how do you define cookie cutter? (Austin, Burton: to rent, condos, loan)

[readymade]

Originally Posted by llkltk

Why is everyone arguing about this? Anyone is lucky to have a home, whether cookie cutter or not. It's just a house, a place to hang your hat. Many electic subdivisions in central austin were once mass produced homes of the 50s. Who cares?

Um, because people are human and have different needs. You might not care about something that someone else cares very much about. And the other way around. I imagine you'd have something to say (or just think it to yourself) if I said I didn't see what the big deal was about having kids.

Personally I'd rather live in an apartment than a "cookie cutter" house. I find them to be soul-sucking. I wouldn't live in one if you paid me to.

People are different and that's a beautiful thing.

[TexasHorseLady]

Beautifully said, twange! You got across exactly what I was trying to convey. Even if the homes started out similar, or even identical, they were allowed to change in ways that they never can in a HOA, to develop their full, unique beauty.

A house is a living thing, in a way. It reflects all of those who have lived in it and loved it and made it from a house to a home, and it holds all those lives in its memories and in its alterations. Otherwise, it's just a building.

[schoenfraun]

Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady

A house is a living thing, in a way. It reflects all of those who have lived in it and loved it and made it from a house to a home, and it holds all those lives in its memories and in its alterations. Otherwise, it's just a building.

And you, too, TexasHorseLady: beautifully said!

I'm an architectural historian, and that's how I feel about our built environment as a whole, buildings and landscapes: they are living things that change as culture changes, and that's what makes them fascinating to study. We can learn a lot about history and culture from looking at a building or a designed place. Public and private spaces have a lot to teach us. They are containers of memory, it's true.

Strip malls and "cookie cutter" developments also have a lot to say, a lot to teach us about what is valued there by its users. And for folks who are looking for an investment, or who might think of their house as what the late George Carlin would call "a place for my stuff," a development with a few standard choices and a maintenance plan thrown in might be ideal.

What I love about the small town neighborhood in which I live is that I look out my window--and I have a 1950s ranch house with a lot of windows--and see a 1910s Classical Revival house, and a 1920s Craftsman bungalow, some 1930s frame cottages, and other 1960s ranches, and I can see how tastes changed in this community over time, and how the current residents love these styles and love their homes. There are all kinds of gardens and front lawn treatments....

Yesterday I was talking to my next-door neighbor about tearing out some of our front lawn and putting down gravel and some xeric plantings, and he wrinkled his nose and said, "I don't think that will fly here like it does in Austin. I think if it's green, even if it's not a lawn, but weeds, it's good." He's in favor of not watering and letting a lawn go dormant until next year.... But not tearing out lawn.

Then I mentioned this to the neighbor across the street, and she said, "Absolutely you should tear out the weedy part of your lawn and replace it with whatever you want. It's yours, it's yours to mow in this heat! Make it a cactus farm, why not?"

So...this is why some folks like HOAs. We're about to do something that might incur the wrath of neighbors who have lived here longer than we.... And these things matter to neighbors you've never even met....

When I was a kid, my folks couldn't afford landscaping for the longest time...so our house on a prominent corner lot had only a grass lawn, no trees or shrubs or plantings of any kind. When my folks could finally afford to do some landscaping, we had lived there six or seven years already. We were standing on the lawn admiring our new plantings that evening when an anonymous person drove by and shouted from their open window: "It's about #$*@ing time!" I'll never forget that!

[twange]

Originally Posted by schoenfraun

Public and private spaces have a lot to teach us. They are containers of memory, it's true.

The public vs private aesthetic seems to be in a constant state of struggle, especially in our modern civic design. It seems like the pendulum is starting to swing back towards the public after more than 50 years of the other...All of the mixed-use designs(which is how almost all urban buildings use to be built) seem to suggest this.

"Containers of memory". I'm going to borrow this phrase for some project I think...thanks!

[mandib]

Originally Posted by twange

The HOAs and their anal conformities have a lot to do with the modern view of what cookie-cutter means. Limiting colors, landscaping, out-buildings etc...just silly. Some folks need to get hobbies and occupy their time with something useful.

this is so true! I understand wanting to limit uglies...as in cars on cinderblocks in driveways and rvs parked all over a street for weeks or months at a time, but whether or not I put a simple gazebo in my backyard amongst trees, or if I chose to put in different plants in the front yard... please! it's my property, expensive property!

[mimimomx3]

My issue with the newer developments of HOA restrictions and 'cookie cutter' homes is that the developers, in order to keep prices down, bulldoze the old growth trees and plant little saplings. That is just a huge turn off for me. I'd rather live in a house next to one with a toilet bowl planter in the front yard but big, old beautiful trees. Just me.

[twange]

Originally Posted by mimimomx3

My issue with the newer developments of HOA restrictions and 'cookie cutter' homes is that the developers, in order to keep prices down, bulldoze the old growth trees and plant little saplings. That is just a huge turn off for me. I'd rather live in a house next to one with a toilet bowl planter in the front yard but big, old beautiful trees. Just me.

Me too.

It's lazy in my opinion and lowers the value of the neighborhood. Who wouldn't want mature trees around them? Especially when it's hot as all get out...

Then again, my old neighbor in Ohio used to rant that he thought it was the city's responsibility to cut down these "dangerous" trees once they got too big(he was referring to the 100+ yr old amazingly tall oak trees that grew in our neighborhood). What a jackass

[Mckellyb]

Back to the original topic.

"Cookie cutter" houses can be best described by watching the opening scene of the movie Pushing Tin, where the lead character, played by John Cusack, pulls into the wrong driveway because the house next door is literally a mirror image of his own.

This is, to me, the classic and unarguable definition of cookie cutter housing.

Any time you have a development in which there are 6, 8, even 10 different house 'styles' and during a block you see a repeptition of said style more than a couple of times, I see a copy machine being used....

I've found these are becoming ultra-common 'cause it's the fastest way to make maximum amounts of money from 'X' amount of land. Mass-production is the way to do it.

Any day now, we're going to see houses with blank plates in wall where an 'option' would have been, if you'd sprung for it...much like in cars. Actually, I'd swear I've seen this with a vacuum system, or the like. It was subtle, but there.

[twange]

Speaking of film references, the first thing that comes to mind is the vision of "cookie-cutter" suburbia in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands:

[chris_ut]

I would say any neighborhood built by KB homes.