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I recently drove down to Raleigh to try to find a house to rent for a short 6 month stay in the area for a work assignment. I spent hours and hours driving around Raleigh and Cary.
While the countryside is beautiful with lots of forested areas and many of the established areas have lots of trees around the homes, I saw an incredible amount of Tract Housing all over the area. Cooker cutter subdivisions where rows and rows of homes looked pretty much the same. Zero lot lines. Homes jammed together on 1/8 acre lots with basically no room for any grass or trees. It appeared that the developer bought a 500 acre forest tore down pretty much every tree and put thousands of homes jammed together without any concern for the environment. It was one of the ugliest things I had ever seen.
Yes, Tract Cookie Cutter Subdivisions are found all over the country but the new developments in the Raleigh area were just terrible looking. In my home town of Columbia Maryland there are strict tree save laws that require developers to work around the trees and save 40% of them in the development of new homes.
It is such a shame that Raleigh and the rest of the Triangle communities allows so many of it's forests to be felled by developers to build tract housing! What are your thoughts about the cooker cutter subdivisions and huge tree loss in the Triangle?
To each their own. Some people like new houses and new subdivisions. I do not and that's why I chose a neighborhood and the house built in 60s. I love my house and my neighborhood. You can find those houses here in the Triangle. A big plus, most of those neighborhood are going to be close to everything. It's just a matter of $$$ and how much you'd want to spend to get what you want.
As for the trees, I agree, it irresponsible to cut down so many to build new houses. I am guessing that it's cheaper to do that rather than building around mature trees. But, good thing, trees grow back, you just hope that home owner will be planting them. Back in the days most of Piedmont area provided lumber for charcoal to the British Empire. Lots of lumber got exported from these areas because Britain was so depended on charcoal for heating and manufacturing. The forests grew back once that business died down. Anyway, yes, I hate it too. I'd like to think that Durham will initiate something that Chapel Hill does with "rural buffer".... providing some open space that is not developed and kept as parks or forests for people to enjoy.
Raleigh's tree ordinances do affect residential developers. They affect commercial and institutional developers even more.
All the developer has to do is request a "Hardship Variance" and the Board of Adjustment will usually approve it. I have seen it over and over again. This area is VERY pro development!
Everyone says the trees will grow back in 20-30 years. NO! The trouble is the new developments are so dense there is really very little room for grass or trees. With the roads, sidewalks, driveway and the actual homes so jammed in close together 90% of the land in the subdivision is covered by either concrete or buildings. There is little room for any trees.
I grew up in the Midwest and most home lots are still 10,000 to 20,000 square feet. The average lot in 21st Century Triangle area residential development is only 5,000 square foot and the houses are larger. 100 years from now there still will be no greenery in these ugly cooker cutter subdivisions that used to be a beautiful forest.
Location: River's Edge Inn, Todd NC, and Lorgues France
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Originally Posted by Plain Tired
Everyone says the trees will grow back in 20-30 years. NO! The trouble is the new developments are so dense there is really very little room for grass or trees. With the roads, sidewalks, driveway and the actual homes so jammed in close together 90% of the land in the subdivision is covered by either concrete or buildings. There is little room for any trees.
I grew up in the Midwest and most home lots are still 10,000 to 20,000 square feet. The average lot in 21st Century Triangle area residential development is only 5,000 square foot and the houses are larger. 100 years from now there still will be no greenery in these ugly cooker cutter subdivisions that used to be a beautiful forest.
If eight thousand houses were on 1/8 acres lots you have 1000 acres of houses.
Put them on 1/4 acres lots and you have 2000 acres of houses.
Raleigh certainly is. Although the percentage of Wake County residents living in Raleigh has been slowly declining for decades and continues to, the powers-at-be in Raleigh want to minimize that trend to the extent they can. So, development (specifically, dense development) is the objective.
Remember, Mary-Ann Baldwin worked for Holt Brothers Construction when she ran for mayor and now works for Barnhill Contracting. Her predecessors Meeker and McFarlane were pro-development too. But this is nothing new for Raleigh. Developers Seby Jones, Jyles Coggins, and Smedes York were Mayor 1969-71, 1975-77, and 1979-83 respectively. City voters have seldom been bashful about electing developers. The only anti-development Mayor in recent memory was Isabella Cannon, and she served only one term before being defeated by York.
Everyone says the trees will grow back in 20-30 years. NO! The trouble is the new developments are so dense there is really very little room for grass or trees.
The trees do grow back, but I agree that I would rather see developers spare trees.
Here is a Google Streetview of Southern Village in Chapel Hill, which was developed in the '90s and has small lots (1/4 acre for one I just looked up). You can see the streets are tree-lined now.
I'm sure some of the Raleigh posters can point to similar neighborhoods built 20 years ago that are tree-lined now. Just go to Realtor.com or one of the other many real estate sites and put in the parameters that you want a house built in the 1990s/early 2000s and see what it looks like now.
You can just alwys look for an older home. I live in a heavily forested neighborhood built in the 1960s and 1970s. I and many of my neighbors don't even have grass, we have so many trees.
PlainTired: I lived for years in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn. The housing there is brownstone row houses built either directly attached to each other or with minimal spacing in between (usually not wide enough for a car), yet the streets are all shaded from trees planted along the space between sidewalk and curb. You can grow trees in surprisingly little space.
And I have to say, I would strongly prefer a more urban feel to at least some parts of the Triangle, especially Chapel Hill where I live. Housing density gives rise to many good things, including public transportation, walkability and strong feelings of community. I don't need my back yard to be a park (that I have to maintain) as long as there are parks within walking distance.
No kidding, nothing stopping you from buying some land and building a mid-evil castle, just ambition and money. Maybe zoning doesn't allow for castles?
The trees do grow back, but I agree that I would rather see developers spare trees.
Here is a Google Streetview of Southern Village in Chapel Hill, which was developed in the '90s and has small lots (1/4 acre for one I just looked up). You can see the streets are tree-lined now.
I'm sure some of the Raleigh posters can point to similar neighborhoods built 20 years ago that are tree-lined now. Just go to Realtor.com or one of the other many real estate sites and put in the parameters that you want a house built in the 1990s/early 2000s and see what it looks like now.
You can just alwys look for an older home. I live in a heavily forested neighborhood built in the 1960s and 1970s. I and many of my neighbors don't even have grass, we have so many trees.
Same. My house was built in 1959 and the rest of the neighborhood was all before 1961. It's VERY heavily forested. I'm on a 0.3 acre lot and have 4 or 5 massive oaks in the front/backyards and tons of smaller trees/vegetation and bamboo in between my neighbors houses and mine. My backyard literally looks like a jungle if I wait to long to mow/chop things. Like right now actually. >.>Although it kinda sucks in autumn haha. Funny thing is, I'm in one of the more built up areas of town right near Duke Raleigh Hospital.
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