this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 weeks ago (9 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (9 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

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

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago (11 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

Fruit trees. It's the way to go. So much less work in the log run.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That’s amazing to hear! If it’s possible and doesn’t doxx you, I’d love to see a picture or two

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

This person is like the only one with those kinds of plants, an AI can Geogeuser them already.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago

Kill that lawn! Let's fucking go!

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Land of freedom:

Can I grow potato in my own garden?

-No.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Is this true? You can't grow vegetables in your backyard? Why tho? If true it sounds dumb to me.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

A lot of houses are subject to a Home Owners Association (HOA). They often can make ridiculous rules, including kicking you out of your own home for violating whatever rules they made. They can tell you how your garden looks like, which color your house is allowed to have, can fine you for parking on the road...

The rules are usually designed around keeping up the "value" of the neighborhood by forbidding any sort of individuality in how your garden and house looks from the outside. Sterile and boring is what investors want, to evaluate a neighborhood with a high price.

These kind of organizations make sense for apartment buildings, where you need to organize the upkeep of the overall building, but for suburbs they seem to be mostly an investor too and then a tool for whoever wants to keep themselves busy, terrorizing their neighbors.

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