Here theyre bee housing developpe ments...

[altivo]

Went to the dentist this morning. Normal checkup and cleaning, but she had also wanted to replace an old (1979) filling in my front teeth. Long appointment, and boy have the procedures for what used to be called a "porcelain" filling grown complicated. I have to say, it's totally invisible. But even the older one wasn't very obvious except under black light.

Getting there was awful. Every time I go, the traffic seems to get worse. The construction in summer is always bad too, but when the detours have construction and additional detours on them you know things are out of control. Then came the freight train crossing... I was late but fortunately not so late that they couldn't still fit me in.

What really got to me this time was the obvious loss of green open spaces. It used to be that a good half of the trip was through farms and forest. That was just ten years ago. Now I hit vast wastelands of strip malls and six lane highways before a third of the trip is done. Places that I remember as beautiful forest and meadow with ponds and small rivers are all subdivisions now, packed with oversized houses on tiny lots, all house and no land. Typically all the houses look alike, or at most, half are mirror images of the other half. All are painted the same color, with the same color roof. Forty years ago Malvina Reynolds sang about the "Little Boxes, On the Hillside, Little Boxes made of Ticky Tacky..."

Bless you, Malvina, things haven't changed. Why anyone would want to live in a place where all the houses look alike and if the numbers fell off the doors you couldn't tell which one was yours, well, I simply can't understand.

Comments

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear your detours have detours too. I thought maybe that was only another quaint Michigan idiocy. I remember one year recently, there was construction in Dearborn on Michigan Avenue, I-94, and I-96, all at the same time. Maybe Ford Road too. All four east-west routes in the near-west metro area. It's like they planned it.

About the loss of green space... yeah. It's sad. I shake my head a lot about it.

[quickcasey.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of that song on the way out to Union earlier this month.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

"Clone communities" seems to sum it up all too well.

[hgryphon.livejournal.com]

"Forty years ago Malvina Reynolds sang about the "Little Boxes, On the Hillside, Little Boxes made of Ticky Tacky...""

Also known today as the theme to the sitcom Weeds.

Well, you have to expect expansion with all the new people being born every day. True, they could be more creative and environmentally aware when they do so... Well, not all places expand in this way. Portland, Oregon has a "build up, not out" policy, for instance.

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

My neighborhood is kind of interesting. The whole thing was built as a development in the 1920s. There are small and large versions of four and five room bungalows, with reflections, eight models.

But they're all built with different details. So it's street after street of bungalows, but they don't look like they are all the same.

And they're not ticky-tacky. Brick.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

What used to be a new housing estate nearby has aged well over the years with people planting trees and plants and painting their homes different colours. So what used to be very boring repetitive homes has changed over a decade to something actually very nice :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That won't happen in these places.

Here they have what they call "covenants" that you have to sign in order to buy the house. Over the last 30 years or so, those covenant agreements have grown more and more complex. They set rigid limits to what can be done to affect the appearance of your property. Often the permitted color of paint and even the kinds of plants are specified in great detail. No visible antennas may be installed. Fences may be prohibited or limited to one design and color, and even the kinds of outdoor furniture my be restricted. Some even have rules that forbid leaving a car visible on the drive, saying it must be parked in the garage with the doors shut. The grass must be kept below a certain length. Hoses and sprinklers may not be left visible, etc. etc.

It's like a kindergarten nightmare, only these rules have the force of law. Courts continue to uphold them as valid, and the "homeowner associations" are allowed to impose fines and penalties for violations. After 20 years, these places look exactly the way they did when they were built: tacky, unimaginative, and stiff as cardboard.

Usually there isn't enough space between the buildings to allow any substantial trees to grow. Even ornamental flowering shrubs or small trees like crabapples may be restricted because they "shed litter on the pavement" or blossom in "garish colors."

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm familiar with those bungalow developments. The outer edges of Chicago have miles and miles of them. They kind of depress me too, but for other reasons, since I can't remember what the areas looked like before they were developed. One reason that they do have some character and variety, though, is that they didn't suffer from today's covenants and codes. See response to cabcat below.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Around here they spend years working on policies like that, but just don't enforce them. As soon as some wealthy developer promises millions in tax dollars, the policy gets thrown out the window and they give the developer whatever he wants. The real question in my mind is what on earth makes people flock to these rigid, boring, and downright scary places as if they were moving into heaven itself.

The original community about which Reynolds wrote that song was Daly City, near San Francisco. Some of her commentary is less valid today, but much of it is also more true than ever.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually they make me think of toadstools, the way they sort of spring up overnight all at once and all the same. Worse, they also decay like toadstools as the years pass because of the rigid restrictions against change.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It really does apply. Places like Gilberts and Huntley, that used to be small farming communities surrounded by vast working fields have turned into nothing but ugly developments as far as the eye can see, and as Reynolds put it, "All made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same." Ticky tacky was an appropriate term. Most of them are using composition board and plastic as building materials. They don't even have brick chimneys, but instead use steel vent pipe surrounded by what looks like nothing more than cardboard.

The thing that particularly irritates me is that these houses are called "estates" yet they have no land at all. Often there is only six or eight feet between the houses, and the houses are flimsy balloons of cheap material, inflated into 4000 or more square feet of floor space but with walls so thin that the heating bills in winter will be murderous.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I think that sort of construction really is planned that way. Obviously it's a conspiracy by failing merchants along, say, Warren Rd. to force all the traffic over in their direction while diverting it away from the rich guys on Michigan Ave. ;p

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

I would never buy a home that was governed by a homeowners association. I may bitch and complain at times about the county and city citing me for random code violations but I would rather deal with that than some committee of people telling me what colour to paint my house and what to plant in my yard.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Ohhh horrors, I hate those sort of estates, and thank goodness they're very rare here in general estates, usually only very exclusive gated communities have that and then they have the gardens taken care of by a "body corporate"

If I buy a house I shall plant what I want in the garden, have cars in the drive and paint the house how I want to.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I agree with you entirely. In fact, I can't for the life of me figure out why ANYONE thinks this is a good thing, or would put up with the kind of tyranny that it creates. "No plastic lawn furniture?" C'mon, give me a break.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

They are becoming so common in some parts of the US that I'm told you simply cannot buy a house that isn't covered by these restrictions. I certainly can't understand why people put up with that, but I guess a lot of them must be wimps who will wear a sign that says "Kick me" if told to do so.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

You know, I get the concept of the HoA. Generally they just want to keep the neighborhoods nice and tidy but they always take it too far.

You would not believe the news story we had here recently where corruption reared it's ugly head within an HoA. This one family rose to power, enacated maintenance fees which caused each homeowner to owe thousands of dollars immediately and then they evicted those that did not pay. I have no idea how it all turned out but I hope several people went to jail over it.