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NIMBYs (whether they accept the title or not) cherish strong ideas of the value of back yards: how they feel, who needs them, etc.
So imagine if you could pool some back yards to create massive shared ones – e.g. with a playground visible from all the kitchen windows. Like this! https://twitter.com/ElizaJaneAgain/status/1338585728284991488
So imagine if you could pool some back yards to create massive shared ones – e.g. with a playground visible from all the kitchen windows. Like this! https://twitter.com/ElizaJaneAgain/status/1338585728284991488
Moving back to NZ, I dreamed about a "big back yard" for kids. Where we landed: a townhouse with a small back yard (room for one trampoline, a teensy patio, a bike shed, and lots of creative & mostly vertical planting). It works for laidback adults, and visiting pre-schoolers...
...but to be honest, my kids grew out of needing a fenced back yard, and fast. What they (and their parents) now enjoy is: parks & beaches; having schools & mates & dairies within walking/ biking distance; a HOP card for bussing around the city; safe streets and space to roam.
The funny thing is, it feels quite full-circle. My mum grew up in a state house that – besides the trad front yard and back garden – backed onto a shared grassy field. Guess where the kids mostly played? If these old homes are intensified, that space will come back into its own.
Best of all, council mows it for you! If you prefer a big green lawn-of-one's-own that you can mow yourself, go for it; you just might have to move a bit further out of the city in pursuit of that grail. (People who need affordable housing are already doing this, so fair's fair!)
I get the dream of the big back yard; I was raised on it, and in it. Lucky days, when cities sprawled lazily, and we had no idea what all that driving was costing us and when the bill would come due. There were good bits: local needs served locally, and kids roaming fairly free.
Those good bits are still attainable... if you add more housing for people (while cultivating park space and public transport). Want a lively coffee shop or handy grocer on your corner? You'll need a decent catchment of locals of all ages, many of whom walk/ bike/ catch the bus.
Want independent kids who can get themselves to and from school, sports, friends' places, a dairy run, an after-school job? You'll benefit from houses that are closer together - eyes on the street - and streets that aren't busy with cars, because everyone has better options.
Back yards are a recent variation on a beloved archetype: a place of respite in a city, where you can gather, play, grow food, not worry about kids in traffic. They're lovely! But also, in a way, tiny gated communities, which increasingly lock others out of those same benefits.
So what if we scaled back up, and started thinking in terms of village greens and commons, rather than each house as its own little walled city? Make our shared assets - buses, utilities, shops, streets, parks - better used and more social. And let kids out from behind the gates.
We might need a new acronym though, eh. One that welcomes the creative, collective, rational reshaping of pockets of community to help our cities grow up, and help us tackle inequity, emissions, pollution, social isolation, and other unintended byproducts of the current set-up.
(Build Optimised Living Spaces, Heck Yeah!)
This thread brought to you by this article: https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/300183061/the-battle-of-wellington-medium-density-meets-high-anxiety
And also brought to you by growing up in several typologies of classic Kiwi suburban housing; followed by flatting in rundown versions of the same; and then living in cities and towns where human beings snuggle a lot closer together and multi-generational housing is the norm.
