Lawns are the least maintenance option. Grass roots hold dirt in place to prevent soil erosion and dust in the air. Maintaining a lower relative temperature than the heat island effect of paving yards with concrete. Lawns are the worst option in terms of addressing climate change storing lowest quantities of carbon per acre/hectare. Thanks to globalism and offshoring of agricultural labor, we've enjoyed historically low food production costs for consecutive decades. There was not much incentive to consider repurposing land for food production purposes. But perhaps with recent market shifts, we may see a more widescale reexamination of our chosen cultural norms.