Different neighborhoods work differently. I played baseball in my front yard. First (and only base, besides home) was the mailbox across the street.
But it's true that a lot of people don't use their front yards for much, except perhaps as a noise buffer from the road. If you go a non-lawn route, you'll need to be careful to maintain it in a way that doesn't encourage intervention by neighbors, municipalities, etc. On the other hand, I'm rewilding a bit of my back, and nobody says anything.
There's a big difference between country-lawn and suburb-lawn.
Suburb lawn is mostly useless. Front yard is a road buffer that you have to spend time and money maintaining all summer for little benefit, back yard is so large mostly because parks and pools are too far away or don't exist because population density is so low (because lawns are so big).
The sillier and more wasteful thing in my view is the front yard. The back yard is a luxury and definitely an instance of conspicuous consumption in denser suburbs and cities, but it's easy to see why people like it -- it provides an open yet semi-private space where you, your kids, or your dog can play, and also a convenient place to host a gathering with your friends. When weather permits, you see people in their back yard all the time.
The front yard, however, sees much less use in most neighborhoods, at least until you're so far out in the country that you practically live on a farm -- it's rare that you'll see anybody on the front lawn unless they're mowing or landscaping it or on their way elsewhere, precisely due to its lack of privacy. The suburbs in general can, with some debate, be accused of being a result of the lack in imagination in adapting the estates of the British landed gentry to smaller lot sizes; the front yard is much less defensible against this accusation. The only practical functions of the front yard in relatively dense suburbs, such as those making up most of California, are these:
- Provide an appealing botanical decoration for the front of the house.
- Decrease noise from passing traffic.
- Prevent passersby from looking into your windows as easily.
But the puny size of front yards in these suburbs limits their effectiveness in satisfying these objectives, which would be much better served by a hedge or ivy-covered wall. These shouldn't be much more expensive than the front lawn, especially considering that you could either eliminate the front yard and expand the back yard or gain increased privacy in the front yard would make people more likely to use it.
Most of the front yards in my neighborhood are not particularly busy: lawn, plantings, or more commonly both. However, except during the spring and fall you will not see a lot of neighbors without seeking them out. (Exception: the dog walkers meet everybody.) The winter is mild but enough to keep one inside unless for tasks. Most people prefer inside and the a/c in the summer.
I love being outdoors, but a lawn hardly counts. If I want to go outside, I'll go outside - to a park, the arboretum, the beach, up to the mountains, across the mountains to the desert - somewhere interesting. I'll never be wealthy enough to own enough of the outdoors to make it matter.
I have a nice back porch with a grill and a picnic table, and there's a deck way out back with a firepit and some benches and some garden beds, but most of the back yard is gravel and I use it as a parking lot. It's really useful, living in a big city, to have a place off the street to store vehicles.
I also have a front yard, which is a total waste of space. It looks ugly unless I waste lots of time doing repetitive maintenance work, and nobody ever spends any time there because it's all exposed on a busy street. I'd rather rip it all out and have some kind of native plants jungle, but that takes time and money I haven't been able to spend on it yet. I'd be just as happy if the front yard didn't exist and my house fronted directly on the sidewalk.
If I wanted to play badminton or read on a lawn chair I would just go to one of the parks within a few blocks' walk. There's no reason for me to own that land.
In general, the front yard / side yard / back yard distinctions are entirely about the "character" of a neighborhood and making it look nice.
Most places that have regulations -- at the town or HOA level -- discourage you from doing anything in the front yard besides landscaping. Eg, a shed in a front yard will be forbidden.
Usually the restrictions will be more safety based for back and to some extent side yards. It's sort of a "do whatever you want but don't make us look at it" mindset.
It will cause the most problems if you build the house far back on the lot (since then you end up with a lot of unusable front yard and a tiny back yard), if your back yard is unusably shaded, if your trying to maximize the use of your small lot to the limits, or if you don't pay attention to the rules and either buy a house without knowing them or do a lot of work that has to be undone.
Do you have and use both a front lawn and a back lawn? There are lots of people who use one of their lawns functionally, but I don't know anybody who uses both of their lawns functionally.
The streets can be plowed and maintained by the city. That's how it works in my locale. If the city needs aesthetic standards, they can enact them city-wide. Good luck. In my neighborhood, front yards range from fully wooded, to manicured grass, and everything in between.
The yard isn't necessarily there to be used in the way you mean. Often the yard is a buffer between you and your neighbor. Your noisy neighbor who smokes, swears, and plays the most disagreeable music at the highest volume late into the night. Any distance is helpful.
Having some activity in your back yard is definitely worth it, and there's so many people that don't have that because they (have to) live somewhere that's densely urbanized.
I had a very bland back yard (green ivies as walls, some other evergreen ground covering), but my girlfriend moved in two years ago and she's a gardener. We've got a diversity of plants now, the soil is alive again, and there's a popular bird feeder, regularly refilled, hanging on the shed now. We sometimes get a dozen birds flitting about there, who then get interrupted by a pair of magpies.
But, this whole neighbourhood I live in (very middle class, I'm at the outer edge) has been designed to allow for nature, with lots of semi-wild green spaces dotted around and lots of waterways.
Since we're being pedantic, many cities have different rules for what is allowed in a front yard vs. a back yard, which may actually be the problem... this often leads to the occasional news story about the town that forces someone to remove a garden in their front lawn, etc.
Paddling pools and wrestling don't take a 1/5 acre lawn (not atypical suburban plot size). In my previous house, the back yard was heavily landscaped/hardscaped - patio, retaining wall, rocks and shrubs on the hill, etc. The front was lawn. Still plenty of room for my son to run around. And if he wanted more space, he went to the park around the corner.
There's also a substantial difference between a "natural" lawn, where clover and other plants are allowed vs the stereotypical "perfect" lawn (in the US) with a single grass species (and heavy application of herbicides and fertilizers).
But it's true that a lot of people don't use their front yards for much, except perhaps as a noise buffer from the road. If you go a non-lawn route, you'll need to be careful to maintain it in a way that doesn't encourage intervention by neighbors, municipalities, etc. On the other hand, I'm rewilding a bit of my back, and nobody says anything.
reply