It's the parking! Those 2+ cars per family needs space. Also Netflix series aren't going to be watched themselves.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
The decline of the British front garden
(28 posts)-
Posted 9 years ago #
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Aye, those paved driveway conversions. What an eyesore.
Posted 9 years ago # -
TBH, I'd be as well getting the large part of my front garden paved and sticking my car in it. The garden spends most of its time an overgrown wasteland with my car in front of it 99%. I have neither the time, money nor inclination to return it to the feature garden the previous owners ripped out.
I only ever use my car when I need to transport larger items or need to move all three children and the two of us which can not be accommodated in the mini so sticking it away in the garden would take up a bit less space.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Went to look at a property on Sunday. The whole rear garden had been paved over and replaced with 3 garages. By comparison, the neighbour's rear garden was the same size but seemed huge - full of lawn, plants, borders, etc. - gorgeous.
Put us right off that house/flat conversion...
Posted 9 years ago # -
If there's a street that has car and bicycle users, what's better:
-A clear road with more space but with parked cars in the front garden area?
-A road clogged with parked cars (on or off the pavement) but with beautiful front gardens?Posted 9 years ago # -
-Fewer cars.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Despite a driveway on every house on our street the road seems to be getting more and more clogged with additional cars left 'on' the street, and I'd personally rather (if there are going to be that many cars, I'd generally agree with Min on her suggestion) some front garden space was given over to a slightly bigger drive. Only slightly bigger mind, some have tarmacced completely, making the front completely ugly, and still have enough cars to park on the road (or are too lazy to park on the massive driveway). We've got space for one car, which is taken up by a car. Did ponder extending for the addition of a little classic, but I've worked out what I'm after can (just) fit in the garage, if I convert the shed to a bikestore...
Our front garden is planted out reasonably nicely, but it's just for front garden show, not for use. Doesn't mean we don't spend time in a garden, the other reason the front isn't attractive is it's north facing, whereas we have a south facing rear garden, which also isn't on the road with traffic going by...
Posted 9 years ago # -
If push came to shove, I'd rather people let their cars depreciate on their own land, and then got the council round to paint white lines infront of their drive to stop kerb-side parking.
My parents have a drive and garage they rarely use, and complain if anyone has the temerity to park in "their" space, i.e. on the road outside their house.
Posted 9 years ago # -
'and complain if anyone has the temerity to park in "their" space'
Besides my wife, the person who most often parks in the portion of public road immediately outside our house is the multiple-van-owning neighbour who told us there was an accepted custom of one-car-per-house-otherwise-use-the-next-street. A few houses (including his) have converted gardens to drives, but our block is still mostly single-file traffic with a solid line of cars in the road, built when car-ownership was exceptional - there are a couple of clumps of after-market garages around the corner; nearby streets (with insufficient space for front-garden drives) are single-file traffic with two lines of parked cars, each reducing the footway to barely-fit-a-buggy width. As it is, it forces drivers to mostly drive slowishly, whereas if there were no parked cars the people who use our road to avoid some traffic lights would whizz past much more dangerously.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Nature abhors a vacuum.
The number of cars expands to fill the available space.
Houses that have large driveways attract people who like to have lots of cars, or will buy more cars 'because they can'.
and...
Garages are used to store worthless junk, while thousands of pounds of complex machinery sits outside in the rain.
Posted 9 years ago # -
When out on our walks around town, we frequently think it would be fun to buy a house on one of those streets where everyone has tarmacced/slabbed their gardens into a drive and knocked down their front walls and make a big point of putting it all back as a beautiful green jungle.
Posted 9 years ago # -
"Garages are used to store worthless junk, while thousands of pounds of complex machinery sits outside in the rain."
My bikes sit in the garage in preference to the car... ;)
(though as alluded to above, there might be an old car joining the household in the near-ish future, and it'll certainly be living inside)
Posted 9 years ago # -
We've had six cars on our driveway before, but only one lives there. Also fortunate enough to have a reasonable sized front garden, only grass on it though, no flowers.
Regards garages, they don't build single garages big enough to fit cars in these days. Houses don't have any storage in them now, so the garage becomes the storage, where all my bikes live too.
Posted 9 years ago # -
People also do own way more "stuff" which needs to go somewhere. A sort of double whammy.
Posted 9 years ago # -
The cul-de-sac next to us has 8 flats. Three have driveways (two of which have garages) on the property, although two of the flats don't have cars. The four upper flats all have separate garages at the foot of the street. Despite the four upper flats all having at least two cars each none use their garages for car parking - just storage of masses of stuff.
As a result the street is usually double parked. If there is ever a fire I don't know how a fire engine would get in.
Posted 9 years ago # -
People also do own way more "stuff" which needs to go somewhere.
I'm still working on blueprints for squeezing our bikes, my tools (domestic and bike), desk, computer, homebrew kit, library of design books and all the rarely-used but seemingly neccessary trappings of modern life such as suitcases, Christmas decorations etc. into our box room. I also fancy a wingback chair.
It's not helped by the room having 7 walls and only 1 right-angle in it!
Posted 9 years ago # -
As a society we have a lot more clutter than previous generations. If you take the space away, (whether that's sticking cars into garages or putting them in drives), then we just have to get rid of useless stuff which in the medium to long term would be a very good thing.
Posted 9 years ago # -
As a society we have a lot more clutter than previous generations.
Hmm, possibly - but my Grandparents were of a generation of hoarders, keepers of things they had found "in case they might come in useful one day" and compulsive coverers of all free surfaces of the house with doilies and porcelain ornaments.
We might have more trappings of a richer and more consumerist generation but minimalism clearly was an alien concept to theirs!
Posted 9 years ago # -
But if behaviours haven't changed, the amount of stuff we have has. I have way more pairs of shoes than my grandparents would have dreamed of.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Yep. And many people will have inherited their Grandparents porcelain and doilies to go on top of it all! Or at least in a dusty box in their attic/garage/box room.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Oh and the good news is, we need to buy more stuff!
Posted 9 years ago # -
Behaviours have changed though. Our grandparents may have hoarded stuff as much as we do, but only because they genuinely felt that it may be practically useful or recyclable. I get the feeling that nowadays people don't so much hoard as accumulate stuff they don't know what do to with. And are much more likely to buy new replacements than repair or re-use materials.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@kaputnik:
I'm usually impressed by all the space saving ideas seen on programmes like Amazing Spaces and Tiny House Nation. If I had the DIY skills/design ability/wasn't totally hamfisted I'd like to have a go.
Posted 9 years ago # -
"Garages are used to store worthless junk, while thousands of pounds of complex machinery sits outside in the rain."
I've always thought storing a modern car in a garage is such as waste of space, one could have a decent workshop and bike storage for the space taken up by water proof machinery which will likely last 15 years exposed to the elements with out much more problems than one that's spent 15 years mollycoddled.
Posted 9 years ago # -
TBH, cars still go rusty inside garages, unless you only ever put the car in the garage when it is completely dry. A garage does help to keep the seagull merde and tree sticky residue off though... Evil trees. Evil wildlife.
Posted 9 years ago # -
We have a nice front garden...Screened off by a big hedge! Out the front there is parking for about 10 cars parked nose in, almost all of which are taken up by the garages across the road.
We've just sort of accepted it now and only complain if they part seriously battered ones there. I should point out that the garages have space for parking the cars in the actual premesis but seem to just rent that space out to others as they can park for free on the street.
This often ends up with me having to triple park outside my own house if I want to be anywhere near it to load things in and out (only time I use car)
We park about 3 or 4 mins walk away :/
They are thinking about bringing in permit parking though which we'd welcome! (Roseburn Street)
Posted 9 years ago # -
Garages are used to store worthless junk, while thousands of pounds of complex machinery sits outside in the rain.
Round my way, quite a few people have taken to converting their garages into additional living accommodation.
Some others who have driveway space for two vehicles and garaging for another seem to have amassed even more vehicles than that, requiring appropriation of the Queen's Highway for parking. There may be a connection in that many young(er) working people with the wherewithal to buy a car still do not have the wherewithal to buy a house, meaning that the least worst option is to live with their parents – who will also probably own one or two cars. You end up with a situation like Leonard and Ria from Butterflies, choreographing their cars twice a day.
nowadays people...are much more likely to buy new replacements than repair or re-use materials.
Partly because they now don't have the space in the garage to make things.
Posted 9 years ago # -
"Partly because they now don't have the space in the garage to make things."
They used to be used for starting bands or businesses -
"
Jobs’ old workspace joins another famous tech startup garage listed as a historical site. In 2007, the Palo Alto garage where Hewlett-Packard was started, just 10 miles from the Jobs garage, was named a national history landmark.
"
http://mashable.com/2013/10/29/steve-jobs-apple-garage-landmark/
Posted 9 years ago #
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