[chimeracoder]

Most of this is due to a relatively new phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crabgrass_Frontier:_The_Suburba...

The concept of a 'front lawn', or even of easy access to nature in general, has not always been as popular as it is today. As Jackson notes, a front lawn is rather useless except as a status symbol (unlike a back lawn, people rarely use the front lawn for barbecues, etc.), and they can cut the amount of available space in a neighborhood by 50% or more, making them a truly luxury expense.

But this popularity wasn't always so widespread - and n fact, it isn't even so commonplace in some parts of the world today (though the Westernization of global cultures has changed this somewhat).

For those who are interested, the most expensive zip codes in New York are 10014 (by real estate) and 10128 (by income). The poorest would probably be 10451 (South Bronx).

Contrast those both to 10025 and 10027, the border of Harlem (poor, but rapidly gentrifying, historically black) and the Upper West Side (historically well-off for several decades, also a large Jewish community).

[kcl]

> The concept of a 'front lawn', or even of easy access to nature in general, has not always been as popular as it is today.

The divide between city and country living is ancient. I find most of your assertions based on Jackson hard to swallow. We were almost exclusively agrarian before industrialization. Your article gives the fraction of people living in cities as 1/3 in 1890 in the US. It's more than that today. It seems like lawns and easy access to nature have been around for a long time. If they are more in demand today, maybe it's because there is a natural need that's going unfilled.

(If anyone has a good chart of US city vs. non-city dwelling over time, please share.)

> As Jackson notes, a front lawn is rather useless except as a status symbol

A status symbol? Only if you are looking at it from the perspective of an apartment dweller. Suburban neighborhoods don't think of people in terms of their front yard. They don't think of front yards much at all, except when it comes time to cut them.

If your front yard is messy, that might reflect badly on you, but that sort of information will be conveyed in other ways. The front yard won't have much to do with it.

I suppose a more accurate way to phrase your argument would be "ornamentation". Even then, a front yard is not useless. People like to have space between them and their neighbors. It is a buffer between you and the road, and a place for your children to play. People like to have a space that's theirs.

I think it is much more likely that the size of yards is a function of what people find comfortable to have between them and their neighbors, with other factors like cost coming into play second.

Why, for instance, do New Yorkers buy their second homes in the surrounding rural areas? Why not another apartment?

When I lived in the city I felt cramped. Apartment living taxed my well-being. It's possible this is because of how I grew up. I think it's more likely it's a physical attribute of how I am. Suburbanites are probably the same way.

Open up Google Earth and pan over America. Are you suggesting all the front yards you see are equivalent to gold chains, and not some fundamental property of how people want to live?

> and they can cut the amount of available space in a neighborhood by 50% or more, making them a truly luxury expense.

Again, this could only come from a city perspective. Front yards are easy to get. Everyone who wants one has one. The objective function of a suburban area is not to maximize space efficiency.

By the end of your comment you steer the discussion back towards cities in particular---but Jackson is an argument on actual suburbanization, not "intra-city" suburbanization. So if you aren't talking about these concepts in general, why predicate your comment on Jackson's book/phenomenon?

[chimeracoder]

I think you're actually proving my point.

> We were almost exclusively agrarian before industrialization.

Who's the 'we'? Western Germanic society perhaps, but even there there is no shortage of examples of large urban populations, including for the very rich, who usually preferred the safety of the cities.

> Suburban neighborhoods don't think of people in terms of their front yard. They don't think of front yards much at all, except when it comes time to cut them.

> People like to have space between them and their neighbors. It is a buffer between you and the road, and a place for your children to play. People like to have a space that's theirs.

> The objective function of a suburban area is not to maximize space efficiency.

Potlatch would probably have been a better term, but your points are exactly what I was saying - maintaining a well-manicured lawn is incredibly expensive, particularly in areas where grass doesn't naturally grow well (like desert areas).

> Again, this could only come from a city perspective. Front yards are easy to get. Everyone who wants one has one.

Before you dismiss my point as 'only a city perspective', think about the total expense associated with lawn care - assuming that you don't let it completely go to seed, because this is the potlatch that I was talking about.

Read Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use' and you'll see what I mean - she doesn't describe the lawn itself in too much detail (it's an artifact of the time in which it takes place), but even from the first paragraph it's clear she's not talking about a lawn filled with grass. In fact, she's referring to a "lawn" of dry dirt, which she makes 'wavy' by raking wave patterns into it. There's no function to raking dry dirt any more than there's a function for cutting down healthy grass to 1-2 inches from 5-6 inches.

It's not like there's anything natural about a well-manicured lawn; in most suburban enclaves, it's rare to see more than one row of flowers and other flora - 10% of the space at the very most. If the 'function' of a lawn is to provide privacy, or a buffer, it would be just as well served by an empty lot. Or even better, by tall bushes and trees, which can look just as aesthetically pleasing. Don't confuse incredibly artificial front lawns with 'nature'.

> Why, for instance, do New Yorkers buy their second homes in the surrounding rural areas? Why not another apartment?

Second homes and front lawns have nothing to do with each other. You seem to dichotodmize 'suburban homes with lawns' and 'multi-family apartments', but there's actually quite a lot in between. It's just rare within this country because societal forces have caused us to tend to prefer the poles of that spectrum, for the time being.

> Are you suggesting all the front yards you see are equivalent to gold chains, and not some fundamental property of how people want to live?

At one point in Puritan society, housewives were judged by the number of lumps in their sugar bowl, because that showed how much time the household invested in house care. Today we use other metrics, lawn care being one. There's no fundamental property of how people want to live, except that all societies create largely-arbitrary metrics of judgement (like potlatch) - this just happens to be one of ours today. Don't think that any of these arrangements of living are permanent and universal, as if they spring from some intrinsic understanding of human beings. Look at old Chinese living arrangements and you'll see what I mean, even if you only compare them to Chinese homes today.

> Jackson is an argument on actual suburbanization, not "intra-city" suburbanization. So if you aren't talking about these concepts in general, why predicate your comment on Jackson's book/phenomenon?

Since 1970, only two cities in the country have grown in population without annexing territory from surrounding areas. If you read Jackson's works, you'll see that these two aren't as clear-cut and fundamentally different as you seem to think.

[anamax]

> I think you're actually proving my point.

That thought demonstrates that you don't understand him.

> Western Germanic society perhaps, but even there there is no shortage of examples of large urban populations

What definition of "no shortage" are we using?

Yes, London and Berlin existed, but what fraction of the population lived in these areas? How many were there?

When >50% of the population is directly involved in producing food (blacksmiths aren't direct), what fraction do you think can live in urban areas?

> maintaining a well-manicured lawn is incredibly expensive,

No, it isn't. I know poor people with fantastic lawns.

As to the rest, you're revealing your Puritanism. You're upset that people aren't doing the things that would make you value them. That's a problem, and it isn't theirs.

Where do you get off "suggesting" that they please you instead of folks who they want to please, includiing themselves (a possibility that you don't even consider).

> Second homes and front lawns have nothing to do with each other.

I'll bite - which of them do you have? (For some folks, they do have a lot to do with one another. For others, not so much.)

Which reminds me, your inaccurate usage of potlatch is incredibly insulting on at least a couple of levels. Of course, you know that, and don't care.