I’m somewhat confused by all the hatred for lawns – people saying that they are useless.
I don’t disagree that they are costly in terms of water and some kinds of maintenance. A better material culture would have fewer of them and there seem to be some perverse expectations (even regulations sometimes) that various landscaped areas should have lawns rather than other, more appropriate plants or landscape.
However, it’s totally obvious what lawns are for, to me. They’re for kids to play on or to play soccer or run around or sit for a picnic or whatever. And I don’t see why people don’t get *any* of that.
These people don’t have kids. Furthermore, children are so removed from their social circle and frame of mind that they don’t even think about what they would use the lawn for if they did have kids.
(Or they live in dense urban areas where playgrounds are no more than a few blocks away.)
I think it’s more the latter, but even a bit further. The broader model people are using here I think is “suburbia is cancer,” which I think is accurate even (especially?) if you have kids. It gets you suburban-brand Safety at the cost of making you into a suburbanite. Like yeah, there are reasons people make that tradeoff, but it’s hard to argue that it isn’t an example of widespread civilizational inadequacy. @sinesalvatorem @michaelblume back me up here.
OK, let’s actually talk about this. Why? What does “making you into a suburbanite” mean?
Unsurprisingly, I’ve had this exact conversation with a lot of people who are reflexively hostile to the suburbs. The answers I’ve gotten mostly seem to boil down to some combination of four things:
1) Prestige. We all know that only boring thick-necked American morons like the suburbs! You don’t want to be one of them, do you?
2) Aesthetics. To which, well, sure, you’re allowed to like or not-like whatever you want, but then this falls into the general category of “if you’re going to be vehemently angry about enforcing an aesthetic preference you should at least own up to it.”
3) The suburban lack of Social Culture in the form of clubs, neighborhood bars, Town Spirit, etc. There are obviously people for whom this is a legitimately a big deal. But I’d be surprised if it were a meaningful motivating factor amongst the hordes of introverted Internet nerds who mostly want to hang out with their friends and wish that they could just not have to deal with the rest of the world.
4) Environmental issues. Which are of course real and salient, and to the extent that’s what you mean, I’m not going to object. But people don’t generally talk about suburbia like “this is an awesome thing that we’re sadly going to have to give up to save the planet…”
…is that, in fact, it? Am I missing something? Where is all the “civilizational cancer” stuff coming from?
From my own personal standpoint, suburbia seems like a super good deal all around, except for the fact that you might want to have kids someday. You get lots of space at an almost-reasonable price! And privacy! And pretty trees! And you can still get to pretty much anything you want within like forty-five minutes, which is really not that much worse than living in most parts of a major city! It’s just a shame that, if you raise children in the suburbs, you’re signing up for them being totally dependent on your willingness to drive them to any single thing they might ever want to do…