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I hope this is the appropriate forum for this question.
Long story short, I love cities. Currently, I live in Kuala Lumpur in a large high rise condo complex (2100 units). I grew up in a exurb of Boston with a decent sized yard and we needed to drive to get to most places.
I've spent the last 20+ or so years living in various cities across the globe, and I've lived in either apartments or condo apartments during that time. I've always enjoyed walking down the street to get groceries or hop on public transit.
But I'm getting older now and I've been thinking about the idea of moving to smaller towns, suburbs and small cities back in the US.
So my question is this: for those of you who live in dense cities in apartments or condo apartments, do you miss having a house with a yard and a bit of land?
Well in a spin on the parameters of the question (with a minimal of variables considered), I spent my adult life living almost if not entirely in cities and on ships. That was for about 36 years plus 2 years in a house with a yard (not used much) that I see as a transition.
Now, I live on a ranch in the country, miles from the nearest place to buy anything, and I wouldn't give it up for world! I'm a Red Blooded Texan (American) Cowgirl and I LOVE IT!
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Originally Posted by ALackOfCreativity
At an earlier phase in life but likely will follow this path as I age too.
Don't really miss the yard and land for my own benefit, I can go to the park and enjoy that without having to own or maintain it. Will probably move back to the suburbs if/when I have kids for their benefit.
Okay, now we consider variables.
Not only a Cowgirl but also a Steward. Outside the house footprint, it is live and let live. My Kingdom, my castellany, my forest. Where I can proclaim to the lizards, foxes, deer.....scorpions, fire ants and the like, "Welcome to my Forest! You are safe from the hunt here.".
BUT, if it were a city park, others are deciding how things will be, not me, others are deciding who lives and dies in the creatures of the forest......which often can bring dismay to my heart.
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Originally Posted by BrooklynJo
Americans and their obsession with land is overrated? If you want to see actual people who make use of land, then please visit a Jewish community in New York where they make their land useable while the average American sits on empty land and barely utilize it.
a small home on a large plot of land never made sense to me especially since the owners do not use it for anything.
Should they use it for anything or to put it another way, are only certain uses acceptable while others are not? Is having productive growing land acceptable but having a nature preserve of run wild not?
Two things. When I first started searching for a ranch, I had dreams of doing algae research, of building bio electric fuel cells for use on long space flights. Over time, that has turned to philosophies of planet colonization (the research into the former might be something when I eventually retire), both in mindset and in considerations of how to do food preservation. In either situation, both require, at least, land and often, enough of it to escape the regulations others may want to put down on it.
Secondly, perhaps as that philosophy, I like living in, as I call it, a 1950s Aussie Outback (Skippy land for those that old). Massive reduction in available technology and getting away from it all.
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Originally Posted by tijlover
You can have plenty of noise even on one acre in the country!
I used to have 15 acres in the country, on weekends, and living on the 38th floor of a high rise the rest of the week. I had more peace and quiet living in the high rise.
In the country, the noise from the dirt bikes, tearing across my property, gun practice noise in preparation for the deer season in November, wildlife noises, and a neighbor some distance away loved to play his boom box until late hours of the night.
You just can't beat it, living up high in a high rise. Up that far, I couldn't even hear the police car for fire truck sirens. Heavenly!
Back to the philosophy. First of all, the death of the country, IMHO, is land where high speed broad band unlimited Internet is available. If people can't have that, they won't be so quick to move out there. UNFORTUNATELY, sooner or later, such Internet ends up everywhere and then, THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD!
Me, I am typing from home on a very limited satellite Internet system. I have no cable or streaming TV. It is not quite "Gilligan's Island" with "No light! No Telephone! No motor car! Not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe, it's primitive as it can be." But what it is would cause many, if they were out here, probably to change it, make it much like the city.
So the lack of technology here.......probably saves us from boombox billy bob.
As noted, I love the wildlife noises and gunfire is natural, to put it in a nutshell, to this Texas Cowgirl.
Finally, there is imagination....and its limits. When I look out from the loft and see another house above the treeline that might upset my isolated view, I picture it as the ruined castle from another time. When I lived in an apartment in town, I had a bush outside my window and there was enough of an elevation change to picture I was in a sunken room of the Cloisters.
But how much interference can imagination take before ones loses the picture they are trying to believe in? That is always the question. One the possible answers to that question, say if someone moves in next ranch over and builds something that upsets my fantasy, is........what can I plant that grows fast (and isn't invasive) to restore my fantasy.
Last edited by TamaraSavannah; 06-10-2023 at 02:55 PM..
At a minimum the land provides separation and space from others 100% of the time!
They can use the land as they choose. Most importantly they have the right to exclude others from their property (exclusive use and enjoyment).
It's not a difficult concept.
In other words, you are not against density or cities in general, you are against having to live together with people you despise. In fact every family household living in Suburbia has less privacy, higher density and more shared spaces and shared property than what I have as an single apartment household in the city (not that families can not live successfully in cities), but you don't complain about that, because they are your family members. But you complain about shared spaces and so on if it is not your family members. From the standpoint of urban planning in the sense of strict physical engineering of places you and the rest of the anti-urbanists have no arguments at all.
I never lived in a large dense city. The closest I came to that was studying for a semester in Florence Italy, back in college.
I grew up in ugly 60s/70s suburbia, though. That put me off of post-WWII construction. And, not being able to drive made me dislike auto-centric places.
I ended up living in what most would call "streetcar suburban" in a rust-belt city. I feel this is a great compromise between Manhattanization, that the pro-suburban people on this forum disdain, and the endless sprawl that pro-urban people on this forum disdain.
My neighborhood was originally upscale, with a mix of mansions, upper middle-class houses, duplexes, and apartment buildings. (The Warner Brothers lived in my neighborhood before they made it big and moved to Hollywood.) And the neighborhood was walkable to a few different business districts.
Since I'll never be able to drive, I've never had a desire to live in auto-centric suburbia. I sometimes think I'd like to try living in a more urban environment, like Ohio City, in Cleveland, or Over-the-Rhine, in Cincinnati. But it's very difficult to find a place where the old-world charm has been left intact.
I'd say that there are several — nay, dozens, even scores — of American cities where one can live in a house with a yard that is nonetheless walkable and can support decent public transport. Most of the outlying neighborhoods of our largest cities, including New York City, fit this description. And many of those neighborhoods were developed as "streetcar suburbs" in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Our suburban planning went off the rails after World War II.
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Originally Posted by Woody01
Absolutely true. A house built in the middle of a 5 acres parcel will have about 100 yards space, house-to-house, in each direction, minimum....
That is so nice, I can't see why everyone wouldn't insist on that.....?
Because some of us actually like having neighbors?
That kind of privacy is way more than I'd want. I like walking around my neighborhood and running into people I know. That's almost impossible to do in an area where every house sits on a five-acre lot.
I love to cook outdoors in season, and I'm a charcoal snob, which means that in the city where I live, apartment buildings are non-starters for me. But a house with a yard — even one divided into apartments, like the one I live in now — offers me the opportunity to grill the way I want to. (Philadelphia fire codes prohibit "open flame devices" (gas grills aren't considered "open flame devices") within 10 feet of a residential structure, with an exception carved out for one- or two-family dwellings. Since the building I live in is a house, not an apartment building, Licenses and Inspections isn't the wiser — and besides, my grill is indeed at least 10 feet from the back wall of the structure.) I actually just had some friends over for a cookout today.
I do recognize that I enjoy this opportunity because I rent from a small landlord who I knew before I started renting from him. But again, those sorts of relationships are possible in urban neighborhoods but not quite as possible in postwar suburbia as we have come to develop it.
But the point remains: I have a place with a yard in a neighborhood where I can walk a block, catch a bus to a train, and be in the city center in about a half hour. I get the best of both worlds, at least as I see it.
BTW, I like cars and driving as well — but I'd probably like driving less if I had to do it all the time.
I'd say that there are several — nay, dozens, even scores — of American cities where one can live in a house with a yard that is nonetheless walkable and can support decent public transport. Most of the outlying neighborhoods of our largest cities, including New York City, fit this description. And many of those neighborhoods were developed as "streetcar suburbs" in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Our suburban planning went off the rails after World War II.
Absolutely! We stopped building our towns and cities block by block, and transitioned to something more like an amoeba.
Quote:
Because some of us actually like having neighbors?
That kind of privacy is way more than I'd want. I like walking around my neighborhood and running into people I know. That's almost impossible to do in an area where every house sits on a five-acre lot.
I love to cook outdoors in season, and I'm a charcoal snob, which means that in the city where I live, apartment buildings are non-starters for me. But a house with a yard — even one divided into apartments, like the one I live in now — offers me the opportunity to grill the way I want to. (Philadelphia fire codes prohibit "open flame devices" (gas grills aren't considered "open flame devices") within 10 feet of a residential structure, with an exception carved out for one- or two-family dwellings. Since the building I live in is a house, not an apartment building, Licenses and Inspections isn't the wiser — and besides, my grill is indeed at least 10 feet from the back wall of the structure.) I actually just had some friends over for a cookout today.
I do recognize that I enjoy this opportunity because I rent from a small landlord who I knew before I started renting from him. But again, those sorts of relationships are possible in urban neighborhoods but not quite as possible in postwar suburbia as we have come to develop it.
But the point remains: I have a place with a yard in a neighborhood where I can walk a block, catch a bus to a train, and be in the city center in about a half hour. I get the best of both worlds, at least as I see it.
BTW, I like cars and driving as well — but I'd probably like driving less if I had to do it all the time.
Everyone is free to have their preferences. But this insistence that everyone wants to isolate themselves on large properties strikes me as misanthropic.
Everyone is free to have their preferences. But this insistence that everyone wants to isolate themselves on large properties strikes me as misanthropic.
misanthropic
mĭs″ən-thrŏp′ĭk, mĭz″-
adjective
Of, relating to, or characteristic of a misanthrope. Characterized by a hatred or mistrustful scorn for humankind.
Hating or disliking mankind.
You're a piece of work. I just like to have some space around me and all of a sudden I have a hatred for mankind? My neighbors and I get along splendidly, hanging over the fences drinking beer and talking guns and tractors all day. I just don't want to hear every time they sneeze...and that makes us hateful people?
If I were a misanthrope, it would be people like you who were the reason......
misanthropic
mĭs″ən-thrŏp′ĭk, mĭz″-
adjective
Of, relating to, or characteristic of a misanthrope. Characterized by a hatred or mistrustful scorn for humankind.
Hating or disliking mankind.
You're a piece of work. I just like to have some space around me and all of a sudden I have a hatred for mankind? My neighbors and I get along splendidly, hanging over the fences drinking beer and talking guns and tractors all day. I just don't want to hear every time they sneeze...and that makes us hateful people?
If I were a misanthrope, it would be people like you who were the reason......
I guess I struck a nerve... I didn't really have you in mind when I wrote that.
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