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The American lawn revisited: awareness education and culture as public policies toward sustainable lawn

Formally Refereed

Abstract

Lawn has been used for landscaping, gardening, and beautification of homes and cities for a long time. The evolution of the lawn reflects important cultural and biophysical interactions between humans and nature. The American lawn, which was from Europe and has been a part of the American dream for home ownership and culture, has become an area going against nature for its extensively using chemicals and generated pollutions. Tracing how the lawn is becoming an important part of culture, this article focuses on more recent pollution and other environ-mental problems resulted from the lawn culture. It is argued, that awareness, education and changing culture of taste and preference can serve additional measures together with law and technological advancement toward sustainable lawn in the United States and the world.

Keywords

grass, American culture, conspicuous consumption, industrialization, urbanization, pollution, aesthet-ics, landscaping

Citation

Zhang, Yaoqi; Zheng, Bin; Sun, Ge; Fan, Peilei Fan. 2015. The American lawn revisited: awareness education and culture as public policies toward sustainable lawn. Problems of Sustainable Development. vol. 10, no 1, 107-115. 8 p.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/47618