this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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[–] Snowclone@lemmy.world 143 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

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''

[–] Draegur@lemm.ee 53 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

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.

[–] F04118F@feddit.nl 13 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Idk Central Europe sounds pretty good

[–] TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 15 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Imagine thinking there is no racism and homophobia in central Europe

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[–] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 23 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

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.

[–] uienia@lemmy.world 24 points 2 weeks ago

Racism, like a bunch of other biogtry, is an important tool these oligarchs exploit to stay in power and gain support from ignorant and under-educated poor people.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

All these things are true and well documented. US housing policy is very much steeped in racism. Here's a video that sums it up pretty well:

John Oliver on housing discrimination

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[–] joel_feila@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] SandmanXC@lemmy.world 113 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

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 17 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

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.

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[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 52 points 2 weeks ago (19 children)

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 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

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 30 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] baines@lemmy.cafe 14 points 2 weeks ago

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 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago (12 children)

Every time I dig on my land I get two maybe three inches of topsoil and then the hardest goddamn clay I've ever encountered

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[–] Jajcus@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 weeks ago

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.

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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 45 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

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.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

So, you guys are tearing out parking lots and removing parking minimums, right?

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[–] PanArab@lemm.ee 43 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] caboose2006@lemm.ee 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Sounds like the Philippines. Hell, sounds like just about every other sane place on the planet.

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[–] epicstove@lemmy.ca 41 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
  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 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] Paid_in_cheese 36 points 2 weeks ago (2 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.

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 19 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] SektorC@discuss.tchncs.de 29 points 2 weeks ago

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

[–] RedDoozer@lemmy.zip 29 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 27 points 2 weeks ago (12 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.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 13 points 2 weeks ago

Kill that lawn! Let's fucking go!

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[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 24 points 2 weeks ago

So we can mow the grass silly.

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 23 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] MellowYellow13@lemmy.world 22 points 2 weeks ago

America is so dumb on so many levels.

[–] SomeChick@lemmy.ca 22 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

They really do have a lot of odd rules and personal regulations for a supposedly free country

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[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago

I am interested in the replies

[–] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 weeks ago

We have no freedom in "The Land of the Free".

[–] Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (15 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.

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[–] thevoidzero@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago

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

[–] priapus@sh.itjust.works 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.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Land of freedom:

Can I grow potato in my own garden?

-No.

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