I’m not pro-lawn in the sense of believing that a well manicured monoculture of some non-native grass is the ideal use of residential land. That’s bad. Letting dandelions grow and having a spot for butterflies and native bugs is a great thing and should be encouraged. Using part of the lawn for a food garden is also laudable.
Keep in mind that when I talk about lawns serving a purpose I’m using the context of small, reasonably sized homes. In that context, you don’t want a dense thicket of brush reducing accessibility and potentially causing issues with the plumbing and foundation. You want to keep some free space to roam and work with as well. You don’t want a home where you open the door into a bunch of unkept flora. You don’t want to have to wade through waist high brush in order to get around the outside of your house.
It may sound a little extreme, but again I’m not advocating for perfectly manicured lawns - just reasonably kept ones with minimal pesticides.
I think that's a reasonable view to have. It doesn't take up a lot of space while allowing for natural ecosystems to exist alongside human single family residences.
Another idea could be to increase density of human housing while providing vertically built parks integrated into the housing for people who want to use them and keeping larger areas in their more natural state to foster vibrant ecosystems. This would allow people in the high density housing to have space to roam or work while giving the least human interference on the surroundings, in theory at least.
We could even move transportation underground with high density transit networks to decrease impact on surface ecosystems even further.
Even if you wanted to grow vegetables you’d still need to cut the grass and keep saplings from growing wherever they happen to sprout.