The culture of the perfect lawn

(sorry for the late post of this...I have quite a backlog!)

We went to see one of my heros, Enrique Penalosa, speak at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at NYU last week. Enrique loves to contrast urban development of a resource-deprived city like Bogota, Columbia, where he was the mayor, against Western notions of development, especially to show how a "poor" country like Bogota can be one of the most progressive in terms of transportation policy reform.

Specifically, he has a common saying, which is that public spaces are the most democratizing asset any city can provide because in a good public space, the poorest worker and the wealthiest elite will come across each other. It's a cultural thing, and he certainly didn't always have a receptiv audience when he said things like this, but after two years of his public space and greenways initiatives, he made converts out of citizens in Bogota. As he kept re-iterating, the public good must be upheld above private interests.

That got us thinking at our table about how different it is for US residents, and how the argument runs counter to all the signals we're given about our collective American Dream. A common perception we encounter when we go out into the field that every US citizen is entitled to their own car, their own backyard, to their single family home and that public space is extra. Everyone is entitled to "property." The democratizing asset that the government should provide are policies that permit everyone to be able to own something of value. The public good is to ensure equal access to private interests.

The same day as the Enrique talk, I found this LA Times article about the culture of the perfect lawn, which of course is an attendant effect of owning the perfect single family home with the perfect backyard.

The article shows the evolution of the building desire for the perfect lawn, and hypothesizes, "There is no business conspiracy here, just economic self-interest."

What a contrast to Enrique Penalosa's claim that in a democracy the public good must prevail above all else, and especially above private interests!

In this world of monetizing every pro and con in order to make public policies, we wondered how to convince the unconverted that the public good, in the form of a public space, serves everyone's self-interests. As Enrique said, any child can tell you the conditions to raise a happy whale. However, we're failing in our ability to re-create an environment to raise a happy child.