[pooploop64]

Lawns are for much more than just flexing. It's an outdoor part of your property which is flat and open enough to use for various activities and purposes. I don't know where people get such a cynical idea that this is THE reason anyone has lawns.

[jmbwell]

Yeah this is all very regional too. Row houses in London and brownstones in New York or whatever won’t have front lawns as a function of density, but may have back yards or gardens, which may or may not be a function of producing your own food, which is all tied up in different experiences of war, while certainly countryside estates are for form more than function, while post war housing in the midwestern US was in part a build-on-your-lot market with houses literally ordered from a Sears catalog…

There’s definitely more to the story and there are myriad factors.

[nly]

I live in a London terrace, originally built circa 1900.

There's plenty of evidence the rear gardens were used for growing food and drying laundry back then

Children would also play there where they could be seen from the kitchen (which was always in the rear), rather than playing in the road (as much)

Rear gardens also served as a space where you would converse with your neighbour. Typically fences between neighbours were low and wire (tall 6ft wooden fences came later)

The other thing is the only toilet in a 4 bedroom property would also be out there, as an outdoor WC, accessible from outside

I doubt much read space was reserved for lawn back then

[throw0101a]

> but may have back yards or gardens, which may or may not be a function of producing your own food, which is all tied up in different experiences of war

The neighbourhood of "Cabbagetown" in Toronto is so-named because yards were not used for 'ornamental' plants:

> Cabbagetown's name derives from the Irish immigrants who moved to the neighbourhood beginning in the late 1840s, said to have been so poor that they grew cabbage in their front yards.[2] Canadian writer Hugh Garner's novel, Cabbagetown, depicted life in the neighbourhood during the Great Depression.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabbagetown,_Toronto

[jyounker]

Sears stopped making homes in 1942. They were strictly pre-WWII.

[asdfasvea]

Wouldn't a non-grassy flat and open area serve the same purpose?

[blipvert]

Not sure that I’d want to lie down with a book on a slab of concrete.

[mghackerlady]

Doesn't have to be concrete. Could be clovers or something

[inigyou]

One set of my grandparents had an expansive, well-cared-for yard with a swing, arches with climbing plants, secret little gravel paths through the trees lined with mosaic tiles featuring the likenesses of their grandchildren, a picnic table, a patio with a barbecue, and so on. I think if you want to have a yard like that, it is a fine hobby. But most people do not. Most people just have a grass rectangle that is a liability. My father has lived in the same house for 15 years and has never used the back yard except as throughfare and has never used the front yard for anything. You can't even see it yard from outside because of an eight-foot-tall fence. All he does is mow it - what's the point of that? It's pure liability. And I think this is how most people's yards are. And that's silly.

I've lived in a few row houses with fully paved outdoor areas. I don't really see the point of that either, but at least it doesn't require regular maintenance so it only has to be occasionally useful to come out ahead.

[mghackerlady]

I think prev was talking about the origins of the grass lawn as we know it today and not the concept of having a lawn itself. The specific kind of lawn grass we have is directly a result of it being a pain in the ass to grow iirc

[cucumber3732842]

Lawns are for where you want to put a patio but can't because some boomers 30yr ago decided that was bad and needed punitive permitting to make it not worth it.