9mo ago

meme

Lawns and car storage — name a more wasteful use of land

166 comments

Decorative open space is important for making cities livable but uh... lawns ain't it.
- Also nice to have space between your neighbors for privacy and mental health
  
  This doesn't require single family housing on giant lots. Just well built buildings with proper insulation and sound proofing. I used to think apartments were just noisy until my partner and I moved into our current place. I live on the top floor of a 2 building, 6 unit complex of loft apartments cascading down the side of a hill. The buildings had to be built to withstand the extremely strong winds from the bay, and as such they're solid as fuck.
  Despite our downstairs being tile floor our neighbors have told us they haven't heard any noise from us at all. My partner and I started being less concerned about noise and began playing somewhat loud music frequently and yell to each other across the unit. Despite this our downstairs neighbors still haven't heard a peep from us. For a while I genuinely thought our neighbors were just trying to be nice as everyone in our complex is super friendly and gets along well.
  One day our neighbor in the adjacent building was woodworking in his garage. Normally the noise wouldn't bother me, but I was focused on something so I shut the window facing the courtyard which made me realize just how soundproof this giant concrete building is, both between units and to the outside world. I couldn't hear our neighbors saw unless I opened the curtains and tried to hear it, otherwise it might as well have been very faint background noise. I really wish buildings like this were the norm for apartments because they provide all the privacy of a single family home with all the benefits of apartment buildings.
  
  Issue is, these US-style lawns are often mandated in ways they disallow most other things, unless you want hefty fines.
  I'm in Europe, and at least I can have little flowers within the grass, can plant any trees as long as they won't damage any buildings or cables, and otherwise I can customize my own garden. I could even plant vegetables if the dogs didn't stamp it, and wouldn't be so cheap and readily available in the supermarket it doesn't worth to look after them (once I did grew chili in pots since they're more scarce in the supermarket).
  
  nah this is just modern isolationist propaganda, people have lived without "privacy" for millions of years and were clearly happier for it.
  People nowadays think they want privacy, when in fact they've just been robbed of closeness to others during their childhood and never learned to deal with having other people close to them. Like for fuck's sake in the US it's completely normal to put infants in a completely separate room! It's inhumane!
  Humans are profoundly social animals and thrive when surrounded by others, we are literally living in an officially recognized loneliness epidemic that is harming our physical and mental health.
- Nor is advocating getting rid of gardens.
- Lawns are a result of setback requirements imposed because people were building structures right up to and sometimes over the street.
  Yeah, a garden is better than a lawn but most people don't have the time or care to maintain that. Much easier to just have a mono "crop" that can be relatively easily managed.
  
  Easily managed???
  If that were the goal it'd be clover and moss. No mow lawns are the easiest to manage.
  Grasses are a huge pain, and simply there because British aristocracy had a hard on for them and we never questioned if it was smart.
  
  Lawns are a result of setback requirements imposed because people were building structures right up to and sometimes over the street.
  And that's a problem because...?
  
  How can you build anything without a permit? Man, America is weird AF...

I was about to say golf courses, but then I realized that people actually use golf courses to play golf, which is more then the average lawn is used for.
- Hey that’s not true…. Lawns get used all the time for… err….. proving to neighbouring households that the Lawn Owner is rich enough to grow something useless there? Idk tbh
  
  I have a small lot (0.2 acres) with a small lawn, my kids play on it all of the time. It's the only reason I haven't gotten rid of it all and replaced it with native species.

Golf. Especially driving ranges.
- On the grand scheme of things not that bad in comparison to parking and lawns
  Yeah it's large and can be quite wasteful but not that bad
  
  Eh I like to take the George Carlin approach to golf courses they're large swaths of land that take a lot of chemicals, and water to maintain by cheap labor hidden just far enough away so rich fucks can hit a tiny white ball with a metal stick into a plastic cup.
  I'll agree that overall golf courses aren't the source of the problems, but they're the distillation of how our society is structured to how so many resources and exploited labor go into maintaining the wealthy's way of life.
- Not sure about the US, but here in Australia many golf courses are built on flood plains where regular development would not be permitted. Still not nearly as beneficial as native bushland would be, but not as much of a "waste of space" as many tend to believe.

All my homies hate roundup
- (My homies are not the state of Missouri)
  
  I mean, that's true in any case.

Name a more wasteful use of land
Golf course.
- I think there are more green desert lawn than golf courses in most places. But golf course is, of course, very wasteful and unnecessary
  
  At least it gets used for something, unlike most people's front yards. Hell even some people's backyards I see and it looks like they never use it.

Yes, lawns are wasteful.
But there's also water quality and flooding issues associated with using all available land for building.
Grass and dirt absorb water. Rooftops and concrete don't. 1-inch of rain on an acre of grass will be absorbed. Replace that grass with impervious cover and you've got an extra 27,000 gallons of water, or about 2 swimming pool's worth of runoff.
- Grass has an extremely low runoff coefficient. The water absorption is almost on par with impervious surfaces. This is because the root system of most turf/gras systems is only a few inches deep. On the other hand native grasses, fescues, and trees are excellent for water infiltration! Rain gardens are also good choices as they promote pollinators. I'm a landscape architect --happy to answer any questions.
  Errata: meant to say high runoff coefficient --not low.
  
  It really depends on the specific grass and underlying soils, as you say.
  I'm the guy at the City making landscape architects and civil engineers comply with drainage and water quality regulations.
  We live off the tears of developers.
  
  Im going to look up rain gardens right now, sounds awesome
  
  Low runoff coefficient means more absorption and less runoff, even sod typically has a C of around 0.3, as opposed to the 0.95 of concrete.
  I agree more natural landscaping is better!
  
  My backyard slopes towards the house and during heavy rains the cellar floods which, okay, it's a cellar with limestone block walls, it's not supposed to be waterproof, but... is there anything I can do to make this happen less often?
- That's what public parks and other green spaces are for.
  
  the only good lawn is a flood management lawn, there's two notable ones in my town and they literally turn into marshes when it's been raining a lot or the water level is high, and without them entire areas would flood.
- Sububs have way more impervious surface per-capita than dense urban areas do.
- It's worse when you tear down farmland and forests for suburbs.
  Build our cities with sufficient storm sewers and public parks that can double as bioswales and fuck the lawn loving burbs.
- i, too, advocate a more hobbit-like lifestyle.

My eighth of an acre is entirely clover, dandelions, and weeds. Eventually, I'll get around to planting some vegetables, but my thumb is whatever the opposite of green is. I've started by trying to grow some herbs this spring, half of which are already dead.
Living with no HOA that forces grass on me FTW.
Can't do much about having a car though. No public transportation anywhere near and work is twenty miles away. Believe me, I'd much much rather not drive.
- Tbh, my favorite kind of gardening is the kind that thrives on neglect. I love making ecosystems that thrive on their own, without my constant input. There's just something beautiful about seeing life thrive on its own.
- Plant a bunch of trees, put down some mulch. Walk away for a year, with no worries. Once a year, add mulch. Enjoy providing habitat for birds and small mammals, plus the shade and privacy, for zero maintenance.
  Look up mini-forest, micro-forest, tiny-forest, research. Crazy how a few trees changes a landscape for animals.
  
  I definitely miss the birds at the last place I lived. There was a delightful married cardinal couple, various and sundry doves, and the occasional crow.
  Now I've got a couple stray cats battling over the territory, neither of which is quite sure what to make of me.
  I've also got possum bro. He just kinda hangs out and gives me a nod every once in a while.
- Killing off the grass is how I finally got my garden started. The native plants could deal with the grass sucking up all the water it could. The garden plants couldn't. Take a rototiller to your lawn, if you know about rainfall plains and patterns to create a reservoir for your garden plants. Grass and clover will absolutely steal all the water from all the other plants.

These grass lawns always looks awful. 1 color, 0 personality and no variety.
More plants are always better. Also even better plant a fucking tree.
- The HOA would never allow such nonsense like trees and actual plant life!
- I don't care if it's grass or trees, at the end of the day it's wasted space that could be more house. I lived in a suburb growing up and we literally never did anything on the front yard, yet it was like a third of our property.

Chef’s kiss on this perfectly executed meme
- I cropped everything underneath "my brother in christ", that much was perfect imo.
  
  Warning, too nerdy
  Did you crop everything underneath it… or above it 🤔
  Cropped out above, cropped “in” below - is that how the term’s used, or is it ambiguous, time to search.
  … OK I think often people would say “I cropped everything above my brother in Christ”. I knew what you meant but thanks for the educational journey.

Unrelated to the actual topic, but is anyone else starting to find this "my brother in Christ" meme really irritating? I ain't your brother, and I don't give a fuck about your Christ.
- Nah I love it. That's the bit, using it so nonchalantly sort of diminishes the expression. I don't think anyone using the meme gives a fuck about a Christ either
- Yes!!!! It was funny the first time I read it in 2019, kind of. Since then it's not been slightly funny but has gotten pretty irritating to me.
- Would you prefer they go back to using the n-word instead?
  Edit: maybe the downvote was because you don't know:
  From https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/my-brother-in-christ :
  My Brother in Christ is a recaption meme trend using "my brother in Christ" as a slang term put on top of words, most often replacing the N-word, in other meme captions to enhance the original meaning by adding a flair of polite Christianity for humorous effect.
  Edit: fixed link.
  
  Without context this is extremely funny though
  "I don't like this expression"
  "OH YEAH? Then I'm gonna go back to using the N-word"
  
  Colon is breaking your link, btw. Thanks for sharing, though, that was interesting.
  
  Huh, today I learned. Thanks grue.
- Go away, batin'!
- I don't ever use it, but I love it.
- It's just a phrase. Like "how are you" as a greeting. Nobody who say how are you wants to know how you are or gives a shit about any answer other than "fine thanks! how are you". Just treat MBIC the same way, maybe invent your own responses, my sister in Buddha?
- do you also get angry when people say "thank christ" or "jesus that was close"?

I've got 4 cars on my drive way and have run out of room. I do have a large patch of grass next to it, I could probably fit 6 cars there.
Do I purchase and store more vehicles on my grass or purchase more land to store my cars on, so I can protect my lawn?

Giant parking lots and big box stores?

I use my lawn for growing stuff to eat. Bananas, lemons, passion fruit, onions mostly
- Then it's not a lawn
- That sounds so dope.

people burning fossil fuels to eviscerate co2 absorbing plants twice a week
"My impact on climate is minimal"

Scotland has a cumulative moorland the size of Jamaica (That's artifical, not natural peat moor) Thats pretty much kept as desolate scrubland just so a few rich people can hunt deer and pheasants without any inconveniences like something for the animals to hide behind. I did a rough calculation and it works out to about one square kilometer per person per single hunting trip being put asside for the entire year.

Yo, this is Fuck Cars. We're not advocating building Mega City One over here.
- No, we're advocating 15 minute neighborhoods, which could be part of a megacity, but don't have to be. We are advocating higher density housing as that is better for everyone including the environment.
  
  I just want my apartment complex to have a community garden man
- Mega City One
  I mean I dunno, I think if you actually confined the global human population to that level of extreme density, it might be more environmentally friendly. I'm not quite sure of that really because the portrayals in all of the different kinds of media are so vastly different. Obviously the actual environment itself is kind of a 90's cocaine hellscape, but I dunno. I guess my point is maybe just that I find the architecture of cyberpunk landscapes to really be way too impressive and imaginative for the level of dystopia it's supposed to be. A more cynical vision of humanity is one that's not even capable of large built infrastructure projects, and just covers the earth in asphalt and concrete because they're so consistently chasing short term gains.

I just want to live in a world where I can just walk around and go shopping please I'm begging you world. I'm sick of flying around for tens of miles on end with terrible wings!
- Just move to another country. You might also get free medicine as a bonus.
  
  Fuck I wish it were that easy. I wanna get the fuck out of here.

Lawns are better than concrete
- lawns are shit and they were actually a tool for colonialism. they quite literally came in fashion because rich people in europe were flexin with their wealth because they could spend their land and work force for lawn that looked pretty and contributed for nothing. they even took those same lawn species for america so keeo that same flexing going on.
  fuck lawns. Go actually diverse meadow plants that bugs need!
  also lawns are insanely unecofriendly despite being plants.
  https://youtu.be/ciz8NwjurZU
  
  Except in europe we have trees, flowers, vegetables, plants. Real gardens.
  Not just an ugly lawn like this, you never see just a lawn with nothing on it.
  Are americans allergic to trees or something ?
  
  Read the title, your argument shouldn’t be things better than lawns
  It should be that concrete is better or no argument at all
- Lawns beget concrete elsewhere (in the form of parking lots) by being too low-density for walkability.
  
  Bus, Cable Car, Train, Bicycle
  You would think people in this community wouldn’t say something so foolish
- You say that like those are the only two options.
- Grass lawns aren't.
  
  Lawns are 100000% better than an impermeable hardscape like concrete.

What if I'm not christian?
- My brother
- A good Christian will still treat you like a brother or sister. It's not about your beliefs, it's about theirs.
- a sensible christian will still consider you a brother in christ, but not shove it down your throat. You don't have to agree for it to still be "true".

City is full? ROFLS my man there's not a single city in the US that represents anything close to 'FULL'. Not even NYC.

there is grass in your cancer garden

Combine them and you have a golf course. It's like park where everything has been killed and replaced with turf and only rich people are allowed to enjoy.

Golf! But it's the only one.

This has mega Kill Your Lawn energy

Golf courses? Malls?

Insert Fallout quote about the wasteland being harsh

I can understand your frustration comrade, so let me translate for you.
Humans < cars and/or lawns

It's not like children could use a lawn to play on or anything....
And our Public transit system is totally ready for nobody to have cars.... Our GDP totally won't fall to 10% is what it was before once nobody can go to work.
- If only there were easily acessible public spaces where kids could play in. Alas, we had to bulldoze those for lawns and parking lots.
- People should live in cities or not at all...
  ... according to ~~Reddit.2~~ Lemmy.
  The one-size-fits-all mentalities frequently preached here (and there) are where I check out of the political ideology.
  
  First of all, this is about how suburbs are bad, not about how rural areas are bad. Nobody's saying everybody should live only in cities.
  Second, the issue isn't one of "mentality;" it's one of economics. It isn't that you're wrong for wanting to live in a house with a yard; it's that you aren't entitled to have the rest of society subsidize your choice.
  Suburbanites are welfare queens benefiting from the most massive Ponzi scheme in the history of the world, and it has to stop before we bankrupt ourselves (let alone destroy ourselves via suburbs-induced climate change).

Datacenters
- Nah man, the ones I've been at have been quite effectively planned. Every square meter costs. I think it's quite silly to equate datacenters to lawns. Datacenters are better for the environment and and provide stability which is important for national safety.
  
  Nope

What, do those plebs not have driveways or garages for their cars? I never have to park on the street, since I just drive up my driveway across my 1/2 acre lawn. It's quite nice having that "wasted" use of land for my kids to play on whenever they want.
- Your kids play on your lawn? Mine don't, they much prefer the park, that's why I'm going full tilt into meadowizing my lawn.
  It's also worth noting that there's almost no kids on our block, despite it being a pretty new neighborhood, because we're one of a very small handful of younger families that were fortunate enough that they could actually afford to buy a home. Almost everyone else in the neighborhood is older, and their kids have already grown up, because that's largely the demographic that could afford these houses. It makes me sad for my kids a lot, because there's really not much to do outside except look at everyone else's identical homes and kick rocks. We could be doing a lot better than this as a society.
  
  Data doesn't really support your experience, and that being average. A dip for the millennials but gen z is doing quite well on home ownership. https://fortune.com/2024/01/17/redfin-baby-boomers-gen-z-housing-market-homeownership/
  I'm not saying more can't be done and we'll see how the past few years affect this, but if there really aren't any gen z'ers on your block you're an outlier.
  
  Not everyone wants to risk their children getting stolen at a park.
  Having a backyard lawn is a safe way to let kids play while adults don't have to supervise.
  Front lawns aren't really useful but id absolutely have some form of backyard lawn even if it's AstroTurf once I have a house.

166 comments