As someone from Europe, until I discovered Google street view I thought that those suburbs with big lawns, driveways and houses that are “pulled back” from the roads, that all those are just some fancy neighborhoods. Then I saw that pretty much every city and even small village has them, California, Iowa, Texas,…everywhere.
Is there a law that prohibits houses from being built closer to the sidewalk? Almost every neighborhood and every driveway looks more or less the same (apart from the houses themselves), so a law of some sort is the only explanation that makes logic.
There’s probably different types of suburbs too, maybe some run down ones in Detroit or whatever, but I am talking about this stereotipical suburbia type that can be found everywhere.
As a comparison, in (at least) east/south Europe people have their fences either directly next to the sidewalks or very near them, you don’t really have big lawns and people being able to walk up across that lawn and approach your house, you have to go through the fence first.
The distance from the house to the road is called the “setback,” and is usually mandated by the local zoning laws. Suburbs have larger setbacks because land is not as valuable. In cities, the setbacks may be very small.
The law of “people like to be away from roads and own lots of property when they can afford it?” Why wouldn’t you want to be further from the noise of the road if you could afford to have it?
America is big and suburban land is relatively cheap.
I believe they are meant as a display of wealth; “Look at me! I’m so prosperous I have the time and money to have this large expanse of perfectly manicured grass that serves absolutely no practical purpose whatsoever!”
Here’s an interesting article about American lawns and their history:
Also, unlike almost any neighborhood in Europe, suburbs were designed. Usually, it’s kinda of an “If you build it, they will come,” thing. The roads are put in before the houses, so the roads are plenty wide before the houses are built.
In Europe, nearly every road has had to be widened at some time, for cars over horse carts, and that meant taking some of people’s property away.
If you go to New England, you will find suburbs where the setbacks are very short. This is because the houses are extremely old, and were built on old roads, that at some point were widened, and a few feet of people’s yard was taken away to widen the road, then again in the 1950s, probably, several more feet were taken away to put in sidewalks.
I’m not really sure how far back it has to be to draw OP’s notice (never been to any part of Europe) but also, outside a few cities, Americans don’t do public transport - we drive everywhere. So it’s nice to have a driveway that will hold two cars (especially if you don’t have a garage). You might notice in older neighborhoods without garages, there are a lot of cars parked along the street because there isn’t enough parking space in the driveways (built with one-car households in mind).
But yes, being away from the road is nice - less noise. I sometimes see houses like this
We lived in suburban Los Angeles and our house was almost next to the sidewalk. Land is expensive in L.A. Now we live in suburban Austin and have a nice long driveway and lots of lawn separating us from our cul-de-sac. Land here is a lot less expensive. However, it’s getting more expensive every year and I suspect in 20 years new homes will be up next to the sidewalk here too.
I grew up in suburban Connecticut, in a neighborhood that was built on farmland in, I think, the 1950s. The house is on an acre, and newer houses in that town are required to be on at least 1.5 acres. A big reason for this is that these homes use well water and have septic tanks to dispose of sewage. There needs to be a certain distance between the two, so that’s a big reason for the large lawns. In the case of my parents’ house, the well is in the front lawn and the septic tank in the back lawn.
JakeRS, can you point us to a street view of a more-or-less typical suburb where you live? I haven’t traveled widely in Europe, and naturally I’ve only seen pictures and films of either cities or old towns and villages.
kayT, I live in Austin proper. Given the current battle over infill (small rental houses behind existing homes), it’s hard to imagine postage-stamp lots further out.
Also, many developments have homeowner’s associations (HOAs) that have contracts with buyers require adherance to often stricter rules. Here are a few extreme examples.
Septic systems and wells are certainly one reason. As well as cheap land. Or used to be cheap land.
Of course the automobile had a lot to do with it. If your going to drive 10 miles into town anyway, why build your house right next to the road to shorten walking distance.
An odd side note. Look at pictures of old west towns when supplies where brought on big horse drawn wagons. Those streets needed to be wide to accommodate them. I suspect in Europe, supplies where brought in mostly on carts, as distances where not as great.
Besides zoning codes, it’s what suburbanites want.
Pulling the house back from the street insulates if from traffic noise and fumes on the street
By having a longer driveway you have space to work on your car in the summer; overflow parking for the cars that you can’t fit in your garage, etc. A lot of suburbanites dislike parking on the street (and overnight parking is prohibited in some cities) due to the risk of damage.
A front yard provides space to show off your gardens or for your kids to play
Another big reason for acreage minimums is that it keeps out those who can’t afford that much land. Suburbs around the country have used this as a way to keep out lower class households for decades.
That this was deliberate can be seen in places like Levittown. These suburbs were built to relieve the enormous housing shortages from the Great Depression and WWII. Tens of thousands of houses went up in instant communities. Pricing was pitched at returning veterans and therefore both lots and houses were small. They had front lawns, a big selling point to people who lived in New York and Philadelphia, where greenery was almost nonexistent, and designed to provide a place for the kids to play.
Larger lots and greater setbacks as the norm emerged as suburbs evolved and housing prices increased. People wanted land to justify the prices, and larger houses, and that required more land in an escalating spiral. That also meant they got a lot pickier at who they wanted to live near. The early suburbs, like Levittown, were legally restricted, meaning no blacks. Later suburbs could no longer legally do that so were restricted by price to keep out lower classes of all colors.
Wells and septic tanks may have played a part in a few places but the vast majority of suburbs with large lots use them as separators. Setbacks are part of that. And not just for houses. In my neighborhood, inside the city but intended to keep people from fleeing to the suburbs, garages must legally be attached to the house or placed against the back lot line just to make the front lawns look better, even though those lawns aren’t bigger than those of Levittown. It’s a very pretty area full of trees and bushes and flowers and home prices among the highest in the city (although still laughably low compared to the true suburbs).
I live in Santa Clara County, in CA. Lots are typically pretty small by US standards-- about 6,000 - 7,000 SQ FT. Typical setbacks for single family homes are: 25 ft in the front, 20 feet in the back, 5-8 feet on the sides. When you get less than 5 ft on the sides, you have to adhere to a different, stricter building code for fire protection. Also, most property lines are a foot or so past where the sidewalk ends (on the side facing your house)-- usually 30 feet from the center of the road. So, your property doesn’t normally even go right up to the sidewalk.
I hadn’t thought about the big streets of the old west. That would explain why New England looks more like Europe, while the parts of the mid-west, the old west, and south that are not as old as New England, but still much older than the automobile, don’t.
it depends on when the subdivision was built. I live in one of the inner suburbs of Detroit built up in the 1940s and 1950s, and we have plenty of houses within several feet of the road. Plus all of the streets back then were laid out in more or less a grid pattern.
it’s all the newer subdivisions (1980s onward) where they’ve got an acre of a front lawn and the streets are winding tangles.
Right, and in rural areas, houses are often far from the road, because the road is the boundary of a large farm, and naturally, the farmer would prefer the house to be in the center of the property. Suburban setbacks be intended in part to remind people of the country.
This is not the correct answer. The actual reason the suburbs are so homogeneous has to do with several factors :
a. The funding the build suburbs comes from banks, not the actual homeowners. Nearly all Americans do not have enough money to actually buy a house + land for cash. The FHA in turn regulates the mortgages, to a certain extent, and it has countless specifications for what it will fund. Some of these decisions have turned out to be huge blunders and are part of the reason the USA wastes a massive quantity fossil fuels just getting it’s workers from their surburban homes to the workplaces.
b. Suburbs are investments, and the winning formula has been selected for through a selective process. If you build the houses a certain way, and paint them and style them a certain way, the same quantity of building materials and labor is worth a lot more money. All those front lawns are a huge waste, like you think, but the resulting house is worth more.
c. There’s a kind of inertia now. It’s just become the style. I kind of dream of optimal solutions to the problems of housing and real estate. Cities made of factory made, boxy modules that are produced by almost fully autonomous robotic systems. Factory made modules that are actually engineered, where you do A:B comparisons by measuring the typical movement and use of space by the occupants and then optimizing for the best solution.
But the funny thing is, I suspect that it will be decades, centuries, maybe never after the tech makes it possible to produce dwellings and offices and so forth optimally. People will probably still be living in houses that look like crude knockoffs of the mansions owned by wealthy plantation owners 150 years ago.
