’m fine with this considering my house is not in the picture.
Suburbia may be a good place to shelter toddlers, but as soon as a child is more than about 6 years old, being trapped in a mcmansion on the edge of town seriously inhibits their growth and independence. They might be able to walk to a friend’s house, if they’re lucky enough to live somewhere with a sidewalk, but they’re unlikely to be able to walk to school, or anywhere else for that matter. …
… And it’s more than just school, too. Kids have lots of sports and other activities, so [in better urbanist places] it’s very common to see children walking or cycling while dressed in football gear (not [American] football) or hockey gear (not [ice] hockey), because they travel to all these activities by themselves.
In the US and Canada you have the stereotype of the suburban ‘soccer mum’, the mother who spends all of her time shuttling her kids around from school to activities to playdates and back. Because until a kid is about 16 years old and has their own driver’s licence, they need to be driven around everywhere by their parents. And this is considered ‘normal’.
— Jason Slaughter, 2022
People blame the phones but what else.do.they.have to do? I know I didn’t spend all day online by choice as a teen
You’ve touched on the point Jason raises in literally the very next sentence after the quote I shared in the video that quote comes from.
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.
