In my region (Tennessee) the most popular intentional lawn grass is Tall Fescue, which is very soft, but it doesn’t spread laterally, so when gaps happen due to heat and such, spiky/hard crab grass fills in the gaps, and isn’t killed by broad-leaf herbicide since it’s also grass, so semi-maintained lawns quickly get taken over. The lawns with no herbicide regimen get taken over by clover instead, so you end up with a horseshoe of sorts where the completely un-maintained lawns (fescue and clover) and meticulously-maintained lawns (pure fescue) are soft, but the lawns in the middle are spiky.