America is so dumb on so many levels.
this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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American suburbanism is truly wild. When you see how people live outside of the U.S., it's startling what we're putting up with here for the wonders of spending hours in a car every week.
It's technically against the law in my state to make a new neighborhood that doesn't have an HOA. I live in a neighborhood without an HOA because it was built before the law was passed. No one's running a tavern but we've got one neighbor who grows vegetables in a patch of their front yard. Another neighbor has a bunch of chickens and also a rooster. We're technically not allowed to have roosters but who's going to tell on them? Not me, for sure.
HOA truly scares me about American living. That a group of people can dictate what you can and can't do with your own house is absolutely wild. How is that home ownership?
In Canada the only real rule is don't leave your yard in disrepair.
Freedom \TM
Also no chickens (usually)
Yeah depends on the municipality my area it's fine but depends on yard size
Newer suburban housing often depresses me. You have these large, lovely homes, but they're crammed together so tightly that you could reach out of your kitchen window to turn on your neighbour's sink. The front yard is often just a strip of dry grass with a single crabapple sapling, and the back yard is a box the size of a small bathroom, devoid of both foliage and privacy from the eight other houses overlooking it, and serves largely as a box with air to place your dog in. This could be remedied if the developers weren't complete cunts and sacrificed a house or two per block to space the homes out a bit. But they can't waste an inch.
I certainly don't mean to throw shade at anyone who has purchased a home like this and enjoys living there. Everyone deserves a place to feel happy and comfortable. It just sucks that anything built in the last twenty years is erected with no privacy or quality of life in mind. It's just housebox. As long as you don't peer outside, you won't notice you're trapped in housebox. This is extremely common here in Alberta, and it's the reason my wife and I wound up buying an older home (1960s-70s) in a mature neighborhood. Most newer places we looked at felt as though they were missing a soul.
Just kind of gets to a point where the whole "detached home" thing doesn't really mean anything. May as well connect the walls into row housing and drop the price 100k.
Why do I feel like living in an apartment would be better in that case (if u can't find an older house)
In my Eu country, and also the neighbouring countries, the general rule for a detached building is that it has to be build 3 to 5 meters (depending on the local rules) from the terrain boundary. If the builder wants to build closer, then they have to build a blind wall on the boundary with certain minimum fire + insulation requirements. If then someone else builds against that blind wall, that someone else is expected to buy "half" of the existing wall, ie: pay the first builder some money.
So we fortunately don't get those dystopian tightly packed detached housing neighbourhoods.
The shared wall between a home and any other building is also required by law to have certain minimum acoustic insulation values. But there's plenty of old buildings where this isn't the case yet. Living in an apartment building without proper acoustic isolation is horrible, I'd rather live in a dystopian detached house, so maybe that's why those houses are still popular in North America and Australia: guaranteed proper acoustic insulation.
May as well connect the walls into row housing and drop the price 100k.
Sorry, best I can offer is row housing that is $100k more expensive.
When I had the opportunity to buy a house I was elated. Now, 10 years in? Yeah, I despise it. Neighbors that don't give a shit that you can't get away from, no privacy, no ability to do anything without the worry someone will report you for some HoA shit you're not aware of, etc. I was raised on a country house on 7 acres, now I dream of ever being able to escape and have something like that.
Come to Brazil!
Joking, but also not that much. If you work remotely for some American company and choose your city well, chances are you'll probably be making enough money to be able to ignore all of Brazil's problems. $60k per year should be more than enough for that.
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same
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.
Ruth Stout
You had me excited to find a better method. Then it was "find a cheap source of hay". Then you need a method to spread hay- which ain't easy. I'll stick with my cultivar which makes mulch in place.
You have any helpful links that assisted you with setup? I've been toying the idea but the soil here is horrible. Basically 6 inches of crap soil on top of bedrock. Any help is appreciated as I'm brand new to the idea. I do have some bucket planters that were gifted but other than that not much to start with.
Fruit trees. It's the way to go. So much less work in the log run.
Kill that lawn! Let's fucking go!
That’s amazing to hear! If it’s possible and doesn’t doxx you, I’d love to see a picture or two
This person is like the only one with those kinds of plants, an AI can Geogeuser them already.
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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.
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Yes. Lobbying by oil and car companies
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see above.
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See above.
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See above.
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.
I don't even like zoning in city builder games, can't even imagine living in a zoned area.
I currently live in a single family apartment on top of a bakery; within one block of my house I also have two small family markets, two restaurants, a barber, a bicycle repair shop, two clothing stores, a pet shop, a small languages school and a few other stuff, with several houses and apartment buildings in-between.
I'm jealous, and convinced that the only reason people most folks like suburban deserts is because it's all they've ever known.
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