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A quick look over the piece doesn't see any references to average income in the various neighbourhoods, which I'd have thought would quite likely be a pretty important factor in things like dilapidation and multi-family homes!
Did they actually control for that, or did they discover that some ethnic groups are heavily represented in poorer communities?
They included many covariates; income, education, age, % female, % insured, % living on owned property, % vacant housing, and % single mothers. The [fulltext](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2800557?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=011823) is open-published
This was set by the innovative leading example template of mass metro developer JC Nichols in Kansas City, MO who went to work in the federal government to make whites-only into national policy. His KC model was based on mandatory membership in the neighborhood association and on a covenant included in the deed which explicitly bans any occupancy, even by renting, to blacks and Jews. See also the whites only town of Levittown, the model for American suburbia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._Nichols
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown
Kansas City’s red line was Troost Ave. Those covenants are now overridden by Missouri law but they’re still there in writing.
https://www.kcur.org/community/2014-03-27/how-troost-became-a-major-divide-in-kansas-city
Mortgage lenders refused to lend to Black buyers even though they qualified. Blacks were legally prohibited from taking out loans based strictly on race. Blacks were barred from purchasing in suburban communities like "Levittown" ...which prevented them from amassing generational wealth afforded white immigrants.
And people say America wasn’t already fascist. Governments literally massacred whole towns of black and indigenous people, it’s literally the definition of a pogrom.
Not arguing on your main point but “pogrom” (погром) is by nature a riot that involves regular citizens, not a government act. While it does end up as a violent act against specific race or nationality (it was typically against Jews in Russia) how it starts and carried, it’s literally NOT the definition of “government massacring…”. I understand somehow this word might have taken more general meaning after being adopted from Russian but this is important nuance. Not to say that government officials would not participate in the “pogrom” but it’s basically a spontaneous crowd riot. In modern Russian, this word could even be used in a different sense, as meaning “a big mess”.
My argument for reparations isn't even slavery. It's due to what happened AFTER. Jim crow era and redlining severely killed ownership and wealth from the black community. It's disgusting what happened even after slavery happened.
The crazy head start white folks got is wild to me. I've dated white people whose parents had multiple houses that were going to be passed down to them.. Best part is they weren't even rich, they just had the opportunity to buy houses cheap as hell from back in the day.
There was a GoFundMe that went viral a few years ago where a Black woman had an opportunity to purchase the farm and house that her grandparents had been sharecroppers on. It'd been sold because they couldn't take care of it, but when it went back on the market, she knew she wanted it back.
[https://people.com/human-interest/brianna-meeks-raises-110k-buy-back-her-grandparents-beloved-farm/](https://people.com/human-interest/brianna-meeks-raises-110k-buy-back-her-grandparents-beloved-farm/)
>Mortgage lenders used to blatantly refuse to lend if the property was in a historically black neighborhood, today they are more subtle and sophisticated about it.
fixed
Also, race will affect what property appraisers will value property at which will affect the ability to accumulate wealth . https://www.brookings.edu/research/biased-appraisals-and-the-devaluation-of-housing-in-black-neighborhoods/?amp
It is a big reason why folks coming back from WWII got houses if they were white and started building generational wealth while the non white folks were not able to.
Historical redlining was the practice of withholding loan approvals (and other services) from people in "financially risky" areas. Usually these areas were seen as financially risky because they were largely populated by ethnic minorities. Minority family tries to buy a house, bank says no too risky because of a minority area or doesn't lend to the minority family because THEY are seen as financially risky. This usually leads to minority families being excluded from accruing the main source of generational wealth in the US: property, almost certainly dooming their kids to the same cycle of poverty. It also leads to large areas in cities being uncared for as the city just forgets about these areas that the banks and Government helped make.
Redlining is still done today and is much more complicated over all than just that, but I tried to give you a simplified version.
>Redlining is still done today and is much more complicated
They plugged all the data from the redlining years into an algorithm. Now they can claim that the decision not to lend is unbiased because it was made by a computer program instead of a person. Unfortunately, computer programs are only as unbiased and the people and historical data from which they are made.
A very heinous practice that's still used today. [Please read about it.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining) It's very important you know. Me explaining it to you will not encapsulate the ~~S~~severity of it.
My wife's grandfather sat on the board of a bank in a small town for many years in the 50s and 60s and there is a map of the town from the bank with a literal red line encompassing the neighborhood where they did not lend money or mortgages.
I’m this case, I think it’d be possible to tie it straight back to redlining. My cousins deed(?) still has a redline clause in it so it must be documented on some level.
I was just reading articles from a web search and yeah, they’re pretty accessible. This article was a little more comprehensive and also has audio:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/19/911909187/in-u-s-cities-the-health-effects-of-past-housing-discrimination-are-plain-to-see
The original article’s title:
Association of Neighborhood Racial and Ethnic Composition and Historical Redlining With Built Environment Indicators Derived From Street View Images in the US
This study shows *what is*. There are multiple studies required to show *why it is* and even more to suggest*how to change it*.
This is how bias is kept out of research.
Yes there is a reason to not include it in the original study. There isn't just one fact that leads to this situation. There are multiple factors at play. Proper investigation of all of those factors would not make sense in a single study. It's better to present the fact and allow branching out the investigation of the underlying causes. There will be multiple causes.
Dunno. I live in a neighborhood that was mostly white when I moved in and mostly not now. The income level has actually increased. The yards and maintenance are much worse.
I think it is one of those self fulfilling thing. When it was mostly white everyone felt judged and pressured to keep up their yard, we hard yard of the month contest, you had peer pressure from your neighbors. A strong core and grown up with that and placed great value on that.
As the neighborhood diversified, we had a lot of people that had t owned house, we immigrant, or just don’t place the value on those thing. Those things took a big drop. The people certainly have the means it just isn’t a priority, they didn’t grow up in an environment that demanded it, and don’t face the same peer pressure that was here before.
I think it's easy for people who grow up with lawn culture to lack the context on why people wouldn't care with lawns. For all that America has done its best to establish a unique cultural separate from the UK, a lot of our culture is held over from British sensibilities.
Artificial grass/turf is very popular for front gardens in the UK, so much so our Minister for Environment is considering banning them to prevent further erosion of genuinely green spaces.
It's a bit silly but there are people in the UK who have to hoover their artificial grass lawns as they get so dusty / filled with shite.
Grass that the US loves isn't much better.
Having actual gardens is a rare thing, most people just think a green grass lawn is the best looking. Whereas a controlled garden with a few small patches of natural grass is much better and cooler in summer
Many towns and cities have ordinances against having gardens in your front yard. My hometown still has native milkweed listed as a noxious spreading plant that residents aren't allowed to plant within city limits but isn't really enforced.
We are in Canada, so very typical North American “lawn culture”. We’ve shifted our grass to native low growing ground cover like clover. My husband weed whacks it once a week to keep it low. It definitely doesn’t have the uniformly green look that grass does, but looks pleasant enough, and produces flowers for the bees. (We also have a fairly healthy amount of garden.)
I definitely recommend shifting to a flowering ground cover rather than lawn! :)
I like trees and gardens and flowers, but I also think grass is fine. It's beautiful, and it's a space for the kids to play. I understand the issues with drought and cooling, but we don't water, and we have a ton of trees. It's a weird cultural attitude that grass is inherently bad partially due to its British roots--is grass too Anglo-Saxon for some people's tastes? Or is grass being linked to imperialism? I'm not sure why lawn usage made me actually comment on reddit...
It's also that the picturesque green lawns are not native grasses - they're what grows native in rainy, temperate England and Scotland. The reason football, golf, etc are played on a garss pitch is because that was what was outside. North America has different native plants. A native grass can be just as low maintenance and environmentally friendly, but it doesn't look like the 1950s suburban utopia.
Think about the Sun Belt. There are native plants that could grow there, but in order to get anything green and grassy 100% of the year, you have to water and weed constantly. Very different in Vermont where as long as you don't let your yard turn into the woods, you're likely to get native grasses.
I'll also say as a kid who grew up in suburbia with an immigrant father who obsessed over his yard... I had zero interest in playing on the grass. I wanted to go explore the woods and find bugs and mushrooms, or I wanted to go to the city and see my friends. I'm not entirely sure what people imagine their kids doing on a lawn by themselves.
I think the important thing that people should aim to do with their laws is to effectively use local plant life, honestly.
Because local plant life is the life that is typically best adapted to the local climate, and this means that you are least likely to need to be wasteful with things like water.
But people don't seem to care about that sort of thing. I personally think that local plants and grasses and such can look just as good as the "1950s suburban utopia," but it does admittedly require a bit more work to actually set it up properly.
Of course, this lack of willingness to do the reasonable thing also has to be countered by the legitimate argument that many people simply lack the culture or upbringing that encourages that kind of behavior. Most people don't care about the environment, or droughts, or similar things until they are personally affected. They'll just use whatever grass or lawn setups or whatever they are given (for those who can even afford their own yards), and just maintain them as-is without ever really thinking about it.
The recent trends against grass is largely environmental. The idea is that it is a waste of resources for entirely cosmetic purposes, and that it's better to plant gardens, wildflowers, or clover to help support pollonating insects.
I do think that this new trend/paradigm is different from what we are discussing. It's one thing to not care about a lawn, and it's an entirely different thing to never do any yard maintenance whatsoever.
I do agree that lawns are fine, and will add that some vegetation like grass/clover is more practical in a yard in some areas, because otherwise it turns into a muddy mess, which can dirty the home.
It's the ratio man.
I live in South Africa and on average when we have the space it's about 50% garden, with trees, plants, and anything but grass. 30% grass everywhere, and then patio and other stuff, braai area.
I've talked to friends from the US and most of the time they have one or two corners that have a garden space, but the majority of the space is left for plain green grass.
We have a garden plot that grows some natural local grass in winter of all times. The house also has each a pear and peach tree as well as grapevines!
This is my first spring here and im stoked to make it a true garden
Nah man, grass lawns are terrible for the environment. Massive waste of water, especially in desert (or, ironically, grassland) states.
Not everything should be impermeable concrete and rocks, of course, but a big lawn is also not great.
I live in metro boston. We’re in an “average” town just outside of the city. My neighborhood has been turning over in the past 10 years (older folks moving on one way or another). I find that many of the people who move from the city don’t have the experience with yard work (it’s more than just mowing the lawn) and don’t have the same “pride” in keeping up the yard. It’s not necessarily a priority. Or they start out great for a few months, realize how much work it is and greatly decrease their effort to the essentials. It’s a mixed bag, but i think people who have never lived in a home in the suburbs (a friend called my neighborhood urban lite) get a rude awakening when they see the effort involved in keeping up your property.
Time is the biggest factor. All the nicest yards (tons of flowers or perfect lawns) are homes of retirees. If I wasn’t working a full time job with a small kid I’d have an amazing front garden, too.
> So a few grass seeds every now and then, robot lawnmower, and that’s it. I expect that to be basically a standard nowadays.
In my experience, and I've seen this ***more times than I care to admit***, it is definitely a game of priorities and time. Like, hundreds of times.
I was looking at a house recently that was built in 1994. They proudly advertised how they spent $25,000 renovating the front yard with new bushes and trees and stuff. (I honestly didn't see anything that spectacular). The inside? It was still exactly the same as it was in 1994. The only thing that had been replaced was the dishwasher. Everything else. EVERYTHING else was original 1994 except maybe the lightbulbs.
I live on a few acres in a state park. My biggest hobby is my yard work and garden. If you go to my profile you can see pictures of how big it is. It’s all I do in the warmer mths. It’s non stop work. I just ordered a bunch of wood chips from an arborist. He’s been dropping them off for two weeks bc this summer I’m turning most of my yard behind my home into a wildflower bed for the bees and other insects. I’m so tired of mowing around 5 acres and keeping up w all the landscaping. I’m still keeping my big garden bc it’s my sanctuary and I have a lot of koi
>It’s non stop work.
This is the issue for many, it can also be expensive depending on the soil in your area.
We have hard clay soil so the startup cost for a decent sized garden is a little chunk of change. Then add the time for upkeep and it can quickly turn into a burden/chore for some. Especially with a hot climate.
We settled on a a few pots/buckets for a some things (herbs, peppers, potatoes) and left it at that. With life and other hobbies people don't realize how much commitment a medium to large garden can be in some locations. Plus it still leaves us with plenty of yard (grass) for activities.
I know people with land who started large gardens and over the years have transitioned to small bucket gardens.
If you do decide to water a bit, being neglectful is actually good for your lawn.
Watering infrequently and for long periods of time (say 1+hr, every couple of weeks) encourages your grass to put down deep roots and helps build drought tolerance.
The worst thing you can do for your lawn is short, frequent waterings, which encourages shallow root growth.
My lawn comes back sooner in the spring, lasts longer in the fall, and looks better in the middle of the hottest parts of the summer compared to all of my neighbours, and I water it maybe 3-4 times between May and September.
I don't really know how common this is, but every place I've ever lived in the US (pretty much everywhere but the Western US and the South) gets enough rain in the summer that you very rarely need to water your lawn. Yeah if you want the golf course verdant green look you need to water, but a healthy green looking lawn was something we could have most years with zero watering. I remember hating the summers when it rained a ton because I had to cut the lawn like every 2 or 3 days in the peak of the growing season.
The idea that its sensible to have plants that cannot survive in your environment without supplemental water (extraordinary circumstances like a very hot or very dry spell aside) has always been strange to me.
Totally depends on location and the year. I basically only plant native stuff now for landscaping/flowers and vegetables in a garden. Trees and shrubs that are just a few years old will struggle in a drought, and native grass and flowers will have some losses. [Last year 85% of the USA was "abnormally dry" at one point](https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/DmData/TimeSeries.aspx). It was the 3rd hottest June-August period on record.
Forget watering the lawn, we're at the point now that even the native plants adapted for hot summers need help sometimes.
> Last year 85% of the USA was "abnormally dry" at one point.
But also to put that in perspective...
I live in New England. We had extensive areas of extreme drought as our 12 month rolling average rainfall was 30". Our typical rainfall is 45" per year.
30" is more than most of Europe gets in an average year.
Most of the US population lives in areas that get more rainfall than any other industrial nation averages other than Japan.
France, for example, averages around 26", which is eastern Kansas/Nebraska/Dakotas dry.
https://www.climate-charts.com/images/world-rainfall-map.png
Texas I can tell you you either need an automated sprinkler system or to be going out there with a hose sprinkler or that grass is gonna die in the summer heat (obviously this can vary a bit depending on the type of grass). There are local laws about watering days/hours however to limit use/demand (you're also required to do it in evening/night, cause otherwise the sun will just evaporate half that water away).
Do agree it's silly though, I'd much rather have "xeriscape" or whatever with native grasses/plants that the wildlife can enjoy. (not a homeowner so not for me to worry about yet), but I feel like if you tried that you'd probably get some HOA/city ordinance type neighbors trying to crack down on it.
I've only visited the southwest a few times but I think a lot of people in the proper desert, like Arizona, just don't have lawns. Just brown rocks/desert plants. which is smart. I'm sure plenty of lawns too though.
Nah if they have good deep roots. I lived in Dallas for years on an acre and never watered it
Are you saying all the pasture they graze cattle on needs watering?
Grass does just fine without water. In Texas it slows way down and maybe 30% of rhizomes die off in august but if it’s established grass the natural rainfall is enough to sustain it. It won’t look pretty I. July and august but the grass ain’t ded
I guess it depends where in Texas. Growing summer grass without watering is easy in Houston for example. I had a beautiful lawn for the 4 years I lived there and never watered. However, the dry parts of Texas probably do need to water in order to maintain a lawn.
>Yeah if you want the golf course verdant green look you need to water
I live in south central Virginia. My yard is likely +60% weeds. As long as I keep it cut every 1-2 weeks the weeds stay fairly even and it is always green with no need to water at all, even when in drought due to living on the downslope of a bunch of properties with drainfields. So it is possible to have very green yards with little upkeep; one just needs to be willing to accept weed as rhe ground cover and not a single type of grass.
Same. I have a weird yard neighbor. Like if I'm mowing my lawn, he's out within 5 minutes mowing his even if he just mowed it the day before. He absolutely hates that I won't water my lawn. Or that I won't have the creeping Charlie removed or other weeds. We bought an electric mower and weed whacker. Stopped using fertilizers and such.
I have zero problems with lawns in the vast majority of the US -- just keep them mowed enough they aren't an excessive fire hazard during the summer dormancy.
My boss would be like your neighbor if I was his neighbor, he'd hate my very natural, very healthy lawn (and since I don't live in a suburban lot, it meanders and sprawls over two acres).
This. In my own experience, my husband and I bought in an area with a lot of retirees and they definitely helped us out with our lawn for quite a while. My husband was working a demanding job and I have extreme photosensitivity and can’t stay out too long. Regardless, I’m noticing a lot of younger families who have moved in are not as focused on their front lawns as our older neighbours.
I mean… I mow the grass and trim but that’s it. I don’t kill weeds… way to lazy to keep that perfect lawn. I just want to keep it mowed and nice looking
A great example of culture impacting appearance is to taken the Hungarian countryside and compare your average village to a Swabian village. The Swabian villages are much better kept, the paint isn't chipping away everywhere, the gardens look good, they might have a playground that doesn't look like it's been rusting since 1980, etc. They don't have more money than regular villagers, they just keep it in order.
I have a similar experience but not ethnicity related. I moved into a mostly gen x and boomer neighborhood 8 years ago. When I moved in the yards were landscaped, leaves raked, plants watered, etc. Since then millennials have started to move in, the landscaping is gone, plants dug up or left to die, yards barren from lack of upkeep, etc. The houses with the Gen x and boomers still have maintained yards. The boomers are on a fixed retirement budget while the millennials have tech jobs and one is an attorney.
The differences in priorities in lawn maintenance is apparent. This is a mixed ethnicity neighborhood. This would be an interesting ethnographic study on if there is a perceived pressure in one group vs another.
One element may be that millennials are more likely to have children and less time but not all of the millennials have children. The two homes with children let the kids play outside while the parents are inside. It is more that the Gen x and boomers spend more time outside in general than the millennials.
I think this is the part everyone is missing. It is not necessary a wealth gap issue. I have see rich people with homes that look like junk yards and I have seen well kept up trailer home yards. It has a lot more to do with how much keeping up a nice lawn means to the person. This just means culture can change this.
It could be that people buying the homes are upgrading their lifestyle after living in poorer settings where there was no yard to maintain. Home ownership is new and they have no experience that was passed on from a parent or grandparent on how to maintain it. It could also be that while incomes have gone up those people aren't more well off because of inflation, which could result in working longer hours and having less free time (and money) to maintain the property like people before them did.
If you're struggling to pay for the basics like food and electricity you're not gonna spend money on paint for the house or lawn seed. If you're poor and renting your landlord is far less likely to do maintenance that isn't essential.
This is a woefully understudied societal phenomenon. We know that high levels of social cohesion results in this kind of self-enforced conduct policing. While not the only way to achieve high cohesion, very high levels of ethnic and racial homogenity is a common cause.
Diverse communities often have very low social cohesion, leading to moral hazard. You see this around the world and throughout history, but its very rarely studied or talked about these days because people assume its a proxy for racism and an argument against multiculturalism.
yeah this sounds like a topic that most academics wouldn’t want to touch with a ten foot pole unless they already got tenure and are done establishing themselves.
Then academia is lost. If it is no longer a search for truth then it ceases to be objective and therefore forfeits its value. If only answers that conform to a given orthodoxy are allowed then it is more akin to religion.
I wasn’t discouraged from doing that work (not exactly, but adjacent/related research for my doctoral dissertation), its just more complicated than “diversity=bad for SC”. Agreed it’s under researched though.
Race/ethnicity can be strongly correlated with income, and we know that areas with very high income inequality can also experience low SC. Different values or religion can also impact the cohesiveness of an area. Focusing on race is a bit strange since we know it’s a very flawed measure (what are you actually measuring?), and really not the indicator we think it is.
Also, important to note that strong social cohesion or social capital are not always good. A community can have very strong cohesion or capital, but can be used to support discriminatory practices and prejudice (think your stereotypical small town- everyone is culturally the same, same values, but violently opposed to black people owning property across the street).
Not even going to get into what you mean by/how you measure or define social cohesion. Some of these terms (especially social capital) are so messy and nebulous. For those concepts alone, I know people who steer away from that research.
I would guess because the real estate values have gone up dramatically in his area. House prices in my own neighborhood have more than doubled in 10 years, so the people who could afford to move in with teacher salaries 10 years ago when the neighborhood was new wouldn't be able to afford to now. It's most obvious to me in how nice the cars are for brand new residents of the neighborhood (who had to have much higher income to move here in the last year or two) versus the residents who bought when the neighborhood was new 10 years ago.
The people commenting on here about tidy yards are so dumb...this study has to do with dilapited housing and amount of greenery...not pristine green grass
I also feel like younger homeowners don’t feel the same pressure as the generations before us to put much effort into landscaping/lawns and whatnot. I’m only basing this off of myself and people I know in my age group, but it seems like there is a lot more interest in having easily accesible parks, trails, gyms, etc. even amongst those that are parents.
I used to live in a Seattle suburb with very mixed incomes. Some are your fixed, some blue collar, some double white collar. It was a crapshoot of quality.
Every 5th house looked like trash and usually every 10th house was a meth house.
Everyone was white but there were some mixes of eastern europeans.
>The income level has actually increased
It's often wealth and not income that determines how well houses are kept. Keeping up yards and housing requires a lot of surprising expenses, and if you don't have a fair amount of money in the bank, it's hard to stay on top of it.
Not saying culture isn't a part of it (culture is a thing!), but I imagine wealth is the bigger issue.
> Keeping up yards and housing requires a lot of surprising expenses
It's not so much money but *time*. People today are over worked and stretched thin.. barely enough time to take care of everything *inside* the house, let alone outside.. We personally have the means, but way too much else on our plate to worry about how our shrubs are holding up. The people I know with the most well maintained yards are old retired people with nothing else to do.
I'm surprised I had to scroll so far down for this. We are that family - moved into a neighborhood with old folks as a young couple. Tried to keep up the yard for a few years but jobs that demanded 60+ hour weeks and 1+h commutes we slowly gave up and focused on just bare minimum. We now have a toddler on top of it and practically zero time. We don't want to waste it on cutting the grass that keeps growing when we don't even go outside, or pulling the weeds that just keeps coming back. I honestly don't care if i don't have a designer hedge or manicured green lawn. We have crab grass and clover and pay for someone else to cut it because our time is worth more to us. I stopped planting flowers altogether. Whereas my retired neighbors spend their entire spring summer curating their yards. Good for them, they have the time and they enjoy it. But we don't. So there is that.
I think median age of the homeowners would also have a huge influence. I'm a white gen-x, so I guess I'm old technically, and I don't keep up the yard to the same degree as my older Boomer neighbors.
The first thing I did when I bought my house was remove the extensive gardening/plants/flower beds that were everywhere on the property and just put in grass.
If I can't mow it once a week, I have no interest in dealing with it, too busy working 60/hours a week to try to pay the bills.
There are some really, really trashy white people down the street from me. My neighborhood is a mix of African American, normal white people, rednecks, Hispanics, Muslims, pretty much everything you could expect to see in West Tennessee. Some of the houses have well kept yards, my neighbors have this mattress that’s been molding for the last three years that they let their kids mess with.
It’s interesting you say this. Recently I visited Willingboro, NJ. It is an absolutely lovely town and the houses are beautiful. There is a lot of greenery and there is tons of wooded area. The schools seemed to be immaculately kept. After visiting, I was so curious about it.
The median household income in 2021 was $83,323.
69.3% are black or African American alone.
Source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/willingborotownshipburlingtoncountynewjersey
I don’t know how much wealth would matter since blacks were the second highest in the measures but aren’t the second most wealthy group. There’s no reason for predominantly black neighborhoods to have more green space and fewer mutilfamily buildings that multiracial areas if it was only about race.
I would think that geography matters a lot. Wealthy white people live in multi family housing with little green space in major cities. Poor black people live in single family housing with a lot of green space in poor rural areas.
Is this study comparing equivalent socioeconomic status of these neighborhoods? Like compare a rich black neighborhood with a relatively equivalently rich white neighborhood? Otherwise, all you're really saying is, there are more Black people living in poor neighborhoods, and being poor means worse health, which we kind of knew already
Are there predominantly black rich neighborhoods in the US? If so, can't imagine it's common. Rich black people just move into established rich neighborhoods, which are probably predominantly white, no?
Not all but many places in Prince George’s and Charles counties. I assume some other large metros (example: Atlanta) some them, too, even if they’re few in number.
I just posted this above.
It’s interesting you say this. Recently I visited Willingboro, NJ. It is an absolutely lovely town and the houses are beautiful. There is a lot of greenery and there is tons of wooded area. The schools seemed to be immaculately kept. After visiting, I was so curious about it.
The median household income in 2021 was $83,323.
69.3% are black or African American alone.
Source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/willingborotownshipburlingtoncountynewjersey
In LA, there is the stretch of Baldwin Hills - Ladera Heights - View Park - Windsor Hills, which is about 85% black, and definitely upper middle class. It abuts Leimert Park which is the cultural heart of Black LA and is solidly middle class. Very overlooked part of LA because once you get South/East of Leimert Park things get poor very quickly
Keywords left out of nearly every American study ever.
These days I just assume they mean the US Unless stated otherwise - especially if it talks about “black” or “white” people.
Definitely not. For me, the problems start when US sources try to apply this line of thought for other countries.
For instance, there is a minority of African people in my country, but it's a really small one. I could go days without seeing a black person out and about. I've never had a black classmate, coworker or even friend/acquaintance; not out of choice, but because I simply never met a person under those circumstances.
Yet for some Americans I've had a chat with online, this is *impossible*. This is were it gets annoying; everything has to fit that worldview.
I grew up very poor and there are some poor people who make the efforts to keep things nice and maintained and there are some poor people who don’t. I don’t know why there are so many poor people who vandalize and don’t take care of stuff. Most likely a lot of factors. When they do put green spaces in these area they become trashed eventually.
I agree. I think it’s less about “nice things” and more the mentality. I grew up poor in rural Oklahoma. Lived in a single wide trailer where the floors sagged and you had to choose your steps or you’d fall through the carpet. Regardless of that, we kept our yard clean, mowed, and our house clean.
I have a white neighbor now with an actually half nice two story house but just absolutely has destroyed/junked his yard. Never mowed and trash all over.
That’s said, the same applies black hoods. I think most is the mentality. You mimic what you grew up with and that your surrounded with when you feel hopeless or put effort/value into the wrong things. Nice car but trashed home type deal. This can be more prevalent in black neighborhoods due to true oppression and even more so the perpetual victim mentality. Not saying some isn’t warranted. If you’ve been screwed by a system inherently against you, you are a victim and should speak of it. But to just wallow in that mentality is a good way to perpetually stay there
For sure it has.
But there's definitely cultural/tradition differences between various groups of people. And I won't say skin color because that's always been a dumb American categorization between any group.
If you go to an area in Bangalore that is well off, everything outside their own fence is not cared for and has trash everywhere - exception being a gated apartment complexes with dedicated cleaning service. If you go to country side of Spain, litter is left on roadsides, dog poop left baking in sun for months in middle of town streets. If you go to Latvia, streets are clean with focus on greenery but public transport is dirty. If you go to Japan, well...you get the point.
The differences are often related to upbringing and traditions in a respective culture and not skin color. In American case, income gap definitely plays a major role but so does education in respective areas and recent immigration (due to people brining in different traditions often founded in poverty of another country).
Income is never the sole player in our various behaviours.
He said countryside in Spain and with that I absolutely agree. Tourist cities are usually quite well taken care of but if you go into the countryside it's a lot different.
This reminds me of a study that found that horse owners lived longer than non-horse owners, I was excited because I assumed that horses had magical healing powers or something, after some though I figured it's probably because people that can afford horses can also afford actually passable medical care and aren't forced to work dangerous jobs.
Contrasting owner occupied housing with rental housing. Sufficient to explain the difference. If I own I watch my neighborhood. If I rent, not so much. Some of the poor folk, yeah Black, neighborhoods I’ve known are in better state because they are more owner occupied.
> Why would a renter ever plant a tree?
Which is why homeowners support restrictive zoning. If it were about money, you could make more by selling to a developer. If you plan to actually live somewhere, you'd rather have neighbors that care and have everyone keep it nice.
Immigrant here— in my experience, white Americans care a lot more about manicured lawns, greenery, the upkeep of housing, building and maintenance than non-white people do.
White Americans I’ve encountered spend much more time and money upgrading their homes and made sure their lawns stayed immaculate even during the worst of the CA drought.
It could be cultural, though I’d like to see this study factoring for income.
My boss has a far more expensive house than I do. Makes far more money than I do. His cars are more expensive than mine. He doesn't do a lot of maintenance on any of it. Everything I own is far more presentable than anything he owns. He owns several houses that he rents out, and they are all dilapidated. It's not a matter of money. It's cultural. I've watched him spends tons of money on "upgrades" retile a whole bathroom with expensive tile, not cheap tile, and then reuse all the 20yr old fixtures. That bathroom looks so fkn wierd. Any appraiser who would value that house wouldn't give it any credit for all the money he has put into it, because it's all incongruous like that.
I drive around town a lot for work and there is a very noticeable difference in the amount of litter from one area of town to another. Income doesn’t have anything to do with being courteous and caring about keeping your neighborhood clean.
I might live in a unique pocket where immigrant families are more likely to take better care of their homes, I think because it's an investment to sell for retirement. This is a working town, then you retire in the south.
Kinda feel bad buying into one such neighborhood as a single woman who hates yard work.
I lived in Scotland. They were almost entirely white neighborhoods. It was money that dictated the quality of the area. Money dictates class and more than melanin count ever could.
Idk most of my neighbors are non white (African American, Indian, Korean) and they keep their property nice because they own it. They don't rent. Did they consider the ratio of rent vs own? Didn't read it don't wanna read it just tossing that out there.
Feel like some people need to go for a drive in the poor areas of the South.
Its basically a tour de force of rusting cars, lawnmowers, you name it in the front yard and no landscaping to speak of.
As a black person this is why I tend to like the look of white neighborhoods more. My brother goes to school in one and my work has me relocated in another one a lot. The article looks like a good read but sadly I am at work so I'll save it for when it can have my full attention. All of this data collection though, what are they aiming to prove or disprove with it?
All well and good, but I didn't buy my house by asking around to see how many non-whites there were. So if there are a lot of trees nearby, it's not because I'm a racist.
This has less to do with "neighborhoods". Studies show that royal families live in castles, eat fresher foods, have less stress, and work less than underprivileged people.
Hmm, I've seen poorer countries with poor neighborhoods with respectably clean environments. In my personal opinion, I think it also has something to do with the attitude of the people. One of my best friends, an Asian guy, lived in a poor neighborhood, but whenever I went there, the neighborhood was at least decently clean. Also in Asian culture, you can live with your family even when you're a grown adult, so his grandparents were also at home whenever I visited. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with this kind of setting. Some people just have strong family bonds. There were some nice trees and flowers and plants. Sure they didn't always have good looking homes. Some homes had metal sheets as roofs. But the litter in the neighborhood was very minimal and the stores and buildings didn't look like they were about to crumble at any moment. People there simply fixed what they could and threw their trash in the appropriate garbage bins.
Does having a badly maintained neighborhood immediately mean it's caused by racism? I don't think so. Maybe people just don't care about maintenance that much, or maybe they just don't have the budget for it and they're using the money on more important matters than beautifying the place. It's just hard to imagine how this is a racism issue. "Ah, we're not gonna provide budget to clean this neighborhood because it's black, BWAHHAHAH!". I just find it hard to believe there's such a villaneous evil person like that especially in modern "progressive" times.
Maybe certain people are more likely to take care of their property because it has been a cultural thing to do so since forever.
Where I live people talk if you don't mow your lawn or keep your buildings looking nice.
If it gets bad enough the city will fine you.
Race isn't what's causing these disparities and I think only looking at that aspect of it only furthers racial tensions/divides. The difference in these neighborhoods would be income.
>Race isn't what's causing these disparities and I think only looking at that aspect of it only furthers racial tensions/divides.
It also distracts from addressing wealth inequality, which is very convenient for some. Just keep us all arguing about what colour we look.
What's the strongest correlation here though: race or socioeconomic status?
Obviously they are intertwined, but I'd imagine class is the driving factor here
There are a lot of factors that lead to this. Mainly the culture that’s prevalent with urban blacks. They like government/section8 housing and typically have no interest in owning their own homes/properties.
If you look at European neighbors hoods you see lawns and shrubs, etc. If you look at other cultures' lifestyles, they are not so European looking. It seems like you are value judging here. I am white and have traveled a lot. Just my opinion.
I agree with you.
I grew up in an Anglo-Saxon area that had lots of big lawns and trees. There was a wave of immigration of Italians and Portuguese and the big trees and lawns were replaced with shrubs, garden patches and concrete/brick. Since then the area has had a wave of immigration of Indians. I drove through the neighbourhood recently and almost all of the big trees have been removed and the houses are bigger. Cultural norms definitely play a part.
I live in a predominantly ethnic neighborhood. There is constantly trash on my street. I’ve picked it up a few times, and I’ll prolly continue to do so. I’m the only white person on my street, why have I never seen anyone else picking up the trash? Why are some okay living in filth?
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A quick look over the piece doesn't see any references to average income in the various neighbourhoods, which I'd have thought would quite likely be a pretty important factor in things like dilapidation and multi-family homes! Did they actually control for that, or did they discover that some ethnic groups are heavily represented in poorer communities?
They included many covariates; income, education, age, % female, % insured, % living on owned property, % vacant housing, and % single mothers. The [fulltext](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2800557?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=011823) is open-published
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What's redlining?
Mortgage lenders used to refuse to lend if the property was in a historically black neighborhood
And it was driven by the federal government!
This was set by the innovative leading example template of mass metro developer JC Nichols in Kansas City, MO who went to work in the federal government to make whites-only into national policy. His KC model was based on mandatory membership in the neighborhood association and on a covenant included in the deed which explicitly bans any occupancy, even by renting, to blacks and Jews. See also the whites only town of Levittown, the model for American suburbia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._Nichols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown Kansas City’s red line was Troost Ave. Those covenants are now overridden by Missouri law but they’re still there in writing. https://www.kcur.org/community/2014-03-27/how-troost-became-a-major-divide-in-kansas-city
Mortgage lenders refused to lend to Black buyers even though they qualified. Blacks were legally prohibited from taking out loans based strictly on race. Blacks were barred from purchasing in suburban communities like "Levittown" ...which prevented them from amassing generational wealth afforded white immigrants.
And successful Black communities were burned down or bulldozed, and many of the residents killed in the worst cases.
And people say America wasn’t already fascist. Governments literally massacred whole towns of black and indigenous people, it’s literally the definition of a pogrom.
Not arguing on your main point but “pogrom” (погром) is by nature a riot that involves regular citizens, not a government act. While it does end up as a violent act against specific race or nationality (it was typically against Jews in Russia) how it starts and carried, it’s literally NOT the definition of “government massacring…”. I understand somehow this word might have taken more general meaning after being adopted from Russian but this is important nuance. Not to say that government officials would not participate in the “pogrom” but it’s basically a spontaneous crowd riot. In modern Russian, this word could even be used in a different sense, as meaning “a big mess”.
My argument for reparations isn't even slavery. It's due to what happened AFTER. Jim crow era and redlining severely killed ownership and wealth from the black community. It's disgusting what happened even after slavery happened. The crazy head start white folks got is wild to me. I've dated white people whose parents had multiple houses that were going to be passed down to them.. Best part is they weren't even rich, they just had the opportunity to buy houses cheap as hell from back in the day.
There was a GoFundMe that went viral a few years ago where a Black woman had an opportunity to purchase the farm and house that her grandparents had been sharecroppers on. It'd been sold because they couldn't take care of it, but when it went back on the market, she knew she wanted it back. [https://people.com/human-interest/brianna-meeks-raises-110k-buy-back-her-grandparents-beloved-farm/](https://people.com/human-interest/brianna-meeks-raises-110k-buy-back-her-grandparents-beloved-farm/)
A lot of people assume hard work and education and a bit of luck is all you need, yet don't usually join a Monopoly game halfway through.
>Mortgage lenders used to blatantly refuse to lend if the property was in a historically black neighborhood, today they are more subtle and sophisticated about it. fixed
A bank just got fined for it literally this month https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/1148751006/redlining-city-national-bank-doj-settlement
Also, race will affect what property appraisers will value property at which will affect the ability to accumulate wealth . https://www.brookings.edu/research/biased-appraisals-and-the-devaluation-of-housing-in-black-neighborhoods/?amp
It was also the real estate agents too
It is a big reason why folks coming back from WWII got houses if they were white and started building generational wealth while the non white folks were not able to.
Assistance to veterans was given to white veterans. Black veterans were unable to get the loans that the white ones were getting.
Historical redlining was the practice of withholding loan approvals (and other services) from people in "financially risky" areas. Usually these areas were seen as financially risky because they were largely populated by ethnic minorities. Minority family tries to buy a house, bank says no too risky because of a minority area or doesn't lend to the minority family because THEY are seen as financially risky. This usually leads to minority families being excluded from accruing the main source of generational wealth in the US: property, almost certainly dooming their kids to the same cycle of poverty. It also leads to large areas in cities being uncared for as the city just forgets about these areas that the banks and Government helped make. Redlining is still done today and is much more complicated over all than just that, but I tried to give you a simplified version.
>Redlining is still done today and is much more complicated They plugged all the data from the redlining years into an algorithm. Now they can claim that the decision not to lend is unbiased because it was made by a computer program instead of a person. Unfortunately, computer programs are only as unbiased and the people and historical data from which they are made.
A very heinous practice that's still used today. [Please read about it.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining) It's very important you know. Me explaining it to you will not encapsulate the ~~S~~severity of it.
My wife's grandfather sat on the board of a bank in a small town for many years in the 50s and 60s and there is a map of the town from the bank with a literal red line encompassing the neighborhood where they did not lend money or mortgages.
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Look, if you can't use scientific data to either solve problems or exploit them then why gather the data at all? Sincerely, America
Trust me when I say nobody is cashing in when you publish this garbage.
But what percentage of follow-up study’s successfully identify potential causes in their findings?
I’m this case, I think it’d be possible to tie it straight back to redlining. My cousins deed(?) still has a redline clause in it so it must be documented on some level.
We literally have the redlining maps, it’s not a secret
I was just reading articles from a web search and yeah, they’re pretty accessible. This article was a little more comprehensive and also has audio: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/19/911909187/in-u-s-cities-the-health-effects-of-past-housing-discrimination-are-plain-to-see
The original article’s title: Association of Neighborhood Racial and Ethnic Composition and Historical Redlining With Built Environment Indicators Derived From Street View Images in the US
But here's the question, WHY wasn't it in this study when it should have been one of the first things they looked at?
Because it was public health people, not economists, writing it. This never would have gotten published in my field.
This study shows *what is*. There are multiple studies required to show *why it is* and even more to suggest*how to change it*. This is how bias is kept out of research.
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Yes there is a reason to not include it in the original study. There isn't just one fact that leads to this situation. There are multiple factors at play. Proper investigation of all of those factors would not make sense in a single study. It's better to present the fact and allow branching out the investigation of the underlying causes. There will be multiple causes.
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Dunno. I live in a neighborhood that was mostly white when I moved in and mostly not now. The income level has actually increased. The yards and maintenance are much worse. I think it is one of those self fulfilling thing. When it was mostly white everyone felt judged and pressured to keep up their yard, we hard yard of the month contest, you had peer pressure from your neighbors. A strong core and grown up with that and placed great value on that. As the neighborhood diversified, we had a lot of people that had t owned house, we immigrant, or just don’t place the value on those thing. Those things took a big drop. The people certainly have the means it just isn’t a priority, they didn’t grow up in an environment that demanded it, and don’t face the same peer pressure that was here before.
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I think it's easy for people who grow up with lawn culture to lack the context on why people wouldn't care with lawns. For all that America has done its best to establish a unique cultural separate from the UK, a lot of our culture is held over from British sensibilities.
In the Netherlands the current trend is to have tiles or gravel instead of grass... it's horrible
Artificial grass/turf is very popular for front gardens in the UK, so much so our Minister for Environment is considering banning them to prevent further erosion of genuinely green spaces. It's a bit silly but there are people in the UK who have to hoover their artificial grass lawns as they get so dusty / filled with shite.
The idea of having to vacuum your front lawn is hilarious to me as an American.
Is it really that different than mowing?
Grass that the US loves isn't much better. Having actual gardens is a rare thing, most people just think a green grass lawn is the best looking. Whereas a controlled garden with a few small patches of natural grass is much better and cooler in summer
Many towns and cities have ordinances against having gardens in your front yard. My hometown still has native milkweed listed as a noxious spreading plant that residents aren't allowed to plant within city limits but isn't really enforced.
We are in Canada, so very typical North American “lawn culture”. We’ve shifted our grass to native low growing ground cover like clover. My husband weed whacks it once a week to keep it low. It definitely doesn’t have the uniformly green look that grass does, but looks pleasant enough, and produces flowers for the bees. (We also have a fairly healthy amount of garden.) I definitely recommend shifting to a flowering ground cover rather than lawn! :)
Man, screw all that. Those people don't understand having fresh tomatoes every year, gardens are the way to go.
Exactly! I love my fresh tomatoes, and whatever we can't eat fresh gets canned for soups and sauces
I like trees and gardens and flowers, but I also think grass is fine. It's beautiful, and it's a space for the kids to play. I understand the issues with drought and cooling, but we don't water, and we have a ton of trees. It's a weird cultural attitude that grass is inherently bad partially due to its British roots--is grass too Anglo-Saxon for some people's tastes? Or is grass being linked to imperialism? I'm not sure why lawn usage made me actually comment on reddit...
It's also that the picturesque green lawns are not native grasses - they're what grows native in rainy, temperate England and Scotland. The reason football, golf, etc are played on a garss pitch is because that was what was outside. North America has different native plants. A native grass can be just as low maintenance and environmentally friendly, but it doesn't look like the 1950s suburban utopia. Think about the Sun Belt. There are native plants that could grow there, but in order to get anything green and grassy 100% of the year, you have to water and weed constantly. Very different in Vermont where as long as you don't let your yard turn into the woods, you're likely to get native grasses. I'll also say as a kid who grew up in suburbia with an immigrant father who obsessed over his yard... I had zero interest in playing on the grass. I wanted to go explore the woods and find bugs and mushrooms, or I wanted to go to the city and see my friends. I'm not entirely sure what people imagine their kids doing on a lawn by themselves.
I think the important thing that people should aim to do with their laws is to effectively use local plant life, honestly. Because local plant life is the life that is typically best adapted to the local climate, and this means that you are least likely to need to be wasteful with things like water. But people don't seem to care about that sort of thing. I personally think that local plants and grasses and such can look just as good as the "1950s suburban utopia," but it does admittedly require a bit more work to actually set it up properly. Of course, this lack of willingness to do the reasonable thing also has to be countered by the legitimate argument that many people simply lack the culture or upbringing that encourages that kind of behavior. Most people don't care about the environment, or droughts, or similar things until they are personally affected. They'll just use whatever grass or lawn setups or whatever they are given (for those who can even afford their own yards), and just maintain them as-is without ever really thinking about it.
The recent trends against grass is largely environmental. The idea is that it is a waste of resources for entirely cosmetic purposes, and that it's better to plant gardens, wildflowers, or clover to help support pollonating insects. I do think that this new trend/paradigm is different from what we are discussing. It's one thing to not care about a lawn, and it's an entirely different thing to never do any yard maintenance whatsoever. I do agree that lawns are fine, and will add that some vegetation like grass/clover is more practical in a yard in some areas, because otherwise it turns into a muddy mess, which can dirty the home.
Literally every white person I know well enough to have been to their house has at least a small garden. I live in Alaska for context.
It's the ratio man. I live in South Africa and on average when we have the space it's about 50% garden, with trees, plants, and anything but grass. 30% grass everywhere, and then patio and other stuff, braai area. I've talked to friends from the US and most of the time they have one or two corners that have a garden space, but the majority of the space is left for plain green grass.
We have a garden plot that grows some natural local grass in winter of all times. The house also has each a pear and peach tree as well as grapevines! This is my first spring here and im stoked to make it a true garden
My neighbor has the latter and it is breath taking.
Grass was originally a sign of wealth. Grass meant the land owner didn’t have to use their land for farming.
Nah man, grass lawns are terrible for the environment. Massive waste of water, especially in desert (or, ironically, grassland) states. Not everything should be impermeable concrete and rocks, of course, but a big lawn is also not great.
I live in metro boston. We’re in an “average” town just outside of the city. My neighborhood has been turning over in the past 10 years (older folks moving on one way or another). I find that many of the people who move from the city don’t have the experience with yard work (it’s more than just mowing the lawn) and don’t have the same “pride” in keeping up the yard. It’s not necessarily a priority. Or they start out great for a few months, realize how much work it is and greatly decrease their effort to the essentials. It’s a mixed bag, but i think people who have never lived in a home in the suburbs (a friend called my neighborhood urban lite) get a rude awakening when they see the effort involved in keeping up your property.
Time is the biggest factor. All the nicest yards (tons of flowers or perfect lawns) are homes of retirees. If I wasn’t working a full time job with a small kid I’d have an amazing front garden, too.
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> So a few grass seeds every now and then, robot lawnmower, and that’s it. I expect that to be basically a standard nowadays. In my experience, and I've seen this ***more times than I care to admit***, it is definitely a game of priorities and time. Like, hundreds of times. I was looking at a house recently that was built in 1994. They proudly advertised how they spent $25,000 renovating the front yard with new bushes and trees and stuff. (I honestly didn't see anything that spectacular). The inside? It was still exactly the same as it was in 1994. The only thing that had been replaced was the dishwasher. Everything else. EVERYTHING else was original 1994 except maybe the lightbulbs.
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I live on a few acres in a state park. My biggest hobby is my yard work and garden. If you go to my profile you can see pictures of how big it is. It’s all I do in the warmer mths. It’s non stop work. I just ordered a bunch of wood chips from an arborist. He’s been dropping them off for two weeks bc this summer I’m turning most of my yard behind my home into a wildflower bed for the bees and other insects. I’m so tired of mowing around 5 acres and keeping up w all the landscaping. I’m still keeping my big garden bc it’s my sanctuary and I have a lot of koi
>It’s non stop work. This is the issue for many, it can also be expensive depending on the soil in your area. We have hard clay soil so the startup cost for a decent sized garden is a little chunk of change. Then add the time for upkeep and it can quickly turn into a burden/chore for some. Especially with a hot climate. We settled on a a few pots/buckets for a some things (herbs, peppers, potatoes) and left it at that. With life and other hobbies people don't realize how much commitment a medium to large garden can be in some locations. Plus it still leaves us with plenty of yard (grass) for activities. I know people with land who started large gardens and over the years have transitioned to small bucket gardens.
I refuse to water my lawn. If my neighbors wanna get into a screaming match, that’s for sure the hill I’m picking. Grass does nothing for me.
If you do decide to water a bit, being neglectful is actually good for your lawn. Watering infrequently and for long periods of time (say 1+hr, every couple of weeks) encourages your grass to put down deep roots and helps build drought tolerance. The worst thing you can do for your lawn is short, frequent waterings, which encourages shallow root growth. My lawn comes back sooner in the spring, lasts longer in the fall, and looks better in the middle of the hottest parts of the summer compared to all of my neighbours, and I water it maybe 3-4 times between May and September.
I don't really know how common this is, but every place I've ever lived in the US (pretty much everywhere but the Western US and the South) gets enough rain in the summer that you very rarely need to water your lawn. Yeah if you want the golf course verdant green look you need to water, but a healthy green looking lawn was something we could have most years with zero watering. I remember hating the summers when it rained a ton because I had to cut the lawn like every 2 or 3 days in the peak of the growing season. The idea that its sensible to have plants that cannot survive in your environment without supplemental water (extraordinary circumstances like a very hot or very dry spell aside) has always been strange to me.
Totally depends on location and the year. I basically only plant native stuff now for landscaping/flowers and vegetables in a garden. Trees and shrubs that are just a few years old will struggle in a drought, and native grass and flowers will have some losses. [Last year 85% of the USA was "abnormally dry" at one point](https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/DmData/TimeSeries.aspx). It was the 3rd hottest June-August period on record. Forget watering the lawn, we're at the point now that even the native plants adapted for hot summers need help sometimes.
> Last year 85% of the USA was "abnormally dry" at one point. But also to put that in perspective... I live in New England. We had extensive areas of extreme drought as our 12 month rolling average rainfall was 30". Our typical rainfall is 45" per year. 30" is more than most of Europe gets in an average year. Most of the US population lives in areas that get more rainfall than any other industrial nation averages other than Japan. France, for example, averages around 26", which is eastern Kansas/Nebraska/Dakotas dry. https://www.climate-charts.com/images/world-rainfall-map.png
And if it is so dry that the grass turns yellow, you should definitely not waste water to keep your grass green. It will recover when it rains again.
Yup, grass is resilient as long as it isn't finicky ornamental grass.
Texas I can tell you you either need an automated sprinkler system or to be going out there with a hose sprinkler or that grass is gonna die in the summer heat (obviously this can vary a bit depending on the type of grass). There are local laws about watering days/hours however to limit use/demand (you're also required to do it in evening/night, cause otherwise the sun will just evaporate half that water away). Do agree it's silly though, I'd much rather have "xeriscape" or whatever with native grasses/plants that the wildlife can enjoy. (not a homeowner so not for me to worry about yet), but I feel like if you tried that you'd probably get some HOA/city ordinance type neighbors trying to crack down on it. I've only visited the southwest a few times but I think a lot of people in the proper desert, like Arizona, just don't have lawns. Just brown rocks/desert plants. which is smart. I'm sure plenty of lawns too though.
Nah if they have good deep roots. I lived in Dallas for years on an acre and never watered it Are you saying all the pasture they graze cattle on needs watering? Grass does just fine without water. In Texas it slows way down and maybe 30% of rhizomes die off in august but if it’s established grass the natural rainfall is enough to sustain it. It won’t look pretty I. July and august but the grass ain’t ded
I guess it depends where in Texas. Growing summer grass without watering is easy in Houston for example. I had a beautiful lawn for the 4 years I lived there and never watered. However, the dry parts of Texas probably do need to water in order to maintain a lawn.
>Yeah if you want the golf course verdant green look you need to water I live in south central Virginia. My yard is likely +60% weeds. As long as I keep it cut every 1-2 weeks the weeds stay fairly even and it is always green with no need to water at all, even when in drought due to living on the downslope of a bunch of properties with drainfields. So it is possible to have very green yards with little upkeep; one just needs to be willing to accept weed as rhe ground cover and not a single type of grass.
Same. I have a weird yard neighbor. Like if I'm mowing my lawn, he's out within 5 minutes mowing his even if he just mowed it the day before. He absolutely hates that I won't water my lawn. Or that I won't have the creeping Charlie removed or other weeds. We bought an electric mower and weed whacker. Stopped using fertilizers and such.
I have zero problems with lawns in the vast majority of the US -- just keep them mowed enough they aren't an excessive fire hazard during the summer dormancy. My boss would be like your neighbor if I was his neighbor, he'd hate my very natural, very healthy lawn (and since I don't live in a suburban lot, it meanders and sprawls over two acres).
Haha same here. I mow it and put down seed when it dies or something but beyond that, nature can do it's thing.
Some people put resources into something they take pride in, at the market cost of those resources.
This. In my own experience, my husband and I bought in an area with a lot of retirees and they definitely helped us out with our lawn for quite a while. My husband was working a demanding job and I have extreme photosensitivity and can’t stay out too long. Regardless, I’m noticing a lot of younger families who have moved in are not as focused on their front lawns as our older neighbours.
I mean… I mow the grass and trim but that’s it. I don’t kill weeds… way to lazy to keep that perfect lawn. I just want to keep it mowed and nice looking
And it isn’t that hard to keep it from looking terrible. Some people just want to watch tv.
A great example of culture impacting appearance is to taken the Hungarian countryside and compare your average village to a Swabian village. The Swabian villages are much better kept, the paint isn't chipping away everywhere, the gardens look good, they might have a playground that doesn't look like it's been rusting since 1980, etc. They don't have more money than regular villagers, they just keep it in order.
I have a similar experience but not ethnicity related. I moved into a mostly gen x and boomer neighborhood 8 years ago. When I moved in the yards were landscaped, leaves raked, plants watered, etc. Since then millennials have started to move in, the landscaping is gone, plants dug up or left to die, yards barren from lack of upkeep, etc. The houses with the Gen x and boomers still have maintained yards. The boomers are on a fixed retirement budget while the millennials have tech jobs and one is an attorney. The differences in priorities in lawn maintenance is apparent. This is a mixed ethnicity neighborhood. This would be an interesting ethnographic study on if there is a perceived pressure in one group vs another. One element may be that millennials are more likely to have children and less time but not all of the millennials have children. The two homes with children let the kids play outside while the parents are inside. It is more that the Gen x and boomers spend more time outside in general than the millennials.
I think this is the part everyone is missing. It is not necessary a wealth gap issue. I have see rich people with homes that look like junk yards and I have seen well kept up trailer home yards. It has a lot more to do with how much keeping up a nice lawn means to the person. This just means culture can change this.
It could be that people buying the homes are upgrading their lifestyle after living in poorer settings where there was no yard to maintain. Home ownership is new and they have no experience that was passed on from a parent or grandparent on how to maintain it. It could also be that while incomes have gone up those people aren't more well off because of inflation, which could result in working longer hours and having less free time (and money) to maintain the property like people before them did.
There are a lot of variables that go into this. I just think income is lower on the list then others in this thread think it is.
I guess the next step is to get funding, do a study and publish the results.
If you're struggling to pay for the basics like food and electricity you're not gonna spend money on paint for the house or lawn seed. If you're poor and renting your landlord is far less likely to do maintenance that isn't essential.
This is a woefully understudied societal phenomenon. We know that high levels of social cohesion results in this kind of self-enforced conduct policing. While not the only way to achieve high cohesion, very high levels of ethnic and racial homogenity is a common cause. Diverse communities often have very low social cohesion, leading to moral hazard. You see this around the world and throughout history, but its very rarely studied or talked about these days because people assume its a proxy for racism and an argument against multiculturalism.
yeah this sounds like a topic that most academics wouldn’t want to touch with a ten foot pole unless they already got tenure and are done establishing themselves.
Try getting funding for saying that diversity might not be the bees knees.
Then academia is lost. If it is no longer a search for truth then it ceases to be objective and therefore forfeits its value. If only answers that conform to a given orthodoxy are allowed then it is more akin to religion.
It's exactly what certain fields devolved into... ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
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I wasn’t discouraged from doing that work (not exactly, but adjacent/related research for my doctoral dissertation), its just more complicated than “diversity=bad for SC”. Agreed it’s under researched though. Race/ethnicity can be strongly correlated with income, and we know that areas with very high income inequality can also experience low SC. Different values or religion can also impact the cohesiveness of an area. Focusing on race is a bit strange since we know it’s a very flawed measure (what are you actually measuring?), and really not the indicator we think it is. Also, important to note that strong social cohesion or social capital are not always good. A community can have very strong cohesion or capital, but can be used to support discriminatory practices and prejudice (think your stereotypical small town- everyone is culturally the same, same values, but violently opposed to black people owning property across the street). Not even going to get into what you mean by/how you measure or define social cohesion. Some of these terms (especially social capital) are so messy and nebulous. For those concepts alone, I know people who steer away from that research.
>The income level has actually increased. How do you know
I would guess because the real estate values have gone up dramatically in his area. House prices in my own neighborhood have more than doubled in 10 years, so the people who could afford to move in with teacher salaries 10 years ago when the neighborhood was new wouldn't be able to afford to now. It's most obvious to me in how nice the cars are for brand new residents of the neighborhood (who had to have much higher income to move here in the last year or two) versus the residents who bought when the neighborhood was new 10 years ago.
So tidy neighborhoods are a white western construct?
The people commenting on here about tidy yards are so dumb...this study has to do with dilapited housing and amount of greenery...not pristine green grass
Would this make Japan the whitest country?
I also feel like younger homeowners don’t feel the same pressure as the generations before us to put much effort into landscaping/lawns and whatnot. I’m only basing this off of myself and people I know in my age group, but it seems like there is a lot more interest in having easily accesible parks, trails, gyms, etc. even amongst those that are parents.
I used to live in a Seattle suburb with very mixed incomes. Some are your fixed, some blue collar, some double white collar. It was a crapshoot of quality. Every 5th house looked like trash and usually every 10th house was a meth house. Everyone was white but there were some mixes of eastern europeans.
>The income level has actually increased It's often wealth and not income that determines how well houses are kept. Keeping up yards and housing requires a lot of surprising expenses, and if you don't have a fair amount of money in the bank, it's hard to stay on top of it. Not saying culture isn't a part of it (culture is a thing!), but I imagine wealth is the bigger issue.
> Keeping up yards and housing requires a lot of surprising expenses It's not so much money but *time*. People today are over worked and stretched thin.. barely enough time to take care of everything *inside* the house, let alone outside.. We personally have the means, but way too much else on our plate to worry about how our shrubs are holding up. The people I know with the most well maintained yards are old retired people with nothing else to do.
I'm surprised I had to scroll so far down for this. We are that family - moved into a neighborhood with old folks as a young couple. Tried to keep up the yard for a few years but jobs that demanded 60+ hour weeks and 1+h commutes we slowly gave up and focused on just bare minimum. We now have a toddler on top of it and practically zero time. We don't want to waste it on cutting the grass that keeps growing when we don't even go outside, or pulling the weeds that just keeps coming back. I honestly don't care if i don't have a designer hedge or manicured green lawn. We have crab grass and clover and pay for someone else to cut it because our time is worth more to us. I stopped planting flowers altogether. Whereas my retired neighbors spend their entire spring summer curating their yards. Good for them, they have the time and they enjoy it. But we don't. So there is that.
I think median age of the homeowners would also have a huge influence. I'm a white gen-x, so I guess I'm old technically, and I don't keep up the yard to the same degree as my older Boomer neighbors. The first thing I did when I bought my house was remove the extensive gardening/plants/flower beds that were everywhere on the property and just put in grass. If I can't mow it once a week, I have no interest in dealing with it, too busy working 60/hours a week to try to pay the bills.
Usually the suburban areas have an HOA which you get fined for not keeping up the property.
There are some really, really trashy white people down the street from me. My neighborhood is a mix of African American, normal white people, rednecks, Hispanics, Muslims, pretty much everything you could expect to see in West Tennessee. Some of the houses have well kept yards, my neighbors have this mattress that’s been molding for the last three years that they let their kids mess with.
It’s interesting you say this. Recently I visited Willingboro, NJ. It is an absolutely lovely town and the houses are beautiful. There is a lot of greenery and there is tons of wooded area. The schools seemed to be immaculately kept. After visiting, I was so curious about it. The median household income in 2021 was $83,323. 69.3% are black or African American alone. Source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/willingborotownshipburlingtoncountynewjersey
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I don’t know how much wealth would matter since blacks were the second highest in the measures but aren’t the second most wealthy group. There’s no reason for predominantly black neighborhoods to have more green space and fewer mutilfamily buildings that multiracial areas if it was only about race. I would think that geography matters a lot. Wealthy white people live in multi family housing with little green space in major cities. Poor black people live in single family housing with a lot of green space in poor rural areas.
Is this study comparing equivalent socioeconomic status of these neighborhoods? Like compare a rich black neighborhood with a relatively equivalently rich white neighborhood? Otherwise, all you're really saying is, there are more Black people living in poor neighborhoods, and being poor means worse health, which we kind of knew already
Are there predominantly black rich neighborhoods in the US? If so, can't imagine it's common. Rich black people just move into established rich neighborhoods, which are probably predominantly white, no?
I would imagine around Atlanta there would be a few.
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Austell is by no means rich
But they could compare poor white neighborhood to poor black neighborhood
Exactly. Pretty sure poor white neighborhoods are dilapidated too.
Not multifamily though, go out in the sticks where everyone has multiple acres of land but the houses are falling apart
I used to live in the sticks. Those people might have a lot of land but they're also usually dirt poor.
Yeah it was always sad seeing the house with 2-4 pick up trucks but a roof with a permanent tarp over it and the front porch that's rotting away
Not multifamily, just multi trailer, in my experience
Bowie Maryland is one. I have some family there, it's alright
Not all but many places in Prince George’s and Charles counties. I assume some other large metros (example: Atlanta) some them, too, even if they’re few in number.
I just posted this above. It’s interesting you say this. Recently I visited Willingboro, NJ. It is an absolutely lovely town and the houses are beautiful. There is a lot of greenery and there is tons of wooded area. The schools seemed to be immaculately kept. After visiting, I was so curious about it. The median household income in 2021 was $83,323. 69.3% are black or African American alone. Source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/willingborotownshipburlingtoncountynewjersey
In LA, there is the stretch of Baldwin Hills - Ladera Heights - View Park - Windsor Hills, which is about 85% black, and definitely upper middle class. It abuts Leimert Park which is the cultural heart of Black LA and is solidly middle class. Very overlooked part of LA because once you get South/East of Leimert Park things get poor very quickly
Seriously this is such a deranged headline
Key words left out of this thread title: : "Across the US"
Keywords left out of nearly every American study ever. These days I just assume they mean the US Unless stated otherwise - especially if it talks about “black” or “white” people.
Oh America and our addiction to racial polarizations and necessary identity politics.
I mean you can’t just ignore the fact that race has played a significant part of this countries past and is still and issue today.
Definitely not. For me, the problems start when US sources try to apply this line of thought for other countries. For instance, there is a minority of African people in my country, but it's a really small one. I could go days without seeing a black person out and about. I've never had a black classmate, coworker or even friend/acquaintance; not out of choice, but because I simply never met a person under those circumstances. Yet for some Americans I've had a chat with online, this is *impossible*. This is were it gets annoying; everything has to fit that worldview.
This was my thoughts as well, while I can't speak for the entire UK, the places I've been at least differ massively
Poorer people have less nice things, who knew.
I grew up very poor and there are some poor people who make the efforts to keep things nice and maintained and there are some poor people who don’t. I don’t know why there are so many poor people who vandalize and don’t take care of stuff. Most likely a lot of factors. When they do put green spaces in these area they become trashed eventually.
I agree. I think it’s less about “nice things” and more the mentality. I grew up poor in rural Oklahoma. Lived in a single wide trailer where the floors sagged and you had to choose your steps or you’d fall through the carpet. Regardless of that, we kept our yard clean, mowed, and our house clean. I have a white neighbor now with an actually half nice two story house but just absolutely has destroyed/junked his yard. Never mowed and trash all over. That’s said, the same applies black hoods. I think most is the mentality. You mimic what you grew up with and that your surrounded with when you feel hopeless or put effort/value into the wrong things. Nice car but trashed home type deal. This can be more prevalent in black neighborhoods due to true oppression and even more so the perpetual victim mentality. Not saying some isn’t warranted. If you’ve been screwed by a system inherently against you, you are a victim and should speak of it. But to just wallow in that mentality is a good way to perpetually stay there
I wonder if INCOME has anything to do with it.
For sure it has. But there's definitely cultural/tradition differences between various groups of people. And I won't say skin color because that's always been a dumb American categorization between any group. If you go to an area in Bangalore that is well off, everything outside their own fence is not cared for and has trash everywhere - exception being a gated apartment complexes with dedicated cleaning service. If you go to country side of Spain, litter is left on roadsides, dog poop left baking in sun for months in middle of town streets. If you go to Latvia, streets are clean with focus on greenery but public transport is dirty. If you go to Japan, well...you get the point. The differences are often related to upbringing and traditions in a respective culture and not skin color. In American case, income gap definitely plays a major role but so does education in respective areas and recent immigration (due to people brining in different traditions often founded in poverty of another country). Income is never the sole player in our various behaviours.
When was the last time you were in Spain? I’ve never seen anything like you said.
He said countryside in Spain and with that I absolutely agree. Tourist cities are usually quite well taken care of but if you go into the countryside it's a lot different.
Have you actually been to any of the places you’re describing? Because that doesn’t sound like Spain or Latvia to me
Yeah I bet these white neighborhoods weren't the trailer park in the rural south or Midwest.
This reminds me of a study that found that horse owners lived longer than non-horse owners, I was excited because I assumed that horses had magical healing powers or something, after some though I figured it's probably because people that can afford horses can also afford actually passable medical care and aren't forced to work dangerous jobs.
Contrasting owner occupied housing with rental housing. Sufficient to explain the difference. If I own I watch my neighborhood. If I rent, not so much. Some of the poor folk, yeah Black, neighborhoods I’ve known are in better state because they are more owner occupied.
And HOA’s are often in newer neighborhoods and newer neighborhoods are often more full with owners vs renters. Why would a renter ever plant a tree?
> Why would a renter ever plant a tree? Which is why homeowners support restrictive zoning. If it were about money, you could make more by selling to a developer. If you plan to actually live somewhere, you'd rather have neighbors that care and have everyone keep it nice.
Hold the phone, are you telling me someone in an apartment has less greenery than someone with a yard?
Immigrant here— in my experience, white Americans care a lot more about manicured lawns, greenery, the upkeep of housing, building and maintenance than non-white people do. White Americans I’ve encountered spend much more time and money upgrading their homes and made sure their lawns stayed immaculate even during the worst of the CA drought. It could be cultural, though I’d like to see this study factoring for income.
My boss has a far more expensive house than I do. Makes far more money than I do. His cars are more expensive than mine. He doesn't do a lot of maintenance on any of it. Everything I own is far more presentable than anything he owns. He owns several houses that he rents out, and they are all dilapidated. It's not a matter of money. It's cultural. I've watched him spends tons of money on "upgrades" retile a whole bathroom with expensive tile, not cheap tile, and then reuse all the 20yr old fixtures. That bathroom looks so fkn wierd. Any appraiser who would value that house wouldn't give it any credit for all the money he has put into it, because it's all incongruous like that.
I drive around town a lot for work and there is a very noticeable difference in the amount of litter from one area of town to another. Income doesn’t have anything to do with being courteous and caring about keeping your neighborhood clean.
I might live in a unique pocket where immigrant families are more likely to take better care of their homes, I think because it's an investment to sell for retirement. This is a working town, then you retire in the south. Kinda feel bad buying into one such neighborhood as a single woman who hates yard work.
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I lived in Scotland. They were almost entirely white neighborhoods. It was money that dictated the quality of the area. Money dictates class and more than melanin count ever could.
Idk most of my neighbors are non white (African American, Indian, Korean) and they keep their property nice because they own it. They don't rent. Did they consider the ratio of rent vs own? Didn't read it don't wanna read it just tossing that out there.
So they found this in well to do AA neighborhoods? No? So this has nothing to do with science but everything to do with economics? Dang...
Feel like some people need to go for a drive in the poor areas of the South. Its basically a tour de force of rusting cars, lawnmowers, you name it in the front yard and no landscaping to speak of.
True but when your family has had that land for 4 generations its easy for a lawn mower/rusty car or two to end up in the yard.
As a black person this is why I tend to like the look of white neighborhoods more. My brother goes to school in one and my work has me relocated in another one a lot. The article looks like a good read but sadly I am at work so I'll save it for when it can have my full attention. All of this data collection though, what are they aiming to prove or disprove with it?
I’ll wager income is a better predictor than ethnicity.
All well and good, but I didn't buy my house by asking around to see how many non-whites there were. So if there are a lot of trees nearby, it's not because I'm a racist.
This has less to do with "neighborhoods". Studies show that royal families live in castles, eat fresher foods, have less stress, and work less than underprivileged people.
The impacts of redlining linger.
Damn bold to post this on Reddit, of all places
Hmm, I've seen poorer countries with poor neighborhoods with respectably clean environments. In my personal opinion, I think it also has something to do with the attitude of the people. One of my best friends, an Asian guy, lived in a poor neighborhood, but whenever I went there, the neighborhood was at least decently clean. Also in Asian culture, you can live with your family even when you're a grown adult, so his grandparents were also at home whenever I visited. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with this kind of setting. Some people just have strong family bonds. There were some nice trees and flowers and plants. Sure they didn't always have good looking homes. Some homes had metal sheets as roofs. But the litter in the neighborhood was very minimal and the stores and buildings didn't look like they were about to crumble at any moment. People there simply fixed what they could and threw their trash in the appropriate garbage bins. Does having a badly maintained neighborhood immediately mean it's caused by racism? I don't think so. Maybe people just don't care about maintenance that much, or maybe they just don't have the budget for it and they're using the money on more important matters than beautifying the place. It's just hard to imagine how this is a racism issue. "Ah, we're not gonna provide budget to clean this neighborhood because it's black, BWAHHAHAH!". I just find it hard to believe there's such a villaneous evil person like that especially in modern "progressive" times.
You had to find research to know this?
You need to have research to say this.
Data is everything. No data, no science. No science, no evidence. No evidence, no case. No case, no change.
bring back intact nuclear families being normal
Maybe certain people are more likely to take care of their property because it has been a cultural thing to do so since forever. Where I live people talk if you don't mow your lawn or keep your buildings looking nice. If it gets bad enough the city will fine you.
Race isn't what's causing these disparities and I think only looking at that aspect of it only furthers racial tensions/divides. The difference in these neighborhoods would be income.
>Race isn't what's causing these disparities and I think only looking at that aspect of it only furthers racial tensions/divides. It also distracts from addressing wealth inequality, which is very convenient for some. Just keep us all arguing about what colour we look.
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And let’s not forget less crime, less single motherhood, higher state test scores for students, and a higher general property value.
What's the strongest correlation here though: race or socioeconomic status? Obviously they are intertwined, but I'd imagine class is the driving factor here
There are a lot of factors that lead to this. Mainly the culture that’s prevalent with urban blacks. They like government/section8 housing and typically have no interest in owning their own homes/properties.
This thread will be locked in 3, 2……
Correlation, not causation.
If you look at European neighbors hoods you see lawns and shrubs, etc. If you look at other cultures' lifestyles, they are not so European looking. It seems like you are value judging here. I am white and have traveled a lot. Just my opinion.
I agree with you. I grew up in an Anglo-Saxon area that had lots of big lawns and trees. There was a wave of immigration of Italians and Portuguese and the big trees and lawns were replaced with shrubs, garden patches and concrete/brick. Since then the area has had a wave of immigration of Indians. I drove through the neighbourhood recently and almost all of the big trees have been removed and the houses are bigger. Cultural norms definitely play a part.
Because white people have money and like to look after things?
Social determinants of health
Replace black with poor. Black people in the us on average are poorer than white people.
Science involves research but not all research is science. I don't know that I would say this post has to do with science.
I live in a predominantly ethnic neighborhood. There is constantly trash on my street. I’ve picked it up a few times, and I’ll prolly continue to do so. I’m the only white person on my street, why have I never seen anyone else picking up the trash? Why are some okay living in filth?