06-23-2023, 05:23 AM
(06-23-2023, 02:39 AM)dtkvictim Wrote: Somehow the only valid complaint against garages, IMO, hasn't been mentioned yet. And that's how damn ugly they are, usually taking up over half of a house's street presence on anything built in the last 50-60 years.
Yeah, this is a valid objection, especially homes where the front door is tucked away behind the garage and the garage makes the entire front of the house.
FWIW, this basically never happens in the Netherlands, houses with garages are generally larger and garages are rarely more than 1 vehicle wide.
The only exception is this street near me:
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.1881248,...?entry=ttu
But these aren't houses, it's literally just a bank of garages...and having seen inside one, presumably largely used as sheds or small workshops.
Still, the use of single doors to me makes it still less problematic than places in Canada.
That being said, I still prefer a row of garages to a street overwhelmed by parked cars. A lot of folks (not unreasonably) argue for street parking instead of garages, but I think that actually creates an uglier place (and this is something that the Netherlands is actually quite bad at, their are many roads like this). Really, I think we need fewer cars, but if we really must have vehicles than my preference is for garages behind homes accessible either through narrow driveways or from a rear alley.