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Comment by beckman466 | Hacker News Reader

love that. yes some are making it out to be something disrespectful somehow. i also would prefer if cemeteries were converted to parks to be green spaces available to all.

spots in cemeteries are also usually only affordable for the propertied class too. for many in the working class they're not viable.

do our cities really need to reserve and block off sizable physical spaces for decades, when we have a housing crisis in most cities around the world? i am all for beautiful ceremonies and the like, but the use of excessive physical space in cities seems outdated.

consider also that we now have photos, video and other digital media to help us remember loved ones and keep them alive in our memory.

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I have two enormous cemeteries on either side of my neighborhood. However where I live, just going for a walk there would be considered disrespectful. It's outdated in my opinion. Cemeteries are a terrible waste of space and horrible for the environment too. Like you said, go ahead and have a beautiful ceremony. I've told my wife to cremate me or turn me into one of those tree things that people are talking about now. I don't want to be covered in all the chemicals and be used to destroy the planet.

If you have an existing cemetery, at least convert it into a dual use space like the one in Boston with the fish ponds and maybe also put a playground up. There aren't nearly enough of those for parents of young children. Especially during a pandemic when you want to not cram 100 kids in a fairly small space.

Cremation also makes a significant carbon footprint, afaik. Best eco way to get rid of the body is to drop it to the sea floor.

I've heard that too. Running the furnace likely consumes a fair amount of electricity, but I think that's a non problem with high renewables. Just don't run during peak. Is the carbon footprint that bad from the conversation to ashes process? If so, yeah, maybe ocean is best.

I've heard we've made great advancements in human composting. Specifically composting combined with tree planting sounds like a great use of public spaces to rebuild some of our forest commons as opposed to traditional cemeteries.

"yes some are making it out to be something disrespectful somehow."

"Some" are probably ignorant of the fact that cemeteries have been routinely moved in Western societies for centuries. It's not a new thing, and there are cultural procedures for doing it respectfully. It is also in a different sense a tradition to argue about who is going to pay for those procedures since they aren't the cheapest, but that's a separate matter.

So, your question can be given a concrete answer: No, we aren't stuck with cemeteries forever in the place they were plopped down decades ago. That is a present reality, not something we have to aspire to.

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