I’m not sure that’s the case in Germany (or Bavaria and Austria that I’m more familiar with), where many villages grew up around the large farmhouses and where you can still see the old centres containing the Rathaus, church and big barns that have been there for hundreds of years and the more modern houses have grown up around them.
As others have mentioned already, the lawn which seems so big, and so exposed to your European eyes is not “open for everyone”.
To American eyes, there are lots of visual signals that say “this is my private property”.
The location and shape of flower beds, the low “swale”* between the lots , the different types of grass planted in the lawn, the location of trees near the edges of the lot. Even small children learn to instinctively recognize the boundaries, and respect the neighbor’s property.
*A swale is a small depression in the land designed for drainage. Every lot slopes away from the house and towards the sides,so that along the sides of the lot, there is usually a small but noticeable channel that carries rainwater away, and everyone knows that it also marks the boundary between their properties.
Still very common in the UK for farmers to live on the farm. Probably because a lot of farms have at least some livestock.
I’ve not really been to the US, but the thing that always strikes me isn’t so much the size, it’s the uniformity of the front lawns, and the fact that, from discussions on here, it seems Americans often have far more restrictions on what they can and cannot do on their own property than in the UK, at least.
The concept of bylaws saying grass has to be kept under a certain length, or that you can’t put up a fence, or can’t put rocks on your own property is somewhat mind boggling to me. There are height restrictions on fences and hedges here, at least on the edge of property if it’s overshadowing a neighbour, but other than that and maybe the odd historical preservation order on some very old or unique properties, however you choose to design and maintain your land, or if you leave it to go totally wild, well, that’s entirely your business.
It doesn’t seem that this council agrees. “Overgrown gardens”, among other eyesores, that have an “adverse affect on the amenity of the area” are grounds for legal action, or for the council to have the work done at the owner’s expense (which is exactly what my city here would do with an overgrown lawn).
My former neighbour collected rusted out old cars, rubble, and other junk in the front. My parents attempted to get him to clear it out, via the council, as they were trying to sell the house at the time. The council didn’t care. They did get him to remove a car which was actually partly outside the property, but aside from that, nah. It was on his side of the boundary.
I’ve only actually heard of anyone bringing those sort of regs in regarding empty buildings where locals are worried about squatters or junkies moving in, or when things are actually encroaching on a neighbour’s, or public, land.
Have a look round the towns that council deals with on Street View, there are loads of visible front gardens which are overgrown, or tangles of weeds, even halfway to woodland. Where I used to live had a frontage that was solid bramble, but so long as it didn’t cross the boundary, no-one cared. There’s certainly no-one going round saying that people’s grass is too long.
A lot of residential subdivisions are subject to homeowners associations, which are created precisely to allow your neighbors to tell you what you can or can’t do.
I’m aware that’s the case, but why?
Here, the freedom to do pretty well what you want with your space is considered to be one of the major benefits to owning your own space, and that’s much more important than having a say in what your neighbour does, at least to the vast majority. Is there some historical reason why those priorities seems to have swapped for a large proportion of the US?
I’m not sure they have been. I tried to find out the percentage of homes covered by mandatory homeowner’s associations in the US, and the most commonly cited figure was that 20% of homeowners pay some sort of monthly fee. Different cites described the fees differently - one said 20% paid fees to homeowner’s associations while others said 20% paid some combination of HOA fees, mobile home fees, co-op fees or condo fees.The only thing I’m pretty certain of is that the 20% includes more than single family homes where the homeowner owns the building and the land.
I’m certain there are differences in different areas - there may be specific areas where nearly every home is subject to a fee and others where none are, or areas where coops and condos are largely in multi-unit buildings, and few or none of them look like a single family home.
I am not really sure why someone would chose to buy a single family home with a mandatory HOA membership (except of course if a person wants to live in certain area and nearly all homes there are subject to an HOA) but some associations/fees are necessary because of the method of ownership and provided amenities. Condos and coops have “common areas” (including the land they sit on) that are not owned by any one person which still must be maintained. Mobile home parks and some retirement communities have lot rent- you own the mobile home (or in some cases a non-mobile home) but not the land, and you must pay a monthly rent for the land. Condos/coops/mobile home parks/retirement communities often have some amenities/services that the fees pay for - maybe a party room or a gym or a pool or trash pickup.
I think a lot of it goes back to the PLSS grid in the US. When the US was expanding, they parceled off everything using this grid of townships (6x6 miles), sections (1x1 mile), down to quarter of a quarter section (40 acres). People would buy these quarter sections and farm on them (hence the terms “upper/lower 40”, “40 acres and a mule”, etc). Towns would develop along the intersections of highways that border the 1x1 mile sections.
In contrast, European towns and villages are much older and I would imagine formed from the original medieval villages where the people lived close to each other or within walls for protection and defense.
Because they want their neighborhood to look like this:
https://placester.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/best-listing-photos-3difocus.png
not this:
Ultimately what it comes down to is preserving the value of homes and the neighborhood. Erecting eyesores, painting homes in garish colors, annoying neighbors who throw loud parties or operate loud vehicles and equipment create a nuisance that may deter the “right sort of people” from buying in the neighborhood.
Keep in mind this normally takes place in planned communities where the homes are closer together. As you move to more rural areas where homes have large setbacks or even woods between them, it’s less of an issue because there is more of a buffer between the homes.
There were several eras of planned suburbs in the U.S. The earliest, in the 1800s, followed the commuter train tracks out of the city and built up linearly, no more than a mile from the tracks. The Main Line in Philadelphia is the most famous example. A second wave occurred in the 1920s when cars and roads made a larger area accessible. Westchester County, New York and Fairfield County, Connecticut are examples of this.
The third wave, after WWII, is the one that people today mistake for suburbs in general. The income barriers for entry were lowered precipitously so a far greater percentage of people could move. And most of these people were moving from cities that had decayed because of overcrowding and lack of money for twenty years. This was called urban blight and it took many forms. Without cities being able to take care of upkeep, neighborhoods had to work harder to keep up home prices through their own efforts. A single home that was left to decay could bring down the value of a whole street. This often happened via absentee landlords renting out houses once owned by a family that lived there. Overlaying all this was a pervasive racism that equated one black family moving into a neighborhood with blight and a wave of more black families taking advantage of the lowered house prices. All the factors caused cities to empty out from 1950-1970.
As I mentioned, Levittown was restricted for many years and it had other rules and regulations that forced upkeep by owners. Its sheer size made individual failings easier to tolerate, but most of the developments that followed in the 1980s were much smaller. In a tradeoff for size and exclusivity, those revived a much older custom of homeowner associations that would enforce agreed upon rules that penalized anything that threatened the continual rise in home value. (They also pooled money to provide services, so that individuals didn’t have to worry about, say, snow plowing.) As the housing bubble of 2008 proved, most Americans cared a lot less about individuality than about making a profit by selling their house to the next sucker. And I bet they still do. Anyone who feels a need to express themselves can move to a city, which is basically the function of cities.
For some reason, Americans are deeply worried about how the property values in their entire neighborhood will be affected-- if even just one house doesn’t look as good as all the others.
Anecdote: I know someone who lives in a nice neighborhood of 50-75 private homes on huge lots along 6 or 7 curved streets. But one house is poorly maintained. That house is not visible from his house, and you have to drive to the farthest part of the neighborhood to see it.
But he is very worried that he won’t be able to sell his house because of the bad neighbor.
If there was an HOA, they could force the naughty neighbor to be a good boy.
This is ( I think) a speciifically American thing.
And it does seem weird that in the country founded by cowboys, the land of the free and the home of the brave-- people are so willing to sign away all their rights to use their own property as they wish.
In a gardening sense, some observers see the relative lack of fences and walls surrounding American properties as a conscious attempt at wider engagement with the world.
Allen Lacy has written about this, as described in this review:
“This notion that the garden is a path out into the larger world is a peculiarly American idea. For most of history, and in most of the rest of civilization, gardens have been conceived as walled-off refuges from the world, places of escape rather than engagement. Maybe that’s why Americans never went for the hortus conclusus, preferring to bring down the traditional walls and fences so that our gardens might, in every sense, connect.”
To the extent this viewpoint exists, I think it relates to having more space in which to spread out. When you’re living right on top of your neighbors, fences and walls seem more desirable.
I think a sense of enclosure/seclusion is an essential element of a garden, not supplied by an expanse of lawn.
You surely have to be aware that New York City is one of the most unusual parts of the United States as compared to the other parts, right? I mean, it’s by far the largest city in the country, and the most densely populated, and it’s very, very old by American standards; it was a fairly big city before Chicago was an incorporated city at all.
Yes. The “no fences” thing is an East Coast convention. Everyone in CA has a fenced in yard, usually a 6-ft wood fence which you can’t see through (well, almost everyone).
The redwood “privacy fence” is usually around the back yard. My impression is that we were discussing the front yards you see as you drive down the street, which are usually unfenced in CA suburbia, as I am familiar with it.
Yes, of course I know that NYC is unusual - but that doesn’t mean that something that exists in NYC (fenced/walled front yards) doesn’t exist elsewhere. Like Boston or Chicago or Philadelphia
Th point of my original post was that saying “to an American that street looks like a prison camp.” is an over generalization. Maybe it looks like a prison camp to suburban Americans - I wouldn’t know. But front yards that are fenced/walled or in some other way separated from the public sidewalks are not at all unusual in urban areas in the Northeast and they apparently exist in Chicago as well.
I think the poster I was responding to was talking about the entire property (emphasis added), and “the garden” is something that is normally in the back yard. But I’ll let him clarify if wants.
I freely admit that I was not talking for every American.
That said, a significant difference exists between those images and the one of Hungary. In each of the American versions the fences stop at the steps leading to the front doors. On the Hungarian street, the fences and gates are continuous. That’s why I likened the scene to a prison, not the mere existence of fences, which aren’t odd or rare.
I do not have a back yard, only a large side yard. I wanted to fence it in for privacy, until I learned the city owns the first 10’ from the street curb. That would greatly shorten available space, so I gave up the idea. In my post-WWII neighborhood, very few houses have fences. The most you tend to see are partial split-rail fences, delineating the corners of property, set back at least 10’ from the curbs.
People park either in front of the house (it’s a little narrow on that particular picture, so over there you have to park sideways, but not everywhere), most people however just park their car inside the yard and then either leave it in the yard or park in the garage, which is also inside the yard. People don’t like leaving their cars outside if they don’t have to, especially in the winter.
Kids play inside the yards, we consider it kind of bad to let small kids play on the streets. “Bigger kids” have enough space to play on the driveways and lawns, they are much smaller than in America, but they are big enough nonetheless, they play on the roads as well, but only in neighborhoods where there are little cars passing by. The Hungarian neighborhood is a little tight, so here’s a somewhat wider neighborhood in Serbia, you can see that cars can park in front, although most people seem to park inside. https://s20.postimg.org/pdyo2qnmj/Serbia.jpg
Btw, a few people mentioned that the lawns in USA are private property and that “no one really trespasses”, perhaps, but what if you want some basic privacy on that property, for example to set up a big pool for your kids? You have plenty of space in front of the house, but not enough in the back, what do you do then, just give up on the idea and/or buy a smaller pool?
Here you would have the front lawn fenced up and you would be able to let your dog run around, you could have the pool, you wouldn’t have neighbors being able to stare at what you are doing on your property and so on. Perhaps open lawns are prettier looking from the outside, but they are a waste of space nonetheless (unless you have a much larger backyard, in which case it’s not that important)