The search "property rights" yielded
35 articles

Guerrilla gardening at the crossroads: of daffodils and debris.

The eastern seaboard—and certainly the Mid-Atlantic—has dodged most of the winter bullets that hit the Midwest, the Great Plains, and even California (!) these past few months.  Washington DC did not receive any snowfall that lingered more than a few hours.  I espied the first blossoming trees on February 19, and though the blossoms at

Dolphin House revisited: they’re turning it into apartments!

Two articles in a row that resuscitate topics from less than a year ago…am I losing my edge?  Maybe.  But when you’ve been hacking away at this for twelve years while using little more than social media to promote yourself (but swearing off Twitter and Patreon and Youtube), it’s hard to say what constitutes an

Wildlife fences in Western Colorado: are they keeping out or letting out the elk?

The fencing that line both sides of Interstate 70 in western Colorado may lack the iconic character of those creosote-lined barriers that flank the highways surrounding Lexington, Kentucky’s horse country.  The green of those rolling Appalachian hillsides offers a critical backdrop to the black-as-pitch (literally!) wood that lends structure to the fences in the Bluegrass

Dolphin Mansion: the country’s ugliest house hits a fascinating planning snag.

The Dolphin Mansion is up for sale again!  Indianapolis’s most notorious home has struggled to find an occupant for the last seventeen years, but it’s not for lack of trying.  Actually more of a campus with six structures on a mega-lot, surrounded by mid-century middle-class housing that’s a lot humbler (and I mean that in

Classical music and crime prevention: 7-Eleven is just the start.

Several weeks ago I noted what I believe is a misbegotten campaign loosely branded “hostile design”, which seeks to galvanize criticism toward the now-ubiquitous effort of preventing people from getting too comfortable in shared public spaces—so comfortable it constitutes (in some people’s option) outright abuse of that shared civic trust.  We’ve all seen examples: carefully

Directional arrows in excess: the squires’ turf wars cause serfs’ confusion.

“Too many cooks…”  It was an aphorism decades before it became a cult short film–maybe even centuries.  We all know how it ends.  And we can all think of examples.  After thirteen years at the helm of this blog (American Dirt is finally a teenager!), I had to use my website’s own search function to

High tension wires in Pickwick Commons: maximizing utility out of utility line ROWs.

For the small handful of people who are this blog’s devotees, the image below may be a tiny bit familiar.  I’ve covered this small subdivision in New Albany, Indiana once before.  The name is Pickwick Commons, an age-restricted townhome development in which the retirement-age residents retain (at most) a small garden plot to cultivate, but