New Urbanism Watch: lawn sharing!

Great post by Matt Yglesias, who is rapidly turning into one of the blogosphere's biggest proponents of the New Urbanism. For the uninitiated, New Urbanism is a loose movement that seeks to find ways for Americans to live in close proximity to each other (and within easy access of interesting public spaces) without sacrificing the things we love about our expansive American lifestyles. Today, we have the idea of lawn sharing:

Jonathan Zasloff observes that shared yard space (as in according to him a show for kids called Backyardigans or else perhaps Big Love) where several separate single-family homes would converge on a single back yard might be appealing to some people. But of course like a lot of things that might increase residential density with the various positive impacts on affordable housing, transit accessibility, climate, public health, etc. that entails it's generally illegal to build this way.

A little more sarcastically than I'd have put it. But lawn sharing is a great idea, and one that I've been advocating for a while now. And Yglesias doesn't even mention some other benefits of lawn sharing - that it would allow kids to more easily make friends, and provide a convenient way to organize "babysitting pools" so that family-raising becomes less of an onerous chore.