[Disclaimer: The following statements reflect the Finnish planning context. Other aspects may apply if you are in another location.]
Reasons (in no particular order):
- it is a safety thing for small animals (minor reason): higher grass means more hiding space for hedgehogs and cats and other similarly sized skittish animals (or very small children)
- it’s a safety thing for cars (major reason): so you can see along the road (and not hit said small skittish animals who decide to jump out from under a bush)
- keeping harmful pests at bay (like rats and ticks and snakes and stuff)
- keeping invasive species at bay (you notice them when you have to go and cut the grass every now and then)
- it enables the proliferation of traditional landscape plants that were normally found along the edges of fields and forests, but that today have little space to thrive as field and forest is more stationary than they used to be
- Because Of History: it’s always been done that way and no-one cares enough (or is paid enough) to change ingrained processes
However, things are changing! Slowly but surely people realise that those burnt strips of grass are… not very good, both aesthetically and from an environmental standpoint, no matter how much of a car-safety-focused peep you are. Experiments on roadside planting have been done since at least the late 90s in Finland, probably earlier in other parts of the world, and now that people have started waking up to the climate crisis, local resilience and green-blue planning is a very hot topic. So things are changing!
For example, one major reason for short grass is the car safety argument: if you can see the road, surely you are more likely to drive more carefully?
Not at all! Wider angles of sight and broader roads actually promote higher speeds and more unsafe driving! If you want truly safe city streets, they should be winding and have a lot of trees and bushes so you can’t just zone out behind the wheel but have to pay attention – the basis for many traffic calming measures today. Things are changing!
What you can do to promote better urban planning and introduce some nice local plants to the side of the road:
- vote in your local elections for people who promote things like these
- check if your city has some sort of landscape planning guidelines and/or environmental guide, and when you can make an impact on it if they are updating it? When is the ‘ask the citizens’-time (usually around a month)?
- send in suggestions if your city has a citizen participation system
- vote in your local elections
- suggest that your city gets a citizen participation system if they don’t have it already
- go to local political rallies and town meetings and those weekend “Let’s Mingle With The Voters” that local politicians both organise and go to! An opinion piece sent to the local newspaper/facebook page might get some traction, but do you know how hard it is to say ‘no’ to a person in front of you who comes with kind questions about the economic impact of the unsightly roadside lawns and how we really should promote local species since they are so much hardier and cheaper, don’t you agree?
- vote in your local elections
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