The American Lawn
The total area that American lawns take up is equivalent to the area of the entire state of New York…and they require an amazing amount of water.
From the New Yorker:
The essential trouble with the American lawn is its estrangement from place: it is not a response to the landscape so much as an idea imposed upon it—all green, all the time, everywhere. Recently, a NASA-funded study…determined that, including golf courses, lawns in the United States cover nearly fifty thousand square miles—an area roughly the size of New York State….In order to keep all the lawns in the country well irrigated, the author of the study calculated, it would take an astonishing two hundred gallons of water per person, per day…nearly a third of all residential water use in the United States currently goes toward landscaping.
