Show HN: I mapped every US golf course

golfcoursebrowser.com

198 points by rickmf 19 hours ago

I got tired of Googling basic course info, so I made a free directory of every US course

Google filters for golf course results are terrible so I built a better way to browse courses using OSM as the backbone.... https://golfcoursebrowser.com/

It's a work in progress and mostly US for now, but I want to expand to the rest of North America, the EU, and the rest of the world ASAP.

It's free, no ads, no login, no bs. If you spot anything wrong (bad info, a missing course, wrong scorecard), you can flag it right on the course page. I actually read those and fix them.

Still a lot of missing info, but I'm filling out more and more each day. The goal is the most complete, and current golf course directory in the world, verified and maintained by actual golfers. I think is attainable in the next few months. The base layer is OpenStreetMap, cross-checked against course websites and enriched with scorecards, USGA rating/slope, and public/private status. User corrections from golfers who know their home course have beaten every commercial data source we check against.

crossroadsguy 17 hours ago

I am not sure how it is in USA but in my country golf courses are abuse of public resources for (almost) private use. For a very few who can lobby enough for renewal of these leases and these are kept out of reach of the normal public, either by rule or by cost, sometimes both. Golf courses are lungs of many of the growing cities, across the world, but I do believe they should not be kept exclusive. Also, this comes directly from feudal/colonial times here. Those also require too much of other natural and public resources to be maintained.

  • trollbridge 15 hours ago

    In the USA they are overwhelmingly public and are desperate for customers.

    The handful of private ones near me are also desperate for new members, and several country clubs have ended up closing. Considering some of the golf courses that have closed around me ended up being converted into Amazon distribution facilities, I am not terribly excited about the idea of more golf courses closing.

    • contubernio 14 hours ago

      In the USA as elsewhere golf courses are incredible wastes of water and false green spaces that would function better as green spaces were they actually parks open to the public they serve the wealthy. What is different is that in the US there is very little real (operational) worry about waste of water (or other resources) - at least compared to other places - and there is lots of space compared to other places.

      • trollbridge 14 hours ago

        That is an overly broad generalisation. Where I live, golf courses aren’t irrigated at all - they just rely on rainwater, like every other farm does.

        One of the golf courses near me has tee times for $10. I do not consider that something that only “serves the wealthy”. They also periodically close the course and open it up for RC plane enthusiasts.

        Another one you can easily go for a walk in - I often do. It is effectively a public space.

        • scotty79 8 hours ago

          The spot you live in might be an outlier. Golf courses in US use half a trillion gallons of fresh water annually.

        • gnz11 11 hours ago

          Irrigation isn’t the only concern but also the loads of herbicides and pesticides that get dumped on them.

          • trollbridge 7 hours ago

            … which also happens if the land were people’s lawns, were farmland, or commercial space with lawns.

      • paradox460 7 hours ago

        Bothers the snot out of me that I'm told by my irrigation water company that I have to cut back and have a brown yard, meanwhile I drive past perfectly lush green golf courses, with sprinklers dumping more water in 1 hour than I use all season

      • lmpdev 14 hours ago

        In wealthy parts of the US, maybe

        The vast majority of the world is nothing like this

        From Scotland to Tasmania, most courses congregate around already wet and mostly sand/loamy soil (largely unusable for other purposes without major construction)

        I agree with you for artificial American places like TPC Scottsdale or Wolf Creek GC etc

        • maccard 12 hours ago

          I’m an avid golfer and I live in Scotland. I’m not going to pretend that they’re bastions of sustainability - it’s not rained here in 2 full weeks and my course is watering their greens and fairways. We’re not quite at drought but the UK has a hosepipe ban in place and yet courses are continuing to water and maintain.

          On the suitability of the soil, for some courses yeah. For the vast majority - there’s 4 courses within 20 minutes of me in an urban area and they would be developed into property in a heartbeat if they sold. My home course has an apartment block cutting through it.

          I don’t think any of that matters though - it’s not like it would be a public park if it wasn’t a golf course. It’s certainly no less resource intensive than the massive concrete jungle of a sports centre with a running track across from me, or a football stadium or any of the numbers of empty buildings in the city centre. It’s an amenity, just like any other, it has a cost and we have to accept that otherwise we might as well just tear it all down.

          • bookofjoe 9 hours ago

            Let's give a "Hip Hip, Hooray" to your links courses and the Champion Golfer of the Year. What a putt!

      • duped an hour ago

        Where I live the municipal courses are actually a part of our water retention and drainage systems that are provided at cost (or discounted cost, sometimes free) to members of the community.

        Basically we found a good way to create green spaces for recreation out of flood plains and drainage ditches. During heavy rain they provide important buffers that protect the nearby homes from flooding, and reduce the urban heat sink effect.

        That's not true everywhere but keep it in mind before making sweeping statements about golf courses. Some people like golf. It's fine if you don't.

      • tclancy 9 hours ago

        Don’t forget the tax breaks! Some places (many?) use farm rates for the tax rate.

        • trollbridge 7 hours ago

          That’s odd, since golf courses aren’t farms. The ones local to me are not taxed at ag rates but are taxed at the commercial rate which is the highest rate.

          Amazon’s new data centre, of course, is paying a tiny fraction of that since they negotiated paying less.

          • tclancy 3 hours ago

            I live in New Hampshire where our taxes are entirely property tax based. Anything over ten acres qualifies as farm land no matter what. It’s a quality scam.

    • crossroadsguy 15 hours ago

      Were those private lands/properties? Because in my country a lot (if I can't say 'most') are actually on public land with weird and disgustingly cheap leases which can be closed at a finger snap but somehow very few Govts have tried it because every Govt have ministers (and of course bureaucrats) who are members there or made members there, and then there are their kids and families etc. So no they can't be turned into building constructions really, I mean assuming the limits of corruption in my country. Because technically anything can be sold if we go down that way. Also, my city is reclaiming lakes, demolishing illegal constructions and parks are also being reclaimed and cleaned up etc.

      Not perfect, far from it, but it's a start and no, that Amazon Warehouse thing I am not expecting to see here. People are divided strongly on religious and ideological lines here but everyone's tempers run high whenever Govt tries touching a public land, green patch, and now we just take matters into our hands whenever that happens.

      • trollbridge 14 hours ago

        It’s private land.

        There are a handful of government owned golf courses (sort of like parks that have tennis courts), but they are not common.

      • matkoniecz 8 hours ago

        > Were those private lands/properties?

        In my city (Kraków, Poland) there was attempted to waste enormous amount of public land and turn it into private golf course, funded from public money. It seems it was stopped after protests from citizens.

  • navaed01 13 hours ago

    Malcolm Gladwell did a great podcast on golf courses in prime urban spaces

    https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/a-good-w...

    In some parts of the US it is certainly the case that golf courses are private and as a citizen you notice there are v. Few parks but lots of good courses. Many of the courses pay little in taxes so they’re also feels that there is a disparity between how the rest of society functions and golf courses.

    Los Angeles is a v. Good example - huge urban sprawl - poor urban planning - few green spaces - amazing golf courses - as a runner I personally noticed I would be running around golf courses and not have any parks near me

    • 0ldblu3 4 hours ago

      Malcolm is not much more than a pop physicologist who is a very good writer. It looks like he is going to get his way with that golf course in LA that has some sort of vote happinging soon. Here is what will happen.. "the public interest" will win, and for a while it will be a park of some sort, then there will be a slow but inexorable push by the city council to reduce the size of the park by selling the land to developers. 15 years down the road it will be luxury homes for the ultra wealthy and nobody will be recreating there.

  • cmiles8 9 hours ago

    In the US many golf courses are owned by local governments as part of public parks.

    Many new courses in the US are also built on non-developable land like former landfills.

    Not trying to defend all courses, but at least in the US it’s not just uniformly bad.

    • mark-r 7 hours ago

      Within 5 miles of my house are 5 golf courses. I believe only 1 is government owned, by the city.

  • rickmf 17 hours ago

    US is a mixed bag. Where i am from, Michigan, we have over 600 courses and 87% of them are open to the public.

  • nayuki 4 hours ago

    In Toronto, I think golf courses are built on flood plains along rivers (Don, Humber, etc.). Some other flood plains are public parks. Houses are generally not built on flood plains.

    • rickmf 3 hours ago

      this is true in a lot of cases. its land that otherwise isn't great for any kind of development.

  • topato 16 hours ago

    Yeah, I could imagine golf being a sore spot for Indians. I never imagined India would even be a hotspot for golf, but given the amount of corruption going on, it would make sense that golf courses would be foisted upon the public. It’s always discouraging to see the amount of upper class Indians who, despite colonial times being long gone, are still very willing to sell out their countrymen to appease whites or to fit a British/white ideal. I hope I’m wrong about this impression, and I’m just seeing cherry picked news articles, but your reaction makes me think otherwise….

  • philip-b 9 hours ago

    Are you saying your country's government, for some reason, spends its money on private golf courses?

    • matkoniecz 8 hours ago

      Kraków, Poland tried but it was cancelled after protests.

  • scotty79 12 hours ago

    > Golf courses are lungs of many of the growing cities, across the world

    What? Why and how? And why wouldn't leaving a patch of forest there be way more efficient?

scoofy 16 hours ago

So, I started https://golfcourse.wiki in 2020, and I see courses that basically only I’ve mapped.

It’s cool, I want it to be public, if you want to work together, do reach out.

I would also say what you are doing is almost certainly opening you up to liability if you are just scraping other sites and republishing their data. One paper town that you published and you might have a lawsuit on your hands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_settlement

  • rickmf 16 hours ago

    Nice! Someone shared thAT wiki with me recently on reddit. I had not been aware of it before. Great stuff!

    I'm not a lawyer but my stack is clean. My base layer is OSM, which is licensed for exactly this stuff (and attributed). On top of that I used golfcourseapi.com which i also recommend (affordable, and fairly reliable so far, but not always current). Then community notes etc.

    I cross reference against other sources but I am only publishing facts, which are not copyrightable in the US.

    Would love to touch base one day and compare notes. I work in the golf industry so mostly just made this for myself. But after sharing with some friends and co workers i thought the wider golf community might appreciate it

    • scoofy 14 hours ago

      Sounds good, and it would make sense that OSM and I have some crossover at this point. Now that I've had more time, I can see that the extremely obscure courses are not in your dataset (Like Ulukhaktok GC: https://golfcourse.wiki/course/ulukhaktok_golf_course-ulukha...). Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of time to look through your site when I saw this post, so I’m sorry about that.

      Just so we're clear, I'm effectively fine with sharing my data via Creative Commons Non-Commercial licenses (say, CC BY-NC 4.0). Much of my site depends on fair use and not being for profit anyway. I'm actively losing money on the site every month (ha!).

      ---

      One personal note...

      It looks like you're not using referral advertising by linking to Golf Now. I would say -- golf nut to golf nut -- as someone who cares about small, mom-and-pop golf courses, Golf Now can be incredibly bad for those courses. I understand that might just be Pollyanna-ish given "the internet," but I've talked to folks who operate small courses who feel forced give a big portion of their margin to those middlemen (even losing money sometimes). I actively avoided linking to them. My partner works in hospitality, and it's the same for sites like booking.com (if you can book through the business's website, your probably should).

      I'm entirely happy to collaborate on this, I really just care about someone mapping all the golf courses even if it's not me. I'm happy to collaborate even if we're trying to build different things. Feel free to reach to me here, on GolfCourse.Wiki, or via the blog (for some reason most people contact me through the blog): https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/

      • rickmf 9 hours ago

        I'd like to to the same with my data (allow a download of all the course pages) eventually. I'm only publishing facts at the moment but would love to support other features (local ratings, reviews, etc)

      • rickmf 10 hours ago

        Sounds good. And yeah ideally i can link to a course's direct booking links but they are often harder to find.

  • Loughla 9 hours ago

    There's already one club I can see on there that doesn't actually exist.

    Is a running gag in the area where I grew up, and made it on this list somehow. So that's weird.

    • rickmf 2 hours ago

      please report it on the site!

punnerud 18 hours ago

Nice job! When I zoom in on Google earth you can easily see if it’s actually a golf course or not, would been interesting to use this to draw up the areas with polygons and some more details.

Then you could start providing a lot more details about each one automatically.

  • rickmf 17 hours ago

    yeah i am pulling from OSM. I can probably draw those polygons. It;s been an OK source for number of holes etc but I need to cross reference to get other detailed info

    • punnerud an hour ago

      I was thinking image analysis from satellite images, but of course start with what’s annotated (OSM)

wanderingmind 12 hours ago

This is supercool. But I have a tangential question. I see projects like this built on top of OSM for different use cases. Does this data gets contributed back to OSM. A lot of them seems hobby projects, so it's hard to maintain long term, but the data is quite useful and could be used beyond the lifetime of these projects if they can be contributed back to OSM somehow.

haunter 15 hours ago

Golf is a sport I never tried but really want to. Also from the outside it looks both fun and relaxing to be outside in the nature. But I’m in the wrong country for that currently lol, golf is a niche here in Eastern Europe

  • kubb 11 hours ago

    It definitely can be enjoyed, but does it beat a walk in the forest? Not necessarily.

    Golf is a social marker in Anglo-Saxon countries. Only the highest classes used to be able to afford it. In America they built a lot of courses because they have the space, and there was demand, obviously because lower classes wanted to feel like they’ve made it. Kind of like wearing tuxedos (or owning a Mercedes Benz in Eastern Europe).

    Obviously the higher classes just got more exclusive markers (particular clubs, private jets, islands, etc.), but America is left with all that land converted into courses which apparently aren’t even used that much nowadays. Turns out it can get boring quickly.

  • rickmf 3 hours ago

    Try VR golf to get started!

0ldblu3 4 hours ago

I am surprised that Google Maps has never mounted a camera on a golf cart and driven it over golf course holes. They have a backpack version and they've used it on ski resorts.

vxxzy 2 hours ago

It appears Four Sister’s golf course in allegany county md is missing.

tysilva 7 hours ago

I noticed the site is actually quite slow to load on first visit (at least for me). Is it actually loading in all the courses up front?

If so, a better experience would be a landing page where users can search or specify a geographic location - only loading in what is relevant for the query.

mikeocool 10 hours ago

As I recall, OSM already tends to have many golf courses mapped in extreme detail, because there’s a game that lets you play OSM golf courses on your golf simulator.

This sometimes leads to conflict between the game’s passionate users and OSM, when they map every road around a golf course as a cart path, because that’s the only thing the game imports.

  • rickmf 2 hours ago

    course details are not that great on OSM. typically just some polygons labeled 'golf course' and maybe a number of holes

totetsu 17 hours ago

This is fascinating not because I’m interested in visiting any of these. But to see the communities in Alaska with courses, or to look at the most concentrated places and wonder what so many people in Florida get out of having a fairway and one hole right in their backyard..

  • navaed01 13 hours ago

    In a lot of places, that golf course is the most beautiful piece of land around you, not just well maintained but lot of wildlife, birds, deer etc. so having that right on your backyard whether you golf or do not golf is a great attraction

  • rickmf 17 hours ago

    retirement communities in florida have a lot of these weird mini private courses.

    • AshamedBadger56 16 hours ago

      Yep, old people in Florida love to golf and really love it when they can drive their golf cart from their garage straight to the clubhouse, finish a round of golf, and ride it right back to their garage only ever having to get out to hit the ball.

jaqalopes 9 hours ago

Possible bug: Went scrolling way East on the map for kicks and was surprised to find 14 courses on Guam, but also that the data don't repopulate as you make it back around the globe a second time. This seems to happen in both directions—eg Guam doesn't populate at all if you scroll West.

  • rickmf 2 hours ago

    Fixed and deployed! Markers only existed on the primary copy of the world, if you ever scrolled passed it would have nuked all the pins. Thanks for the report!

  • rickmf 2 hours ago

    looking into it thanks!

flaburgan 15 hours ago

Do you plan to contribute the data back into OSM? That would be the nice way to go to share with the community and allow you to have better data in the future with less maintenance work.

  • rickmf 10 hours ago

    Not yet but i'd like to port it back somehow eventually. I've definitely named a lot of their unnamed courses on OSM

comrade1234 13 hours ago

You have hidden greens in Solon springs Wisconsin but you have it on the wrong side of the lake. It's like a 25-minute drive around the lake to get to it.

I think you must only have the village name for the address and not the street address. You can see the golf course in the map image on the other side of the lake.

  • Jolter 13 hours ago

    I think the corrections are better filed in the linked web app. ;)

snisarenko 8 hours ago

Great job! This is very useful.

The search by city, state doesn't seem to work.

If you enter something like "los angeles, ca" it returns no results.

zip code search works fine.

  • rickmf 2 hours ago

    Only state and zip currently. City names not yet supported (its another 3000ish pages)

postalrat 18 hours ago
  • fsckboy 17 hours ago

    that's the University of Minnesota Les Bolstad golf course

    https://www.uofmgolf.com/teetime

    • rickmf 17 hours ago

      Its actually present, but listed as closed (auto toggled off).

      the tee time link is dead and google reports as permanently closed. However if its open i'd love to know!

    • rickmf 17 hours ago

      You can report these right in the site and they should get cleaned up in 24-48 hrs or so,

cheeaun 17 hours ago

Polygon areas would be cool to see how big they are. I made this few years ago for Singapore https://observablehq.com/@cheeaun/golf-courses-in-singapore

  • NSPG911 17 hours ago

    That seems slightly pointless no? I mean Singapore is small enough already, there probably is 10 courses maximum. The one I've seen is the Changi course, and I don't think it can compare to the average course size in the States

thunfischtoast 12 hours ago

Somehow it disturbs me that we have access to a far-away, tropical island and use the very limited space there for not just one, but eight golf courses

thomasswift 17 hours ago

This is badass. Thank you!

Near my area, there is a driving range and a simulator place as pins. both nice but not courses. Do you want reports on that?

  • rickmf 17 hours ago

    Yes. You can report any missing or bad info right in the course info drawer that pops up when selecting one. There is a button for sending corrections with a few fields but you can also just make a comment.

parker42 11 hours ago

A buddy made golf.bronnerapp.com to map golf courses that we had played.

jasonjei 15 hours ago

No information on Olympic Club. I’m a member. Let me know if you need info for filling the gaps there.

  • lmpdev 14 hours ago

    Is the Lake course as good as I’ve heard?

  • rickmf 9 hours ago

    you can fill out missing info right on the site. There is a buttons for missing/ correcting data and you can fill out any info. Appreciate any that do!

sehugg 11 hours ago

Are you planning to feed the info back into OSM?

  • rickmf 10 hours ago

    eventually yes. I've named a bunch that were unnamed from OSM

aren55555 17 hours ago

Would be sweet if it also had membership status (private/public/etc)

  • cortesoft 17 hours ago

    If you expand the filters, you can see it allows you to select public or private.

  • rickmf 17 hours ago

    it does! pins are different color and it should label them. Might be some inaccuracies, but its pretty close. report any if you see any wrong

abhishek_aieng 16 hours ago

Are you planning to do somthing similar other than US?

  • rickmf 16 hours ago

    Yes. After i work out best pipeline in North America id like to expand worldwide.

    It will take some time i'm just doing this in spare time.

prologic 18 hours ago

Any plans to expand this to other parts of the world?

  • rickmf 17 hours ago

    Yes. Canada and Mexico next. Then will move to EU Asia etc. Want to work out all the hiccups in US first

    • prologic 17 hours ago

      How are you populating the dataset here? Anything we can to do help crowd source and contribute?

      • rickmf an hour ago

        OSM, golfcourseapi.com, booking sites, etc. some help from AI to parse duplicates, bad locations. missing data.

        Users can contribute right on the site by submitting corrections. It goes into a review queue and then is reviewed and implemented

      • rickmf an hour ago

        That said if its in the US and incorrect or incomplete you can submit, but anything outside the US i'd wait until i do a first pass on the new regions.

cantalopes 15 hours ago

This map just shows how terrible more priviledged people are and destroy our environment for their rich boi "fun"

  • deepsun 15 hours ago

    Well, golf fields are not as bad for environment as datac... I mean mines and factories.

    Really, golf courses are taxed much lower usually, as they go as green open spaces (similar to protected forest areas), and also their assessed land value does not account for neighboring residential prices, so their tax is based on lower value than land can be sold at.

    • lukan 14 hours ago

      "Really, golf courses are taxed much lower usually, as they go as green open spaces (similar to protected forest areas"

      That does not seem allright. A forest has lot's of ecodiversity, but a low cut golf course?

      But sure, it is still green and somewhat alive.

      • rickmf an hour ago

        Golf courses are often full of exclusively native foliage, often protected areas, and wetland areas. With much more ecodiversity support than neighboring businesses, residential areas, and even parks.

      • deepsun 3 hours ago

        Yep, and I would not say they are "open spaces" if the owners yell at you for stepping on it.

        • rickmf an hour ago

          you'll get yelled at for entering state parks if you don't pay.

          • deepsun an hour ago

            Nope, you pay only for parking/camping (at least in CA and WA). You can legally walk on foot paying nothing.

  • vel0city 7 hours ago

    The courses around me cost like $25-50 for a group tee time reservation. It's pretty cheap to get a set of second hand clubs, my small collection was had for like $75 over the years. You don't have to be rich to play golf.

    Plus the golf courses around me are often municipal, they've got some nice bike paths to cut through the urban landscape around and through the links. It's a much nicer ride than along busy streets.

    That said I do tend to enjoy disc golf more than traditional golf. I have never had too good of a shot.

    • mark-r an hour ago

      You may not need to be rich to play golf, but you need to be rich to have the spare time to do it.

      • vel0city 15 minutes ago

        That then applies to practically any kind of recreation.

        A city park and playground? Only for the rich, you need to be rich to have the spare time to do it.

        A public swimming pool? Only for the rich, you need to be rich to have the spare time to do it.

        A public baseball/softball/soccer field? Only for the rich, you need to be rich to have the spare time to do it.

        An activity center with some basketball and tennis courts? Only for the rich, you need to be rich to have the spare time to do it.

        Jogging trails through the woods? Only for the rich, you need to be rich to have the spare time to do it.

        Picnic tables in a field? Who has the time to take their food out some place to eat it? Clearly only rich people with too much time on their hands.

elpakal 18 hours ago

clicked on a website link for a course near me and it took me to a weird site wopraja

  • rickmf 17 hours ago

    probably and old site that now redirects.. you can report issues right on the site. community reports are going to be the most reliable for me over time.

proxy_skate 17 hours ago

so thats why lebron wanted to go to philadelphia or miami

scotty79 12 hours ago

Golf courses in USA use half a trillion gallons of fresh water annually.

All data centers use less than 0.2 (of which only less than 0.02 is used for cooling the servers, the rest is just electricity generation, which can and should be replaced with solar).

There's no replacement for water usage for golf courses and even half a trillion number is after recent 30% reduction of usage from what it was before.

  • rickmf 2 hours ago

    Good thing water replaces itself!

ck2 8 hours ago

fun-fact:

people living next to golf courses have extremely high rates of cancer and Parkinsons

and if a golf course is next to an airport you probably should never ever go there due to the total toxicity

andrewstuart 17 hours ago

Why free? Golfers have money.

  • lmpdev 14 hours ago

    Seems to be mostly be a US-only phenomenon

    And even then, a broad generalisation

    It’s $10 USD/round in my area, cheaper than bowling by a mile

    • pbhjpbhj 12 hours ago

      Does that include club hire?

  • rickmf 10 hours ago

    yeah maybe they'll donate one day.

verdverm 18 hours ago

are we able to estimate water usage and other statistics from this data set?

  • bruce511 17 hours ago

    The amount of water used is somewhat less important than what the source of the water is.

    And it's important to understand that "using water" isn't like "using coal". In other words, while coal can be burned once, water is in a cycle that means water can be "used" infinitly.

    But back to the source. A golf course near me takes effluent water (ie treated sewerage) destined for pumping out to sea. They spread it over a large piece of land. What is not consumed by plants, or evaporation, ends up in an underground aquifer.

    So it "uses" a lot of water. But it's not using tap water.

    Obviously this is not true for all courses. Hence the issue of "source", not "quantity" is material.

    • verdverm 5 hours ago

      For sure, I posed the question as it is often asked about data centers. Nuance is important, as is accurate data.

      The relative comparison is a potent one as we have a national debate about how we use our resources effectively and responsibly. I've seen similar mappings for data centers and thought OP's project might be a good starting point. The golf world is also aware about this issue and looking at ways to be more balanced with nature. I've seen some articles within the golf world discussing their water usage from before the data center debate began, which was very nice to see.

    • ta20240528 15 hours ago

      "The amount of water used is somewhat less important than what the source of the water is."

      Where I live, the golf courses are the largest and often only consumers of recycled water — in a water stressed city. This directly subsidises indigent water use.

      It doesn't stop the easily-offended from agitating to convert them into low-cost housing.

      • albumen 13 hours ago

        “easily-offended / agitating”? Hmm. There’s lots of good reasons to convert golf courses to low-cost housing, or use the recycled water for something else. Expand irrigation of parks, recharge groundwater, create wetlands, create dual plumbing networks to use the recycled water for toilet flushing etc.

        • bruce511 11 hours ago

          There will of course always be different potential uses for land. And there are up and down sides to every argument.

          It's easy though to dismiss options which don't benefit me personally. If I don't cycle then money spent on cycle tracks is wasted. If I don't golf then I'll lean towards non-golf options.

          Incidentally it's very seldom local users who are lobbying for more local low-cost housing. That typically reduces neighborhood property values.

          Equally having green spaces is something that drives up property values etc.

          And yes, creative use of effluent would be nice. We should be able to recycle grey water into toilets etc. But that is an infrastructure change, so not easy to implement.

          Yes we need public green spaces. And yes we need sports fields and golf courses and so on. It's not necessarily an either/or situation.

ryan_lane 17 hours ago

It would be interesting to map this to parkinson's data.