Eli5 what happens if a cemetery runs out of space to bury bodies?
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There’s a strong economic incentive for cremation, since the remains can be respectfully interred in a fraction of the space of a casket.
There are some U.S. military cemeteries for which the deceased needs to qualify with a certain level of service. They will often set the bar lower for cremains than for caskets.
I know an old timer who qualified for an urn at Arlington but said he was going to be buried at the veterans’ cemetery in San Diego, “because I like to stretch my legs out.”
Look up ‘Ossuaries.’ Often the final resting place of bones once they’ve been moved out of a cemetary.
Here in Australia the laws around grave ownership are very strict. It’s kind of like a land deed to property. Even if the person is long dead, they still own it. No changes can be made without permission. No one can be exhumed without permission. No one else can be buried in that grave without permission.
Once full, the cemeteries go into maintenance mode. They will be maintained in perpetuity. All cemeteries here are public so they become like parks. Some do fall into disrepair, but the governing of cemeteries is getting better to try and prevent this
But there are options! Cemeteries can convert exisiting garden beds into cremated remains positions. You can fit a large amount of cremated remains interments in a relatively small space
In my rather small hometown growing up when they ran out of space they started building masoleums(spelling). Giant buildings that use vertical space and you bought a tray instead of a plot in the ground. Its existed for over 100 years and every decade maybe they build another one of these buildings. I’ve had great grandparents I wasn’t alive during their lives that died in the 40s and 50s that are still buried there.
I work with a cemetery in the USA. They have a trust setup to fund maintenance for the grounds after it fills up. The trust is setup in such a way that in theory (fingers crossed) the interest will be enough to keep things running without depleting the trust. That’s assuming good management of course.
As people have said, it varies from place to place but in my part of the world (Sydney), the practice was often just to close the cemetery and build another one.
[Central station was built over the city’s first major cemetery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_railway_station,_Sydney). When they closed the cemetery they gave families of the deceased two months if they wanted to exhume and rebury remains. Any uncollected corpses were built over. A new necropolis was built and named Rookwood to accommodate new deaths.
Near where I live [the local churchyard cemetery was mostly rededicated as a public park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camperdown_Cemetery). The church built some new walls around a smaller yard and moved the headstones inside that but not the corpses.
In both cases subsequent works have scared hell out of people [when they start digging up skeletons](https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/news/human-bones-to-delay-sydneys-light-rail/news-story/4732e12eb512b2aa8dd6f5f52f1829fc).
There’s a small cemetery I drive past every morning. It’s fully occupied and has been for several decades. It’s run down, no grass, just dirt and a the tomb stones falling apart.
Cheesman Park in Denver, Colo. is how things sometimes go. The land eventually gets sold and the bodies may be moved, maybe not. regardless you can turn it into a nice park where people play with their kids and dogs on top of the ones you left behind. Another option is just to develop housing over the cemetery. There was a story on NPR that told of a family with a ghost issue and they eventually dug up old graves on the persons property. They were of a Hispanic family that was left since there was likely no money to relocate them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheesman_Park,_Denver#:~:text=The%20park%20was%20originally%20named,honor%20shortly%20after%20his%20death.
They stop selling plots, or they buy more property and divide that up into more plots to sell.
Think of a burial plot as a tiny piece of real estate. When they run out they stop selling or buy more to resell.
Sometimes they resell empty plots they think are forgotten. I had a relative attempt to bury his wife in a plot beside her parents. They had paid for the plots sixty years ago, but the cemetery had resold the plot and someone else was in it. He had the receipt, but the cemetery wouldn’t move the body. He had to be content with a different plot offered in compensation.
If he didn’t have the receipt he would have gotten nothing.
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