Why American Yards Are Shrinking - Cheddar Explains

it's the American dream a house a white picket fence 2.5 kids and a big green yard in the 1970s the American yard was around 11,000 square feet but today that number has dropped to 9,000 Calabasas California is a shining example of where things are headed just check out how close together these homes are the average 1.5 million dollar home in this neighborhood takes up 60% of the lot so why are our lawns shrinking before we get into this click Subscribe you're already here let's rewind in the 1800s the average American yard was around 50,000 square feet or a little over an acre back then the American dream was to have a nice little house where you could raise all of your children and a big yard where you could grow food and have space to make things the average house took up about 4% of that land or about 1,700 square feet there were fewer people so Lots could take up more space since there wasn't as much land and demand lawns started to shrink when urban row housing sprung up making efficient use of small amounts of land these row houses were generally 15 to 20 feet wide and 30 to 40 feet deep as America moved away from an agrarian economy to an industrial one in the late 1800s lot size shrunk dramatically the American dream had been downsized because people needed a lot less to live comfortably lot size decreased by dramatic 43,000 square feet averaged across the country or down to around 1/5 of an acre single-family home sides decreased by 300 square feet so that the average home took up 20% of the lot this was a huge change but there are two very reasonable answers as to why the first is that square footage shrunk to compensate for the costs of having plumbing heating electricity and other new technology the second reason is that people no longer needed to produce their own domestic goods they didn't need to store home canned fruits and vegetables supplies to make the family's clothing and bedding and other odds and ends people stopped being producers and started becoming consumers these trends started to reverse in the 1930s and Homan lot sizes increased throughout the 1970s this was because of high rents and crime rates in the cities sheep land in the country easy access to cars and government incentives that all pushed families to leave the city for larger suburban houses the empty farmlands the quiet towns and villages surrounding the city found themselves in the midst of a roaring housing boom new developments on every hand some well-planned well-designed blending naturally into the terrain these larger suburban houses had large lawns that became symbols of success and were therefore something to be proud of part of the reason why people cared so much about their lawns in the first place is that in the 1870s when lawns became popular they were seen as aesthetic extensions of manifest destiny they were symbols of American entitlement and triumph manifest destiny wasn't just the notion that America should be a bigger country it permeated many aspects of American life and people believed that they deserved bigger better and grander things because it was meant to be that way lawn products were heavily marketed to men men were rulers of their tiny wild domain that they could domesticate in addition lawns were seen as the masculine equivalent of the hoenn kitchen that their wife ruled over but houses have only continued to get bigger since the 1970s the average new home is 2,500 square feet about 50% bigger than homes from the late 1970s a combination of lots inking by 30 6.2% and home footprints growing by 15.2% mean that lot utilization is a lot higher homes built since 2015 occupy 25% of the land that they sit on while homes built in 1975 occupy just 13% now average lot size has shrunk to around 1/5 of an acre and this isn't because of an increase in town houses or multi-family homes census data shows that 90% of new home growth came from detached houses it's also not because of land crunched areas like the Northeast a Zillo report in 2015 found that yards are shrinking across the south and the Midwest despite lots of available room to expand the report hypothesizes that shrinking lungs are actually an economic compromise americans want bigger houses but since every extra square foot balloons the cost builders cut down on lon acreage to keep things affordable but why did house size become so valued Lewis Hyman a Cornell professor says that in the 1970s Americans started to view their houses as assets that could become more valuable the mindset was that you should buy the biggest house that you can because you'll make more money when you sell it because house prices will go up also lawn maintenance is expensive there are 40 million acres of lawn in the US turf grasses take up roughly three times as much area as irrigated corn which was the USA's largest crop in 2019 grown on the equivalent of 39 million football fields turf grasses vegetables that nobody eats with a single largest irrigated crop in the country the EPA estimates that America's lawns take nine billion gallons of water a day to stay green a NASA study derived from satellite imaging found that turf grasses took up nearly 2 percent of the entire surface of the continental US all of that lawn maintenance gets expensive and since people want bigger houses without paying too much more for them cutting down on lawn size is an effective way of making that happen will American lawns keep shrinking probably since studies say that around 50% of Millennials want to live in bigger homes but I for one think that the grass isn't always greener in the bigger lawn [Music] what's your home toulon ratio and do you wish it was different let us know in the comments make sure you click Subscribe ring the bell for post notifications like this video and I'll see you next time

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 1,040,203

Rating: 4.7781277 out of 5

Keywords: Cheddar, America, Yards, Lawns, Lawn Care, homes, houses, explainer, mansions, city planning, housing, yardwork, lawnmower, neighborhoods, why american yards are shrinking, shrinking, tv dinner, why, business casual

Id: uKwOyA-pOTY

Length: 7min 25sec (445 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ActuallyUnder]

Man these videos are horrible.