I mean seriously what is the point of a front lawn. No one
ever uses them for anything productive. Don't get me wrong I have nothing
against lawns that serve a useful purpose. I grew up in a house in the suburbs
of Boston with a flat backyard that was perfect for playing soccer, football,
ultimate frisbee you name it. I have a lot of fond memories of that lawn. My
memories around our front lawn, especially mowing it, are.... less fond. We
never played in our front lawn, we never sat in our front lawn, we never did
anything except mow it.
After we graduated college, my wife and I (yes we got
married young :) moved to the Los Angeles area. Where she pursued her PhD and I
worked for SpaceX. As cash strapped newly weds, we opted to live in Hawthorne,
within walking distance of SpaceX so that we would only need one car. I walked
the route between our apartment and SpaceX hundreds of times, and as I walked
past front lawns of our neighborhood, I couldn't help but wonder why such
precious southern California real estate was being eaten up by useless
rectangles of grass.
I thought about how much more efficient it would be to have
the houses built up all the way to the sidewalk. Each house could have an extra
2-4 rooms, more available housing would help to tame the sky high rents.
Whenever I mentioned this thought experiment to people they would scoff and say
that would make streets feel too crowded and claustrophobic and yet these same
people would go to London or Amsterdam and talk about how charming and cozy it
was to buildings come right up to the sidewalk.
Unlike my childhood home, which had no sprinklers, these
California lawns weren't just a waste of space, they were a waste of
water. As a California resident, I was
bombarded by constant messaging about how California was running out of water
and yet these useless lawns continued to slurp up their fill.
A few years, a few kids, and a few lucky breaks later, I am
back in the Boston area attending Harvard Business School. About halfway
through my wife got a job offer in Utah so that’s where I focused my own
recruiting efforts. As I read up about business and the Utah economy, a
recurring theme was the water shortage. The water level in the Great Salt Lake
is going down. There are all kinds of horrible economic, environmental, and
health implications to this. The most alarming of which is that the drying lake
will expose toxic salts which could then be blown into the atmosphere. The idea
that the state is drying out and yet people still had these pristine (and
useless) front lawns blew my mind. I decided to make it my mission to wage war
on the Utah front lawn.
