Comments on: How green is my neighbourhood?

By: Christine

Christine — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 03:06:30 +0000

These examples in Chicago demonstrate that the shared lawn wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, notice the attempts to fence individual patches of green.
[ http://achicagosojourn.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-incomparable-striking-in-every.html ]

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 07:44:38 +0000

You sometimes see shared front lawns in England but I think the idea always comes from the land owner/developer and I doubt if it is ever what the residents want. ‘My home is my castle’ is a fair summary of the English attitude – and probably derives from the time (most of history, in fact) when gardens were places to grow food. Loudon did much to popularise the idea of a garden as a place for horticultural display, rather than food production. It is also likely that the coal smoke in industrial cities made food production problematic.

By: Christine

Christine — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 02:44:31 +0000

ps. Thankyou to the reference by Scott he recommends (p110):
“no lawn can be bought to perfection if it is cut less often than once a week, and two weeks is the longest time a lawn should remain uncut, except in periods of total suspension of growth by severe drought.”

By: Christine

Christine — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 01:12:22 +0000

Yes. Sharing a front lawn is one form of communal living. It takes a commitment from each person in the neighbourhood to upkeep their patch of lawn to create the tranquil sweeping feeling of a lawned street.

By: Thomas Mickey

Thomas Mickey — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 22:00:07 +0000

This scene in Detroit could indeed be on the East Coast in America as well. Ohio writer Frank Scott is his book of 1870, The Art of Beautifying Home Grounds, recommended that the lawn of one house sweep into the lawn of the next. Certainly happens in this picture. Scott wrote that Andrew Jackson Downing his inspiration for his treatment of the landscape. Downing, of course, preferred all things English in landscape and garden, and recognized J. C. Loudon as his mentor.

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 19:21:27 +0000

If you had set Sherwood Forest,Detroit, as a guessing game I might have made 1m other guesses before I got it right. But despite its English character, the front gardens without fences or walls should have told me that it was not in England. So I should have been going through all the large settlements on the East Coast of the US. My criticism of housing reformers is that they all offer us panaceas – and what consumers want is a vast range of choice. I don’t know what China is going to do when apartment living becomes less popular.

By: Robert Webber

Robert Webber — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 10:56:25 +0000

Difficult to overestimate the psychological value of growing up in that street compared to the mean and nasty little collections of private spaces which are being designed now!
Best
Robert

By: Christine

Christine — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 05:43:53 +0000

As this urban centred debate continues the world of microbial ecology is adding new knowledge of the carbon cycle and to the carbon accounting equation of rainforest ecologies…
[ http://www.scienceinpublic.com/stories/2010/forest-sink/ ] and potentially old growth temperate forests. [ http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/preserving-oldgrowth-forests-is-vital-to-saving-the-planet-20090621-cshx.html ]