I do agree that houses with large lawns and zero food crops are just... wasteful. I rent so I am limited to what I could do, otherwise I would just till my lawn and make almost the entire thing into garden beds.

I dislike seeing those houses that have what amount to prairies and on that grass you see just a few horses or whatever. Such a waste of arable land.

Quite frankly, I think such housing areas look far, far better than your typical grassy suburbia.

I guess from there the whole thing evolved to american real estate selling "american dream" aesthetics.

This is true in the general sense, but it's also mostly subjective. There are plenty of divisive yet enjoyable pursuits in the world.

Well, you can’t eat it. So doesn’t that immediately knock it down some pegs from growing many other, edible things? It’s also not great for pollinators and other important participants of the food chain, so perhaps that reduces its mental rewards?

Also, most lawns I've seen will inevitably have clover, unless you're overly aggressive with your herbicides, which most people aren't. The pollinators are supported, not that that really helps anything since they're not commercial pollinators.

I think grass is utilitarian. It’s carpet for outside. The kids can play on it, you can bbq on it, have a picnic, etc.

As for why you’d want to keep it short? Bugs, utility, etc. The taller you let it grow, the less usable the space is and the more critters move in (critters that bite in the Midwest)

As for why you wouldn’t let stuff rot on top of your outdoor carpet over the winter, vs process it through a compost pile and spread it as fertilizer in the spring…

So, I guess I hate the expectation of a lawn more than the lawn itself.

What’s astonishing to me is how deeply some folks care about what I plant around my house for my own enjoyment, and how willing they are to nominate themselves to tell me to change it.

The nice thing about grass is how little effort it takes to maintain. Not everyone wants to be a full time gardener.

We grow a small family vegetable garden as well, which is probably substantially less practical than buying the equivalent amount of produce at the best and most expensive organic farmers' market you could imagine.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practic...

Plenty of us did as children as recently as the 90s, and even at that point it was less common than previous generations. I wouldn't do it today either, but the reasons are societal and/or emotional rather than any high statistical danger.

Yes of course! My entire childhood was spent running around in the woods. Bears and mountain lions are rare and most of them are more scared of you than the other way around. No more than a small handful of people are attacked by those across the entirety of North America, the last time a child was killed by a mountain lion was about 25 years ago. There were only two or three fatal mountain lion attacks against kids in the 90s, two in the 80s, and three in the 70s.. there are less than 20 of these kind of incidents in the entire 20th century across all of North America. Why the hell would you bring up such an unlikely risk? And fatal bear attacks are only marginally more common, they're still incredibly rare.

Your kids are many thousands of times more likely die from choking on food than by getting attacked by an animal in the woods, do you ban grapes in your house? How did you become so cowardly? Forbidding kids from playing in the woods is absolutely pathetic, reading your comment left me with a feeling of visceral disgust.

There are only one or two kids killed by snakes per decade in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in_t...

Spider deaths are even more rare. Brown recluses are pretty spooky though.

I personally like to think of the stats too, but then again, why wear a seatbelt?

I actually went to school with a kid who was run over by a lawn mower. He survived but it chewed up the side of his leg and left him with a limp. I think he was lucky he could still walk at all.

Lots of people do like the aesthetics and perhaps some HOAs are strict about it, but I think most people maintain their lawn because it’s what they think they’re supposed to do.

Personally I think small lawns are great but would love to see more natural landscaping with native plants.

Even if you completely eliminated lawns, you wouldn’t make a meaningful dent in water consumption.

It's only in the past decade or so new development has started requiring drought tolerant landscaping. Municipalities have also recently introduced ordinances to limit watering. But this is all a reaction to the serious droughts we've had rather than being proactive.

Grass lawns are a waste of water, gas (mowing/maintenance), time, and effort. Reducing grass lawns in residential and commercial spaces would make for a meaningful reduction in the state's water usage with little reduction in economic output.

When that water evaporates, it goes up in the air, and then falls back down as water.

But water is not a scarce resource and putting it on plants is not a negative sum game.

The planet recycles water. Grass is 100% sustainable if maintained using the planets natural water cycles.

The water in the sky falls on a water shed which is harvested into a local water supply which comes right back to a tap.

Not everywhere irrigates their lawns.

But I agree with the sentiment. The amount of energy I see in the US being put into maintaining an artificial environment in places that otherwise would be barren is astounding.

So parents need to pack everything up daily for their kids to go play (at least for the first N years of life until they’re independent enough to go do a 15min walk on their own) or be taxed for it?

I have a public park across the street from me.

I spent $20k converting the side of my house into a playground for my kids.

The QoL impact has been massive.

It’s gated in by a 6ft perimeter brick wall with a door that we put in that opens from the kitchen.

In the morning, my 2 year old can unlock the door to the side yard and go play before we even wake up.

The side yard lets our kids play without us needing to supervise. It gives them strong early independent play and gives us space to get life sorted out while they are entertaining themselves (chores, bills, etc.).

The park across the street does none of that, it is not interchangeable in any meaningful way.

This is a city opinion that not many people in suburbia would agree with.

It's also motivated by West coast water shortages, something that those on the East coast can't relate to as easily.

It's a lot like the /r/fuckcars argument. It's a great idea inside a single population of like-minded users, but there's an unspoken silent majority whose lifestyle and entire world doesn't work in the same way.

But I also never see the gas powered backpack blowers portrayed on TV so maybe I’m perceiving a different context.

They get blown into he woods on the back half of the yard where the decompose and fertilizer the dirt.

Your citations state that lawns consume 60% of household water, implying that this leads inevitably to environmental catastrophe.

But household water usage is a small fraction of total fresh water usage.

In a dry region like California, households consume only 10% of total fresh water [0].

In regions that get more rain, households consume a much smaller fraction than that.

I'm all for conservation, but if we converted every lawn to cactus and every resident switched to once-a-week bathing, would that delay the "destruction of the planet" by any measurable amount?

[0] https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

An equivalent amount to grow almonds for export also seems wasteful.

Do either of these wasteful uses of water constitute an existential risk to the planet?

This is a well documented problem