Originally Posted By: Dyusik
It is the same with residential structures, it just burns my chops to see what used to be a pleasant green area turn into a jungle of structures. This for profit crud is really ugly. There was an old house up the street from me, yes the house needed to be demolished as it was far gone, vacant for years, but the property was gorgeous with rows of fruit trees, just a dream. Now this lot is a home to about to 19 townhomes.
I want to move to the woods, some 50 miles away from a small town so that I can have [hopefully] 10 years of not being surrounded by 6,000 neighbors per acre.
Vinyl villages, cookie cutter communities, suburban sprawl. It's the American way, unfortunately. What happens around here is tilled farm land around outskirts of suburbia is sold off by the heirs after the farmer dies or goes into assisted living or whatever, and the land is bought by a developer and re-zoned either residential or commercial, then suburbia gains another developed/built-out acres.
I can't throw stones as I live in such a development although it was not a new sprawl, the area has been a suburb with interspersed small farm fields for a very long time this particular subdivision was planned to be as aesthetic as possible and small with only 28 houses. It was originally restricted to brick exteriors but then the bubble burst and the small family owned local builder sold off the remaining about 14 lots to a large regional/national that used to specialize in slab houses they'd slap up in about two days flat, and the back half of the division they bought is vinyl one stories with a brick or stone facade for 1/2 to 3/4 of the front facing side of house. Zero down, sponsored financing no matter how bad your credit, move in for a dollar promo type stuff. Most of those new neighbors keep their properties nice but there are a few that either don't care or can't really afford to own a home and don't do much upkeep. But I guess every neighborhood has of few of those.
Fiancee and I are each looking to sell our places soon and get a place we'll live once married (we're traditional and won't shack before marriage). We'd like a small to medium size house just outside suburbia with an acre or two and some farm land surrounding but at the rate that sprawl is happening around here, any such property will be surrounded by planned communities within 10 - 15 yrs maybe sooner. Although by then we would probably be looking to sell again anyhow.