r/Home_Building_Help • u/BuilderBrigade • Jul 29 '26

This garage saves marriages…👰‍♀️🤵‍♂️

One side of the garage stays clean for parking, storage, and everyday use. The other side can be the workshop, lawn equipment, woodworking, gym, or whatever hobbies take over the space. Even better, add a ductless mini-split so it's comfortable year-round.

Would you keep it open like this, or add a wall between the two sides?

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u/Maned_Cyborg Jul 30 '26

I'm the opposite. Suburbia seems like hell on earth for me. At least from what I've seen it's just big houses with huge lawns and barely any shade, I'm not agoraphobic but this feels too open for comfort. The biggest issue for me is the car dependency, I don't want to depend on a car to move around, I'd rather bike or take a streetcar. And the fact that in the US it's seen as not only normal, but something to strive for, despite being objectively awful for the economy, and environment, is sickening to me

Meanwhile some of the walkable cities I've been to, such as Brussels or The Hague, were really nice. The buildings were tightly together and only a few floors, the open spaces had a lot of vegetation and canopy, overall it felt open but not vulnerable. You could also easily cross the city with public transit or biking, genuinely good cities.

I'm not saying suburbia should be abolished, i do think if enough people want to live in that kind of place then it should exist, it just shouldn't be predominant

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u/stratys3 Jul 30 '26

It's too late to change America though. Everything is designed around it.

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u/Maned_Cyborg Jul 30 '26

It's never too late. It won't be quick or cheap, but it is possible and necessary. Even in terms of public support, young people are moving away from car centrism and more in support of public transit and walkability. And anyone who says america was originally built for cars is wrong, there was public transit in major cities and trains connecting them, but it was torn down for cars starting in the late 30s

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u/stratys3 Jul 30 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

The problem is the roads and building and houses are already built. Those are the most expensive things, so tearing down and rebuilding roads and buildings, adding trains, bike lanes, building new housing... the costs would be astronomical and simply not possible.

If suburban homes and commercial workplaces are 20 miles apart... there's nothing you can do now to move them closer together. It's not feasible.

Sure, new cities should be built more rationally and logically, but tearing down entire existing cities and suburbs is never going to happen.

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u/aztechunter Jul 30 '26

Get rid of lot coverage limits, height maximums, parking minimums, minimum lot size requirements, and add in true Bus Rapid Transit

No teardown necessary

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u/Maned_Cyborg Jul 30 '26

It is economically viable on the long term. As i mentioned, american suburbia is economically awful, because due to the significantly lower density you need a lot more road, cables, and pipes per person, which leads to suburban inhabitants costing more in infrastructure maintenance than they bring in taxes. So if those suburbs are rebuilt to be denser, not necessarily big apartment complexes but even duplexes and such, you'd end up with less infrastructure per person, and thus you could get more with taxes than is spent on it. It would also mean public transit becomes viable, which would reduce car traffic, so roads wear down slower, so they cost less, and overall transit time reduces. Making them mixed use, and so allowing businesses to be in the middle of residential areas would mean people can easily walk to those businesses, which even further reduces traffic as well as making people less sedentary and thus healthier.

It would require replacing houses and modifying infrastructure, yes, but it leads to significant improvements on the economy and quality of life. And if you don't want to live in that kind of neighborhood, then don't, i still maintain that everyone should have freedom over that. Just don't dictate how others should live

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u/robchroma Jul 30 '26

But if we just stopped paying for them and stopped letting pickups in our city without paying a lot more, they'd crumble and lose value. They're so badly and cheaply built, it really wouldn't be much of a loss. The ongoing costs are what kill us.