[rockfan4]

I can see both sides of this. A few years ago I was in Chicago, and the route my gps picked out for me happened to take me down a street, I don't remember which, but it was blocks and blocks and blocks of cemeteries, one after the other. They seemed to go on for miles. It seems there could be a better use for that real estate.

On the other hand, if I drive a few miles from my house, I can go to a cemetery that holds the remains of my great-grandfather, his father, and his father's father, who was born in 1806. A few miles from that is another cemetery that holds a couple uncles, their spouses, and a few more generations of my mother's family. I've been working on my family's genealogy, and I think in some way I'm related to almost half the people interred there. .

There's cemetery in La Crosse that according to their records holds my 2nd great grandparents. But in the spot they say they are buried, there is no headstone. In fact, in that section there are very few headstones. I don't know if they never had one, or if vandals destroyed them. That cemetery is near a main street and used to have lots of vandalism issues. Would / could that section get reused? These people died before 1900.

But it seems that the funeral and burial tradition is ending. Seems a lot of people here are getting cremated, and the ashes are scattered or placed in an urn, not interred. If we stop burying bodies, how long until it becomes acceptable to remove the ones that are already there? 20 years? 50? Don't they already do something similar in Europe? You only get the space for a few years, then someone else takes your space?