Lawns are useful for standing on outdoors, given that they are not up to your knees, not concrete, and not dirt. That's why most people maintain them. If you never go outside then there is not much need for a lawn.
If you choose to host social events on your own property, that's fine. Houses are great for that. But is it really worth it to maintain a yard 365 days a year for those hypothetical three that you use it for entertaining? Is it worth it for everyone to do that, at such environmental cost? The universe is not all about your pleasure.
I'd love it if we had denser, walk-able, and affordable village style housing developments in America, but we don't.
Then you haven't lived in low density suburbs/rural areas, you're very lucky, or you and I have different definitions of "easy range". There is a park about 5 miles from my house. Too far for an easy walk and even if it was, most of that is on a divided highway with no sidewalks that would be crazy to walk on.
Technically biking would work, but I'm not risking my life to drive down a divided highway with cars going 65+mph to bike to a crappy baseball park.
The closest park that is anything more than a few baseball fields is just under 15 minutes away by car, and I'm about 25 minutes from the downtown area of a major city (with no traffic).
This is normal for most of rural and suburban America.
Plenty of people out here (most where I'm at) live in subdivisions off of highways that would be absurd to bike on, and almost nowhere in my county has sidewalks.
>Are you sure you're not just being too picky about what kind of green space qualifies for you?
There's a cemetery that shows up as green on Google maps that's a bit closer than the park I mentioned. Still not safe to walk or bike to.
You are vastly underestimating how hostile most of the US is to biking/walking.
Well, let's see. I've lived in cities of multiple sizes - Wellington, Detroit, Ann Arbor. I've lived in both inner and outer suburbs of Detroit and Boston. I've spent significant time visiting Silicon Valley and Seattle, shorter times visiting a few dozen other cities both in the US and internationally. Is that Scotsman enough for you?
My experience is that the cities have parks and (usually) mass transit. Inner suburbs also have parks, plus sports fields and playgrounds that residents can use when school's not in session. By the time you get to the outer suburbs, you can add patches and strips of undeveloped but still accessible woodland. The configuration changes, but the green's always there. Often all you need to do is find someone walking their dog and follow them, because they'll go to those places for exercise and socialization.
Maybe there's a peculiarly southern kind of sprawl in which all of the land for miles in any direction is enclosed in people's yards, but I just spot checked around Atlanta and there don't seem to be any places like that except for the airport. You don't live at the airport, do you? Sure, there aren't many green patches in a plain street view, but switch to satellite view and there's plenty. There are probably woodlands with cut trails near you that you don't even know about. At most it looks like you might have to go ~3000 feet (barely half a mile) to find something, so I think I'm going to stand by my theory that you're ruling out valid options.
No it's not. With the exception of Wellington (don't know enough about it to know) those are all much higher density areas than the vast majority of the US.
As to the places you've visited, there is almost zero reason you would have spent much time in the areas I'm talking about while visiting.
>Maybe there's a peculiarly southern kind of sprawl in which all of the land for miles in any direction is enclosed in people's yards, but I just spot checked around Atlanta and there don't seem to be any places like that except for the airport. You don't live at the airport, do you? Sure, there aren't many green patches in a plain street view, but switch to satellite view and there's plenty. There are probably woodlands with cut trails near you that you don't even know about. At most it looks like you might have to go ~3000 feet (barely half a mile) to find something, so I think I'm going to stand by my theory that you're ruling out valid options.
No I don't, but this is absurd. Sure there are woods out behind my house because I own them, and there are trails through them because I made them.
All of the undeveloped land nearby is owned by someone else. We don’t have a right to roam in the US. You don’t just go walking onto someone else’s land--that’s a good way to get shot, or at the very least get a visit from the county sheriff. Just walking down the road outside of a subdivision around here will get weird looks from people (mostly because it’s not safe because the roads weren’t designed for it)--a large adult man walking through their property will definitely prompt a negative response.
When I was a kid we used to wander off into the woods behind a neighbor's house, and I used to explore the golf course nearby, but we got chased off by people, dogs, and cops as well.
Even if I did find a neighbor with land who was willing to let me use it, I couldn’t get to it without walking down divided highway unless it was in my subvision.
Don't you mean the vast majority of the tiny corner you know? You haven't even mentioned ever living anywhere else, let alone in the same variety of places I have, so I'll take your claims about vast majorities with more than one grain of salt. Maybe you really do live in a place uniquely deprived of public green space (though that's still unsubstantiated by actual maps or anything). If so, it's still your choice and you're welcome to it. It doesn't change reality for the true vast majority. Enjoy life in your self-made closet.
No, I meant exactly what I said. Objectively, the vast majority of the US has a lower population density than most of the places you mentioned.
>Maybe you really do live in a place uniquely deprived of public green space (though that's still unsubstantiated by actual maps or anything)
It's not unique or unsubstantiated. Here's a study that says for people in small towns there the average distance to a park is 6.1 miles--that's consistent with my experience. Even in cities (outside of the city center--there it's 0.7 miles) the average distance is over a mile, and in the suburbs it's over 2 miles. [1]
If there are few nearby parks, what options are there? Trails on undeveloped land you mentioned? Who owns this land? Take a look at the green space on a satellite map in the metro Atlanta area. If it's not a park (or similar like a WMA), a private individual owns it. You completely ignored my point about trespassing on private land to start a pissing contest about who's lived in more cities.
The US is not a very walkable country, it shouldn't be so shocking to you that vast swaths of the country lack public greenspace that's accessible without a car.
>Enjoy life in your self-made closet.
I have plenty of green space of my own (complete with the odd deer, wild turkey, coyotes, foxes--hell I even had an escaped emu run through my back yard once) and a car (that I used to drive to the Smoky Mountains last week). Sure I'd like it if the US was more walkable, but the way development is currently done means the trade offs of living in a more walkable area aren't worth it for me.
And you're the one who started the pissing contest, by trying to claim that I'm unqualified to comment. Don't whine that you lost because your own horizon is so narrow.
No it doesn’t. Did you just make that up?
>It doesn't include things like the walkable areas often around sports fields, which are pretty much everywhere.
Sports fields are generally in parks, which are included in the data set. The vast majority of parks in rural and suburban areas are sports parks--definitely included in the data set.
Publically available sports fields not in parks tend to be part of schools. They aren’t always publically available, and they are never available during school hours. You certainly can’t use them to host events, grill out etc... Most of the school fields around here won’t even let you walk on the grass, and most of them keep the gates to the fields locked when school’s out.
>It doesn't include private parks or
Did you read the source? It even mentions that the dataset doesn’t different between private and public parks.
>areas which are implicitly - or quite often explicitly - open to the public.
An explicit public greenspace is a park. I’m not sure what an implicit public greenspace is. Undeveloped land that doesn’t have a no trespassing sign? Do you have any examples? Can you have a cookout on implicitly accessible land? Can you set up a volleyball net? Who’s cutting the grass? Clearing the trails? Can you even be sure you aren’t trespassing? When does it close? Will the police show up?
What implicity accessible land do you regularly use?
>The vast majority of the population lives in cities or inner suburbs,
When did we start talking about the majority of the population? I’ve specifically been talking about lower density areas throughout this entire thread.
>and for them a walkable space is rarely even half a mile away.
But while you’re on the subject... I assume you’re still talking about publicly accessible greenspace when you say “walkable space”. The median distance to a park for a person in a city center is 0.5 miles. That means that half of people live farther than that. For the suburbs the median distance is over a mile. Living farther than half a mile certainly isn’t rare.
Check out ParkScore. One of the metrics is percent of residents within a half mile of a park--it’s not rare, particularly in low income communities.
>And you're the one who started the pissing contest, by trying to claim that I'm unqualified to comment.
I never said that. You should go back and reread what I did say. Stop ignoring the topic and focusing on perceived slights and straw men.
>Don't whine that you lost…
There’s no point in declaring victory--no one else is reading.
Why wouldn't we be? If a few people choose to live in a virtual desert, that's their problem. What's important is what's available to those who lack the means to make such choices. I used to be one of those people, but even when I lived in one of the densest most blighted parts of Detroit it wasn't hard to find little pockets of green. Again, follow the dog walkers. They know.
And since you seem so determined to control the focus to what suits you, let's not forget that the original question is whether people need lawns specifically. You haven't even addressed that point. A lawn is an artificial environment, barely more natural than a wood floor or deck. Most people don't even use theirs, except occasionally during child-rearing years. They just pump them full of herbicides and insecticides, deplete often scarce water supplies with their sprinklers, waste tons of energy raking leaves, etc. Are you going to start making the case that having "a place to stand" (as whatshisface originally claimed) is worth all that?
I think lawns are mainly for looks.
It's just crazy to think that now it can be against the law (or at least against HOA rules) to not have a lawn. Like it's illegal to plant a vegetable garden in your front yard.
If you live in a strata or HOA, all bets are off - maybe lobby for an astroturf exemption?
WTF!? I am from Europe, is this really a thing? Although,it wouldn't surprise me, watching American Movies, lawn and suburbia seems inseparable.
Simply a case of no, a lawn it must be?
... which means "protect interest of neighbors".
People like when their neighbourhood looks nice and is safe from snakes, bugs and mosquitos.
For most areas, it's aesthetic.
Here in the south-east, a short lawn will have no mosquitoes but a grassy area will have plenty (as in you'll get 20-30 bites in one evening outdoors), so that's a strong motivation.
In some places, particularly wealthy places built up after WW2. Some people like it because "muh property values". Just as many hate it because "muh freedom"
Making that illegal should be illegal.
Care to elaborate? I spent over 40 years in Florida and maintained a few lawns during that time, and I have never heard of such a thing.
In my area those are called the TruGreen lawns, and they dominate much of the city 3 seasons out of the year. Those little signs that tell you to keep your living creatures off of them for a week after application, or longer depending on weather. I don't, however, think that anyone bothers to notify the squirrels, rabbits, opossum, and birds about those limitations - they will all continue to frolic on doused areas, eat and drink from those areas. Not to mention the impact on insects, the impact on the soil and water.
All for what? Fewer weeds?! It's disgusting to see such callous disregard for our environment being perpetrated as a matter of routine.
Source: my family has a rural house with walkable front- and backyard.
Are they? Over here in Germany, most lawns I see, that ain't in parks, usually have "Keep off the lawn!" signs.