City Backyards

It used to be that you could have a yard with your house no matter where in North America you bought it. Cities, towns, it didn't matter. We had so much room that we could afford to waste parcels of land in urban areas on patches of grass. While we still have a lot of room on the continent, most of it is between cities. The cities themselves have expanded and their populations have boomed, lots have been split and split again to hold more and more houses so that today city yards are so expensive that you practically have to take money for gold jewelry, AND sell one of your kidneys to afford one blade of grass. It's unfortunate but true.

The supply of back yards in cities is dwindling at an alarming rate as the lots get split up and no new backyards are springing up to take their place. They're not even included in most home designs these days because there's so little room to work with as it is that yard space would be put to much better use as a bedroom or kitchen. So back yards are becoming increasingly found only in the suburbs outside of the city and the inner city neighborhoods are building up vertically, with Mississauga single-family homes giving way to towers of Mississauga condos, taking land that used to be occupied by abandoned factories with an automatic strapping machine.

Because of the increasing land values in cities and the resulting scarcity of back yards, back yards' roles in our lives have changed. They're no longer informal and practical. You won't find many children's swing sets, derelect old cars, and clotheslines full of womens' T shirts in modern city back yards. When you do see city yards they're dedicated, professional backyards, devoted to one activity and one activity only, and it's usually entertaining. People are so used to living in high park lofts and condos that they would be scandalized at the thought of wasting their valuable green space on a play area for the kids when there's a park down the street.

People who have back yards in the city these days are generally regarded as either really rich, really lucky, or really selfish. The fact that you can afford a yard at all places you in the upper crust of society. You also have to have been really lucky to find a place with a yard at all, since most home buyers would beat each other senseless fighting over such places if real estate agents would let them. The selfishness comes from the fact that you're hogging space in a city where so many people need room, though mostly it's a cover for jealousy. Then, if you do anything other than turn your yard into a dinner party space for friends, you must be a granola-eating, tree-hugging user of organic diapers.

Such is the evolution of the city yard. Soon very few city yards will become no city yards in a process that is unlikely to reverse itself unless there's some sort of apocalypse and we have to start all over again.