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Comment by stronglikedan | Hacker News Reader

Funny. I was just sitting on my lawn a couple hours ago eating lunch with my dog, thinking how much I love my lawn, and how fortunate I am to have one. Then we played a little fetch on the lawn before I went back to work. It was great, and I hope to always have a lawn to do that on. I couldn't imagine a large useless zeroscaped swath of land around my home.

I do feel back for folks that are forced to have a lawn that they don't use, but they do have options to live in housing without lawns, I suppose. Or they could figure out how to actually enjoy their lawn like I have. But to each their own.

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I don't want to fight, I'm just surprised that after expressing that you "feel [bad] for folks that are forced to have a lawn" you follow up with the suggestion they just move elsewhere or "figure out how to actually enjoy their lawn".

Wouldn't a better solution be to change the laws / regulations forcing people into having lawns? The current status quo isn't benign - it requires people to spend time and/or money during summers doing many bad things: creating noise pollution, burning gasoline inefficiently in residential areas, etc - all to achieve an outcome that is arguably worse than what they would have done otherwise.

If you bought a place that had land use regulations that you now don’t (or always didn’t) like, suggesting a move seems reasonable to me. Plenty of places have no such regulations.

Personally, I love our (small, city lot) lawn. It’s great for kids, the dog, and to have a relaxing place to have friends over. If someone doesn’t want one, I don’t want to force them to have one, but they have to take some agency in not choosing a place that’s a poor fit for their desires.

The big problem is that, as far as I can tell, the status quo is too pervasive. I can't find statistics, but I strongly suspect it's far fewer than 30% of of houses listed for sale which are in places that do not require lawns.

What I was able to find:

> Most zoning codes require lawns, and many don’t allow much deviation from grass.

Are you against people changing laws? Why is moving from where you live the default option, rather than changing the rules?

We have a democracy in various forms and of course I support people changing laws when there is broad consensus. My sense is that broad consensus is in favor of lawns in areas that currently require them by regulation, making “move” a reasonable option.

My sense is that most people do not have enough time and or energy to try to change laws. The status quo is absurd. If there was some weird law on the books that made all these lawn-only requirements go away in 2024, how many people do you think would actively try to reinstate the lawn-only laws?

I clearly hang around different people, since just about everyone I talk to thinks its bonkers that we mandate lawn-only, and fine people for doing otherwise.

In communities that have a gate, my guess is that those requirements would mostly be re-instated within the year. In communities that have a sign with a community name on it [but no gate], I'd guess that around half of them would come back within a year.

Thank you for sharing specifics. I'm guessing fewer than 50% of the houses in USA are of the two types you mention - most homeowners, I think, live in regular suburban sprawl under township rules. I suspect most of those communities would not fight to demand lawns.

Except maybe in cases where (as perhaps often happens in politics), one individual with free time gets to impose their preferences on others (by being the loudest and perhaps the only voice in local government meetings).

We need UBI (Universal Basic Income) and a 4DWW (Four Day Work Week) so that people would have more free time to contribute to the communities where they live (and not be burnt out from day-to-day work).

I really didn’t get the point of lawns until I had a child and wanted to give them a place to run and play and roll around outside without having to worry too much about them hurting themselves on rocks, short sharp sapling stumps, etc. We do still have woodland on our property but its kind of gnarly in there.

I realize this is a very narrow use case and many places require lawns for not necessarily great reasons and also a ton of chemicals and resources go into maintaining them. I try to do it as minimally as possible, and it’s not a very big area.

Having children play outside did not used to be a "very narrow use case". Hopefully that is not our future.

Yeah, I think there is a balance. Lawns are for play, so if you're using it that way, great. Many people have front lawns that they don't use. I live on a hill where lawns are sloped and useless. It's nearly impossible to play on something that steep. The children that live around here don't ever play on their front lawns that are like this. The space could be put to better use.

Do you have and use both a front lawn and a back lawn? There are lots of people who use one of their lawns functionally, but I don't know anybody who uses both of their lawns functionally.

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