Growing Backyard Neighborhoods

The goal of this website is to connect people who want to take down backyard fences to create large, shared spaces where children can play and learn together spontaneously and neighbors can get to know each other easily.

This site was formerly called San Francisco Backyard Neighborhood and Learning Center. You can click here to go to the new site for that group.

In addition to trying to help that group grow, we will post information about other groups and individuals who want to take down backyard fences. Some may just want to share portions of their backyards and nothing else. Others may want to share a few more things, such as tools and outdoor toys, and perhaps share occasional meals outdoors. And some may want to develop into retrofitting cohousing communities with some shared indoor facilities like N Street Cohousing in Davis, where fences have gradually been removed from the backyards of 19 houses. Those that focus on permaculture might even become urban ecovillages.

If you own a home with a backyard and would like to have neighbors who want to take down backyard fences (or you already have fences down and want to expand your backyard neighborhood), please see the request for postings at the Blocks with Potential page. (Renters may also post block locations if the owners of the property they rent are open to taking down fences.)

And if you would like to buy or rent property on a block where there are neighbors who want to take down backyard fences, you can click here to ask to be added to an announcement list. Please be specific about which area(s) you are interested in, such as a city, region, or state. You can ask to get on an announcement list for an area before there are any postings about that area. Whenever someone tells us about property for sale or rent in a block described on this website, we will make an announcement to a list of people who have asked to receive notices about the area that the block is in.

In 2012, we might be able to develop a self-service website where people anywhere in the world can send announcements of property for sale or rent on their block directly to people who have expressed interest in buying or renting property in that area and taking down backyard fences. In the meantime, we will try to provide this service manually.

If you are interested in legal and insurance aspects of taking down your fences, we encourage you to check out The Sharing Solution, which was written by two attorneys and published by Nolo. It discusses legal and practical issues of sharing and has a section on sharing yards.

We will never sell or rent any email address, and we won’t give your email address to anyone except a person or group you ask us to contact for you.

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