I think that the bubble bursting was a good thing in some ways as a major speed check was definitely needed - from a price, quality, and reality standpoint.
IMO the amount of water we waste on irrigating lawns and landscaping is freaking ridiculous. The amount of water I see being used to "water" pavement just in Sowal is crazy. I think that if we made people carry their own water to their lawns and gardens, we'd see a quick return to more intelligent usage.
It's even more ridiculous when people insist upon doing it in drought striken areas or when they have limited water resources. My grandparents never had a "lawn" - they had a yard full of native grasses because it just wasn't done to plant sod and water it in their climate. Grandpa would scythe before the grandkids visited (because Grandma worried about snakes), but that was the extent of any maintenence. With the exception of learning the hard way what thistles were, we never noticed that we were playing in a meadow instead of a lawn.
Decades later my aunt's community actually made it part of their covenants that you had to plant native grasses instead of turf because they didn't want their limited water resources going to "lawn".
Many newer developments throw the conventional wisdom about water usage out the window in favor of green grass and it is rapidly accelerating the Western water wars. In a weird twist some areas are using terrorism as an excuse to further secure their remote water reservoirs (located in places most Americans couldn't find on a map, let alone Al Queda).