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?
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.
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3590901/