>>> Is there an alternative?
My family lives on a 1/3 acre lot in a neighborhood that was built around 1960. Thankfully, there is no social pressure in our locale to maintain a "perfect" lawn. Each house does its own thing, ranging from fully wooded lots, to "perfect" lawns, and everything in between. I'm using the term "perfect" for the kind of lawn described in the article, more or less.
Our house is in between. What I can tell you is that there are portions of our lot that we mow. Everything else is left to chance. We don't fertilize or use weed killers. We don't water. (Fertilizer increases the need for water). The lawn is grass plus maybe a dozen other species.
The grass grows in the spring, we mow a couple times, then it goes dormant as the weather gets more dry. The weeds keep it green. Through the remainder of the summer and fall, we mow maybe 3-4 times at most. I rake the leaves from the trees, use the mower to shred them, and use them for compost in the vegetable garden.
The vegetable garden is growing by a few square feet per year. I bought an ancient roto-tiller off the Craig, and gradually expand the garden at the expense of the lawn. I would also be happy to let other kinds of brush grow, but it hasn't begun to happen yet.
The kids were fine in our back yard. They didn't care about the weeds. The neighbors have not complained.
By and large, the people in our 'hood with "perfect" lawns, are retired, and have the time to work on their lawns and gardens, plus, no kids.
When I travel to the neighborhood where I grew up, in another state, it's a totally different world. Every single lawn is "perfect," with no weeds. My parents told me that a couple of their neighbors had large trees cut down because the trees were shading their grass! The difference is so stark that it's almost creepy. There's also one or two full size pickup trucks in front of every house, that almost completely obscure the lawns from the street. Bizarre.