idly.org

You should read Dave Winer’s excellent meditation on the meaning of parks, and how parks and back yards are not entirely fungible:

He said people need parks in NYC because they don’t have back yards.

This struck me as completely backwards!

I tried to explain how that was just one perspective, but I failed. Later I thought of the proper way of expressing it.

In Seattle they need back yards because they don’t have parks. (I know they have parks, but stay with me here…)

I’d have to concur. As someone who grew up with a back yard, and now has none—even though I live in the “green-country”—I find that a back yard is about isolation. The lack of an exclusionary outdoor space has led me to enjoy more variety in my explorations out-of-doors. Parks have the additional advantage for introverts that you can be among people without necessarily interacting with them.