{"id":13038,"date":"2011-07-11T12:25:36","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T18:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sustainablog.org\/?p=13038"},"modified":"2011-07-11T12:25:36","modified_gmt":"2011-07-11T18:25:36","slug":"definition-of-suitable-not-common","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/definition-of-suitable-not-common\/","title":{"rendered":"The Definition of Suitable: Not “common”"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Q4E5Tg6elGw<\/p>\n

You may have read that title and thought “Uh, Jeff… did you mean to publish this post somewhere else? Some kind of dictionary blog?” Yes, definitions of words not related to sustainability might seem a bit outside of our purview… until you read the story of Julie Bass, and the legal battle she’s fighting with her city government<\/a>. After sewer repairs earlier this year resulted in a torn-up front yard, Julie decided not to replace her lawn, but to put in several raised beds for vegetable gardening. Seems innocuous enough, but Julie is now facing prosecution for her front yard garden… and that prosecution is largely based (you guessed it) on the definition of the word “suitable.”<\/p>\n

According to Oak Park, Michigan’s city code, unpaved portions of front yards must be planted with grass, ground cover, trees, shrubs, or other “suitable live plant material.” Julie’s citations and prosecution are based on this part of the code; Technical and Planning Director Kevin Rulkowski argues that her gardens don’t conform to the code because the definition of “suitable” is “common.” Rulkowski cites “the dictionary<\/a>” in one article, and “Webster’s dictionary” in the video above as the source of this definition.<\/p>\n

So, I put my former English professor hat on and did just a little digging… and can’t find any dictionary that defines the word suitable as “common” or anything remotely like it.<\/p>\n