Privacy fences they're called: those impenetrable expanses of vinyl and redwood designed to keep the neighbors out. But on Lizzie Cove in South Jordan there are five back yards, two vacant lots and not a fence between any of them.
In fact it's hard to say, on Lizzie Cove, where one back yard ends and the next begins. The result is a shared space where the children move from the trampoline in the Willdens' yard to the play set in the Buonocores' to the water feature in the Jimenezes'. Eventually the Jimenezes will build a fire pit and the Buonocores will put in a basketball hoop. As usual, everyone's invited, even though not long ago none of these families knew each other.
Americans spent $3.2 billion last year on fencing, to clearly delineate what belongs to whom. But there is also a little revolution going on, in which neighbors are deciding to not build fences — and in some cases are even tearing them down.
"Taking down fences is about slowly beginning to realize that we need each other," says Dave Wann of Golden, Colo., the author of the books "Affluenza" and "Superbia." Taking down fences is one of the 31 "bolder steps" Wann suggests for creating what is known these days as "intentional community," especially in neighborhoods where front porches have given way to front-yard garages. Think of fencelessness as "gaining something rather than giving something up," he says.
Wann grew up in the 1950s in Park Forest, Ill., in a neighborhood without backyard fences. Instead, he says, there was a feeling of openness. Even Levittown founder William Levitt, the father of the modern look-alike subdivision, spoke out against fences, Wann says.
Six-foot-tall fences — the kind you can't see through or even chat over — are a more recent phenomenon. Maybe people began feeling the need for privacy when their houses got bigger and their yards smaller, Wann postulates. Or maybe their increasingly exhausting lives created a need for refuge. Americans, he argues, have become "grumpy and isolated."
But not in the Eaglewood subdivision in North Salt Lake, where resident Shauna Howe estimates that at least 75 percent of the homes share back yards with their neighbors. Five back yards around her cul-de-sac form one large back yard expanse of lawns and swing sets. Quite often, she says, the child playing in what could technically be called the Howes' yard isn't a Howe.
"I think people would panic if they think someone will build a fence," she says.
In Davis, Calif., the residents of a stretch of N Street have been known to have "fence tearing down parties." What started out 18 years ago with one homeowner who wanted what he calls "a permacultural community amidst the sterile suburban landscape" has now grown into a co-housing community of 17 houses. Unlike most co-housing, built by like-minded people who get together to buy a parcel of land and design a new community, N Street was created out of existing houses as, one by one, a new neighbor decided to take down a fence.
The old fences were put to new uses — compost boxes, hot tubs, raised garden beds — that are shared by the 12 families. Pooling resources is often a by-product of fencelessness, as people realize that the more they get to know each other the less each needs to have his very own lawn mower or a truck or a trampoline.
Davis is something of a mecca for intentional community. The first newly constructed co-housing community in the United States, Muir Commons, was built in Davis in 1990, modeled after co-housing in Denmark. The co-housing concept also includes regularly sharing meals and cooking, sometimes in what is known in co-housing jargon as the Common House. That's the more energetic end of the no-fences spectrum.
At the other end is the "shared park" idea encouraged by a group called Community Greens, headquartered in Arlington, Va. In this concept, neighbors decide to give up a portion of their back yards, creating a block-long green space in between. Sometimes these neighbors decide to fence off their remaining back yards but will typically use a low hedge or picket fence. Another variation creates fenceless back yards with a connecting path running down the middle of the interior of the block. In Village Homes, a fenceless community built in Davis in 1981, these lush, peaceful paths are public walkways, bordered by a community garden and vineyard.
"It's not for everyone," says Tammy Jimenez, who is thrilled about living on the fenceless Lizzie Cove but also thinks there are personalities and situations where it doesn't work. When she and Rick lived in Elk Grove, Calif., on a tiny lot, they were grateful for the fence that surrounded their back yard. With just 10 feet between neighbors, "that's the only way you got any privacy," she says.
Their new South Jordan neighborhood provides the luxury of space. And there is a wall separating the back yards from livestock in a pasture to the north. Even poet Robert Frost wouldn't have minded that.
In his poem "Mending Wall," Frost's neighbor famously argues that "good fences make good neighbors," but Frost thinks to himself that this notion should only apply if there are cows involved.
"Before I built a wall," Frost goes on to say, "I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out."
E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com