Now, the town closest to me is a different story. Despite being the home of the first geodesic dome home, owned by none other than Buckminster Fuller, I kinda doubt you could build one there without going through a lot of legal hoops.

Once in a while people get their panties in a bunch when they get told they can’t keep old tires on their property, and so on.  People forget that in the 19th century, people here were still dying of malaria.  In Illinois.  And malaria is still an issue.  Yes, really.

My parents live in a nearby county, where the zoning laws are nearly nonexistent as well as property taxes.  My Palin-loving, gun-toting mother actually said that she wished for stricter zoning laws in her county, after she had an asshole move next door to her who plopped a crappy old trailer, piles of junk, and would ride a four-wheeler around the perimeter of his property, including by the part of their house that faced their bedroom, at 3 a.m.

There’s also 3rd party wall agreements. If you don’t have one of those, and you’re building within 1 metre of the boundary line, then your neighbour can get a injunction to stop your building work.

Brighton, aka London-on-Sea or Skidrow-on-Sea, has a lot of houses thrown up to home soldiers in the early 1800s with next to no foundations. So doing any building work on these 200 year old houses can lead to horror after horror.

I could be convinced that “the proposed extension, [...] is considered to be out of character with, and incongruous to, the host building. [...] would detract from the character and appearance of the street scene”, but it looks a complete mess anyway, so I’m not sure why they care.

After living there, I moved to Wilmington, NC. When I closed on my house in a golf course community I received the rules for the community – one piece of paper. It is the only place I have lived where there was a junk yard and a trailer park next to such an exclusive community. There wasn’t anything you could do if your neighbor did something stupid to their property that affected you, but for the most part I didn’t see much of that kind of thing. People segregated themselves into the communities that were right for them – the people who wanted to park work trucks in front of their homes didn’t live in the communities where the retirees devoted their lives to their perfect lawns. There were very few community resources there; if you want to run a class, for example,  you had to start your own small business instead of having a community center that would advertise and run it for you. 

Both places were nice to live. Wilmington was a lot of fun but sometimes it felt too much like everyone had to be out for themselves. Columbia had tons of parks and community gyms and places to take classes, but to me it felt oppressive that everyone was so fixated on the rules.

The UK PM (not a name check or endorsement) even made a gift of some of his art to Mr Obama

The whole point of planning and zoning laws is to make sure that the children of local politicians are not unduly burdened by college debt.

As for making it yourself…it’s phenol and fomaldehyde (two carcinogens) baked in a pressure vessel, so…not unless you like tumors.

Galalith, another early plastic, can be made at home, though. 

http://www.wikihow.com/Turn-Milk-to-Stone

Also I don’t see the phrase “disrupt the street scene” on Hackney’s planning refusal page for your submission.