The western obsession with lawns is well past due for a paradigm shift.

It's because of setbacks, which are secretly done to make it easier to expand the road. (US traffic engineers only ever want to expand roads, never make them smaller.)

If it takes a couple of hours you're obsessing. I cut my quarter-acre suburban lawn in about 45 minutes, with a cheap push mower.

The time it takes to mow your lawn depends mostly on the size of your property. When I was a teenager up we had a little under 3 acres of grass that needed to be mowed. Even with a small non-commercial tractor-style riding mower, it took several hours to do.

Oh of course. But in a town that's rather unusually large. When I think of a place where anyone would complain about the grass not being cut for two weeks, it's in some kind of little townhome neighborhood with a really uptight HOA board.