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Why do people want to live in Car Parks now?

AchtungAchtung Posts: 159
in The potting shed
I moved here from North Surrey 3 years ago. North Surrey properties (and probably many other parts of the UK) have lost most of their front gardens to hard standing for cars. Now it's happening here in Poole. I have a neighbour who has just dug out a garden to make hard standing for two vehicles. It looks like a supermarket delivery bay. They have just brought a young child into the world to live in a car park? Why do people no longer want to live in gardens? Cars are litter, IMHO, and I find it so sad that the more I cycle around the fewer 
'Front Gardens' I see and the more 'litter'. 





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  • Hostafan1Hostafan1 Posts: 34,889
    I suppose some folk just don't like gardening as much as having a guaranteed parking space when they come home?
    Devon.
  • Hostafan1Hostafan1 Posts: 34,889
    pansyface said:
    Has this phenomenon appeared along with a decline in the number of buses?

    Round here in rural Derbyshire, if you don’t have a car, you can hardly go anywhere by bus unless you want to travel in the early morning or late afternoon and share your journey with a load of school kids. Two people working means two cars. How many modern houses have a long enough road frontage to take two cars? How many suburban roads are wide enough to take parking on both sides plus two cars passing each other?

    And calling a taxi needs military style planning around here. There is one man who is booked up weeks in advance for airport trips and that is it.
    Ditto rural Devon
    Devon.
  • AstroAstro Posts: 433
    Yes it is a bit of a disappointing sight, and in agreement with others about the increasing role the car plays in people's lives. The size of personal vehicles are growing too.
  • BenCottoBenCotto Posts: 4,718
    The Director General of the RHS was quoted in the FT as saying that 1 in 4 front gardens is now paved over. If true, and I find it difficult to believe, that is astonishing - bad for biodiversity, bad for flood risk.
    Rutland, England
  • BenDoverBenDover Posts: 488
    edited May 2019
    Next door neighbour dug up his lawn and took out three mature (and actually quite nice looking) conifers to expand his drive so it now covers the whole of the front of his house for the three cars that sit outside his house.  If that wasn't bad enough, he ripped up his back lawn, removed the shrubs (that had a blackbirds nest in every Spring/Summer) and then put down a patio covering a quarter of his garden and then laid astroturf (ie, plastic grass) over the rest.  There is no nothing living at all in his front and back gardens.  Each to his own, but very sad.  If that's not bad enough, last year further down the street, three houses in a row clubbed together to all rip up their front gardens to lay down block paving over all of them.  They did it to save money so they could get it as a job lot.  One house did put out containers with plants in.  Containers are still there.  Plants in them are all dead.  Oh well.
  • Myosotis23Myosotis23 Posts: 69
    If I want to park on the road I have to pay my local council for a parking permit, as my husband & I both have a car, which we need for work, it means purchasing two permits. We have a small front garden that is the perfect size to park two cars, so that's what we do. Some of our neighbours have one car so use half of their front garden. Unfortunately this is what happens in a lot of built up areas, cars have become a necessity.
    On the plus side we have a good sized back garden which I spend a lot of time in & like to encourage wildlife as much as I can, hopefully I make up for the loss of the front garden.
    In a world where you can be anything, always be kind.
  • barry islandbarry island Posts: 1,847
    Listening to the radio today the state of the planet's wildlife we are supposed to give up driving, eating meat or fish, using our heating, buying "stuff" e.t.c.
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    My neighbours built zen car parks when there wasn't even a parking problem. I think that they read somewhere that it would add value to their house. I love the feeling when i turn into my front garden and walk down the path ( which isnt that long).
    I try to ignore the I've totally paved over my front garden what low maintenance plants can i stick in a box posts, because they make me angry.
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • Big Blue SkyBig Blue Sky Posts: 716
    I prefer our neighbours to park in their front garden, rather than parking on the road and block it so it becomes really difficult to manoeuvre between parked cars.
    I think people don’t “prefer” to live in car parks, they kind of have to. I guess people who have the money to buy large houses with enough space for both the front garden and parking are very lucky, so no need to judge those who have to make the best of what they have. 
    Surrey
  • GartenerGartener Posts: 99
    I am little lucky to ve a wide~ish front garden. So i paved it but left back-garden style borders around the edges. In the borders i planted mainly evergreen Privet and Laurel interspersed with a mix of Roses, Escallonias, Acer, Crab apple, Lavender, Budhelia, Bush Lavatera and Star Jasmine. Now after a few years it looks quite interesting + tidy due to the clean paving borders.

    Plus i had a Magnolia tree in the middle, which i paved around. Long story short: i think Paving and Garden can both be achieved at the same time..
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