why are our cities still allowing non-grid street layouts and single use planning?
why do we build highways that devastate communities?
why are parking lots allowed in front of businesses?
what is going on?
jane jacobs was telling us not to do this almost 50 years ago!! we are still designing our communities and buildings in such a disgusting manner
im so tired of city planners and "heritage committees" asking for ridiculous design features on our buildings when the main reason is we are destroying our communities with HORRIBLE planning.
everyday im disgusted buy planning of our cities and towns, big box after big box... generic everything, everywhere..
well mostly because so many people like their cars. and there is a lot of false information out there, and most people have never even heard of jane jacobs. personally, i love living in the city. but there is a certain quality of life attributed to the suburbs as well. there will always be at least some suburbs, because there will always be at least some people who enjoy living that way. you can't force it on everyone.
I think the idea of the suburbs has been perverted a little bit too.
I think a lot of the misinformation about suburbs... just like the misinformation about cities... is arbitrary.
I've been reading a lot about this and the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute and the Pew Institute seem to be very anti-urban. They do make some good points about some misrepresentations about cities as well-- but on both sides the views and information are heavily skewed.
So, I've been trying to go even further back to bring back "historic" subrubs and realizing that by today's standards... they were no where even near affordable.
A gardening book written about the twenties I recently read (A LOT of incidental landscape architecture ideas) was talking about the layout and set up a perfect suburban home.
That each suburban home should be between 1 to 3 acres with two houses, a workshop, a shed, a stable, a coup, 4 fields and a row of fruit trees. A suburban house should have at least two access roads on the edge of the property (a car road and a "country road).
It actually made a lot of sense on "perfecting" suburbanism. Unfortunately though, unless you make six figures... it aint happening.
I've also picked up another book mentioning early suburbanism-- it seems suburbanism was also a religious refuge... as in a refuge from religion itself. It made some points that membership to a country club was crucial to developing a social order within the suburbs. This actually makes incredible sense too.
why is urban design illegal? why cant we build businesses to the sidewalk? why is the setback on a 90' lot 30' for a single family home or even more for an apartment building? why must my turning radius on my driveway approach be 2 or 3 times larger than that of the existing street corner one block away?
as long as city bylaws ONLY permit suburban development... might as well kiss the thought of any new urban areas goodbye... and the ones we have, for the most part have been devastated by the implementation of suburban elements such as highways, suburban shopping centres with massive parking lots, etc.
this has caused these urban areas to fail and fade way.
le bossman,
i dont feel i am telling anyone how to live.. but as long as we develop our cities with suburban planning methods.. we are failing our existing urban areas, its almost as if the 2 cannot co-exist, and therefore anyone who prefers an urban life, is told that they cannot have it by those who build suburbia.
i agree it can be very frustrating. in my city architects have to fight like crazy for permission to do things that make perfect sense and will result in better public space; but it seems like appalling developments get the green light without the slightest fuss. It seems to be a problem with a lack of architectural and urban expertise in the council departments concerned.
it depends on what you mean by "suburban planning methods" though. single family homes surrounded by a quarter acre with a garage in front and an SUV in the driveway off a winding street to me aren't the problem per se. people can live like this, and still have access to bike lanes, public transportation, be close to work, etc. it's more the speculative, "leap frogging" mentality of what you'd call suburban planning that is the issue to me.
lot's of cities have both thriving urban areas and thriving suburbs. i'd like to see the residential areas of suburbs maybe not so big, so that one can walk from their home to the corner store or the transit stop in under ten minutes. and in any case, my brother and law/sister in chicago live in the city and still drive their audi a4 and landrover everywhere, despite being only a short walk from the el and bus.
a lot of the urban redevelopment that is happening occurs as a result of people who grew up in the suburbs moving back in, i would argue more out of the sexiness of the idea of being in a city, rather than a true desire to live an urban lifestyle. the fact that it looks like a city doesn't mean it always works that way.
money and laziness to me are always the reasons why obsolete ideas continue to proliferate...even when there is evidence and opinion to support otherwise, it's usually easier to maintain the status quo...
until city politicians, planners and developers see how they can gain from doing things a new way, where's the incentive to change? cities can easily release tracts of land for sale with a simple zoning and cash in on the replication of existing blocks...administrative type planners make it happen, and developers cash in on building the same dozen floor plans they have in stock...change always costs money and time...
only when there are people in those three roles willing to take the initiative in wanting more, can there be change...complex mixed-use and higher density zoning requires a lot more work and requires everyone working towards the same goals to make it happen...as architects, we can play an advocacy role to influence change in all three areas, but it's a numbers game of building up a critical mass of support for change as with anything...
for an example of some fairly widely acclaimed urban planning practices that have appeared in the past while, check out the changes that have occurred in downtown vancouver over the last 15 years...larry beasley headed the city planning department during that time and lead an effort to make vancouver's downtown very livable...current mayor is a biking freak and has made some major moves to support bikers by adding to an already good biking infrastructure...and many of the major developers in the city are mature sophisticated companies who are willing to undertake complex projects such as adaptive re-use, sustainable buildings, and brownfields...
change happens, but the speed of it can be lightning fast to glacial, depending on the powers that be where you are...just make sure you do your part if you want it...
am considering moving to the developer side of things to play a more hands on role in shaping projects, rather than waiting for the right clients as an architect...
suburbs are comfortable and desirable to lots of people so i don't expect they will go away. they could be designed better but lots of obstacles make it difficult, which really really is a big problem.
i love your idea spaceman spiff. my guess is you will have to be seriously large to have any real effect but hope you give it a go anyway.
i am not sure why jane jacobs is still being used as source. the cities she knew are not what we have before us anymore. she was also rather annoyingly anti-suburban and exaggerated the reality of inner-city life just a tad.
for a more balanced view of suburbs i recommend dolores hayden's book "building suburbia", and also "the new suburban history", by Kevin Kruse and Thomas Sugrue. william bogart also offers his method for transforming suburbia from within in his book "don't call it sprawl" (bogart is an economist who specialises in suburban trade zones).
"suburbs are comfortable and desirable to lots of people so i don't expect they will go away."
Yeah but I think the reason suburbs are comfortable and desirable is a series of very well crafted lies and great marketing... at least in the US. I mean the last TV show in the US until very recently that portrayed the main characters as reasonable apartment dwelling urbanites was "I Love Lucy."
When we also talk about suburbs, we should probably always include a "visual" reference.
For instance, a lot of people are quick to point out that most of the "business" in the US occurs within suburbs. But how much of that business is considered "quality" business? How much of that business is the result of different conditions within the suburbs themselves? Where in the suburbs is that business actually happening?
I tend to notice that there's been a big business boom in "1st ring" suburbs over the last twenty years. But that's kind of a deceiving idea considering that "1st ring" suburbs tend to not be anywhere to actual suburbia.
Also, I'm leery of all of these books who make claims about "suburbia" being desirable, et cetera. Mostly because most of these books on the general quality of suburbia are "Head of Household" centered... meaning no one asks the wife, kids and other live-ins what they think about their suburban environment.
Some of these books also liberally use Los Angeles as a point and counterpoint for suburban studies as well as Miami. Both of which are two cities highly suburban in nature but dense enough to be functioning cities. They also have special geographical features that play an important part.
So these studies don't take in every kind of suburbia all over the place. "Don't call it sprawl" is a rehash of Gordon & Richardson who rehashed a bunch of other old papers about suburbs vs. urban environments. The researchers here cherrypicked a bunch of data from obscure places to prove a point that suburbia on paper was no different from urban life on a variety of different means. There's a lot of interesting points on and counterpoints on urbanism... but ultimately it was an attack on new urbanism. The paper was written in 1992 originally... which is mildly entertaining considering there was maybe 3 maximum functioning new urban developments in the US.
But these two authors are right that downtown revitalization projects are mostly horrible and contribute considerably to the downfall of cities.
This suburban vs. urban thing mildly grinds my gears because there's a lot of suburban development in the US that has nice street grids and good compactness but... the poster pointed out... have been legally barred from maturing and developing any sort of business core of their own. The other thing is use of land use ordinances to block "secular" "non-family-friendly" activities from happening close to home.
Why do we have so many drunk drivers? Because there aren't many local bars in most of the US.
tl;dr-- how about we start giving people uninfluenced honest answers about many patterns of living with pictures and maps that detail all of the pros and cons that have quantifiable data to back it up?
not sure where most of y'all are living, but here in albuquerque the planners are doing their best to plan livable communities. the problem is politicians and developers managing to always find a way to circumvent the adopted plans by appealing to some free-market and fair-use ideology (i'm only building what the market wants and if you deny me that , you're infringing on my property rights) accompanied by a few violins.
Some of the better planned suburban type of developments require a massive input up front. Developers don't want to build a core that is not supported, and by the time there are enough people to support it, there isn't the easily accessible land.
There are, however, plenty of half decent examples around Denver. Honestly, if I were raising a child, I'd move to one tomorrow. No way in hell I'd raise a family in or near a true city!
I like living next to downtown, away from monotonous sprawl, but I also like the peaceful streets and convenience of someone the better planned suburbs that are emerging as viable places for both business and living.
The problem I see is that even if you live in a suburb that has a core of commercial/retail, you start work in one of the offices, but then you transfer jobs or whatever, then it really doesn't matter anymore.
We need a better combination of density and decentralized cores. I would never want to live in the heart of a large city, but I need to be near one for business.
There are examples out there that are attractive, functioning developments with cores that continue to evolve. It isn't all bad and not everyone wants to live in a tiny space in downtown.
gordon and richardson may be exceptions, and while i find them disturbing they are also thoughtful. they are however, like jane jacobson, well out of date, as you point out. i didnt see the connection between them and william bogart and his 2006 book on suburban ecoomics, but i can see some similarities now you mention it. however, the thing is that bogart doesn't really make value judgements. he simply points out that it is possible to consider zoning regulations as a kind economic decision that has consequences. those consequences can be measured and manipulated if anyone feels like it. he offers (theoretical) ways to do the latter without involving designers, which i find intriguing. i guess if the big road block is always, "yeah but i need to make money and the free-market is impossible to touch", then it makes sense to start thinking about how to use it to make a change instead of just complaining that people are being irresponsible.
anyway, i honestly think the only way cities are going to get better from now on is if we stop putting suburbia in opposition to the city centers. the fringe IS urban. it is a different typology, but is still urban, and it is better to think of entire cities and regions as planners and architects than to put too much effort into supporting only a single type.
suburbs are popular in other countries too, and not just because of marketing and lies. seriously. that is i would say mostly just wishful thinking, though i sympathise with the sentiment. People chose with their feet and they know the alternatives, but either don't like them or can't afford them (they are not ignorant, and i think the idea they are choosing where to invest life savings in suburban homes because they don't know better is not supportable).
The best example i can think of is the netherlands, which recently gave up its 10+ year effort to create compact communities (basically new urbanism) across the nation. the government there has fantastic powers to control development and they put in great infrastructure, but people, the unwashed masses, chose to ignore the opportunity to live like the government wanted and instead chose to buy cars and drive everywhere and live like THEY wanted. in the face of free-choice the good intentions failed.
holland is not like usa, but is useful example to keep in mind. people make cities, not politicians and not planners, and if we want to make the cities that people make more sustainable then we either need more powerful laws (doubtful), or we need to learn to work with reality. or so i see it in any case.
also consider this. as stated above people like their cars with a/c an ipod plugged in and a texting device of your choice, inside of the car is where many people are truly free to be...
The consensus here seems to be that personal transportation via the car is important to people, as well as their own personal space (their home, and back yard) i think we can provide these elements to everyone without clustering uses into pods and building super highways. if you look at a city like Detroit, Detroit in the 1940's was a low rise city, built on a grid / radial road system. everyone had a car and their own single family dwelling. Yet there were many corridors of commercial though these communities with other commercial and institutional uses scatter within the residential areas. This type of community isn't the efficient urbanism that Jacob's preached, infact she speaks against Detroit in Death and Life... but prior to the flee to the suburbs Detroit had a kind of semi-urban design with urban areas scattered around the city
This allowed people to have a choice. they could live on a quiet residential street with their car and a large house and yard, or they could live in an apartment tower, or over a store whatever. Different economic classes of folks lived in a fairly close proximity.
Despite Detroits racial, economic and highway planning issues all contributing to the collapse of the city, Detroit had something going for it. Even the 1st ring of suburbs were fairly urban.
So would a city built with these principles be so bad for the people who want their new house and SUV? Clearly suburban development isnt going to stop overnight, nor should development be discouraged, even development of greenfield sites.. but can we not delete some of the worst planning concepts from the bylaws?
The worst one.. Single Use Planning ie. residential pods segregating social class, mega shopping centres nowhere near the residential pods, and office / industry parks also nowhere near the residential areas.
The building of highways and high speed roads that devastate communities and the commercial corridors they so often replace.
I was just thinking about this the other day while driving around suburban PA, it doesn't make any sense to me how we came this far with suburban developments. Going way back to the earlier post regarding what a gardening book in the 30 had described as a perfect suburban yard, that really is my opinion of this. I live on a 3 acre plot of land off of a farm in Southern PA. My house is made of stone and organic materials, no vinyl... and so are the other houses around, only when the expansive developers began to infil people on top of each other with crappy homes what are contributing to global environment in a negative way did many of the other problems of america follow, intro big box stores, large parking lots, increase in exhaust not to mention obesity. When you live in a city and you walk everywhere that is proactive for your health so is living in a country area with a big yard that you can play with your dog but when your in the in between where you drive everywhere, and you don't really want to go outside because your yard is small you just sit inside in you're a/c all day. Its a plague. It really bothers me. suburban sprawl of vinyl siding homes with .5 acre plots with mini mansions on them is not helping anyone. its just promoting obesity, fuel emissions, waste of natural resources, and increasing pollution. It doesn't increase social interaction in a positive way either.
"Federal housing policies changed the whole landscape of America, creating the sprawlscapes that we now call home, and in the process, gutting inner cities, whose residents, until the civil rights legislation of 1968, were largely excluded from federally backed mortgage programs. Of new housing today, 80% is built in suburbs—the direct legacy of federal policies that favored outlying areas rather than the rehabilitation of city centers. It seemed that segregation was just the natural working of the free market, the result of the sum of countless individual choices about where to live. But the houses were single—and their residents white—because of the invisible hand of government."
Suburbs today would not exist without the FHA, the interstate highway administration, the big three and home insurance companies and the policies of redlining combining with de-facto segregation to combat the civil rights movement.
But there was no "smoking man" behind it. Just your typical uncontrolled, "selectively" regulated systema dn the people who profited from exploiting it. Can't really help that it happened, and its been happening for the last 60+ years.
Wanna change it? Create profit in the inner city and in mixed use developments, incentivize dense development by removing subsidies on road creation and maintenance, utility expansion. Promote incentives on cleaning up brownfields and urban areas. You know what's attractive to developers, newsmakers, taste-makers? Money. A free lunch.
Besides, meth is already doing a great job turning the low-rent burbs into the "South-Central"s of tomorrow's youth culture.
And Vado, your pesky neighbors are already on their way out - people who live by air-bases (nearly every one located in sub-urban or rural areas) have to put up with their inconsiderate noise every day.
sugrue is great. not sure if he said much in that article though.
federal loans is kind of new as he says. used to be people bought land and built house over decades as they could afford it. black or white (yes racial minorities built suburban homes even then), that was the way it was. don't think those days were necessarily more sustainable, or better. just different.
sometime i wonder if most of the arguments about suburbia are not left over from those days, a hundred years ago and more, before real car use and all the rest.
most of us just dont know enough, including myself, to offer reasonable way out of the mess. maybe the only choice is to jump into the fray and try something out, in all ingnorance, and see what happens. there is not much of that happening though. usually the talk stops with "this is wrong." the hanging question is "what is right?" new urbanism tries to answer but has kind of failed to make a dent over last 20 years. if there is paradigm shift, my guess it is going to happen on its own for reasons we can't predict. that seems to be the way history usually works...
suburb is evil, a total waste of earth resource... they release the most co2 per person... ppl shall feel embarass about themselves talking about green whilst living in suburb
btw satellate city is different from suburb... suburb are those who like to pretend that they live in rural n not share with spaces with other species within the 30m zone...
We are still building suburbs because it still is in the financial self interest of those who have the power to build, regardless of what any powerless architects/planners think.
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same..................
hayden is good. she has biases that slant the discussion pretty heavily so have to be a bit careful. i like her best because she has gotten over influence of william whyte and his picture of grey-suited drones that most people still associate with suburbia today, so is nice update of the same story told in books like "crabgrass frontiers" for example.
In many ways the "why" of suburbia is less important than the "what", and for that i can think of no one better than herbert gans and his still awesomely intelligent book, "the levittowners" (written as a kind of antidote to folks like William Whyte and Jane Jacobs who more or less just decided suburbia was for morons).
While your points are very good and valid, I do believe the question of why is somewhat necessary to this discussion.
However, the kind of "why" brought up from a social sciences standpoint is the wrong kind of "why." I think we should be approaching the question of "why" from a cultural anthropology standpoint.
And this is what most planning theory lacks, a general survey of literature and practical application of the historical method.
That was my point about attitudes-- there was and possibly is a significant driving force behind suburban living. And there's a relatively obvious common theme throughout various forms of media we consume. Whether this theme is benevolent or malevolent is something through discourse we are trying to decide.
But I still think we should look at our past... not just our actions but the cumulative ideas we have had about place. I think this plays an importance issue because, aside from the quantifiable reasoning, attitudes and perception play an important role in validating or facilitation one style of living over another.
"that is i would say mostly just wishful thinking, though i sympathise with the sentiment."
Well consider this... before suburbanism even touched the radar in America, the "suburbs" of 18th and 19th century Europe were awful places. The old saying goes "you couldn't even pay me to do that." Well, in certain circumstances, various governments were paying people to live there. We also need to understand that our idea or correlation and causation is not the same ideas we held in the past.
I find it hard to believe anyone denying that there was deception and malevolence in the practice of planning considering that we had a two-toned country for close to a hundred years. I'd imagine there's all sorts of bullshit, down right evil advertisements from homebuilders in newspapers, magazines and microfiche sitting in a library basement.
If we look at the work of Charles Dickens... almost all of his impoverished characters live in suburbs. Edge cities, suburbs, bedroom communities or whatever you like to call them, low-density tract housing was a feature of poverty in much of Britain as well as continental Europe. There was good reason for this... lower densities and increased density kept the jobs away from the lower classes. But there's more than just that, lower densities prevented the spread of disease, the spread of fire and access to "sanitation."
If Dickens was one of the most widely read authors of the 19th century, we can draw a point that the idea of suburbia and various images presented therein were widely known to the literate individuals of the time.
In fact, there's a lot of general literature that paints the suburbs as a very grim place that stems from the 1830s to the 1870s. This really isn't that long ago. There has to have been some widespread re-imagining of the suburbs between 1850 and 1950.
This is the story we need to tell. We also need to make observations about the observations ourselves as a society we were living in. I've yet to really see a comprehensive literature review about the condition we lived in, how we lived in it and where we learned to live like that.
One thing to consider about suburbs today is that more people work in the suburbs than in core cities. Most commuting is done suburb to suburb. Central core cities are completely avoidable in most major metro areas.
With very few exceptions the cost of doing business for a large company is typically lower in suburban areas than in core cities. Why else did most of the employment added over the past 40 years end up in the 'burbs? Additionally, the exurbs built in the past 10 years didn't pop up because everyone wanted to live 30+ miles from work, people wanted "affordable" single family housing.
Again, core cities and inner ring suburbs are more expensive with few exceptions. Most people would say the direct and indirect expense of living far outside the city still costs less than the expense of living in the city, notably the indirect expense, i.e. smaller/older homes, suspect school district, higher crime perceived or otherwise.
I think over time with rising energy prices the low density suburban model will either be modified or abandoned. There is huge opportunity for in-fill and densification, while newer exurbs might just be abandoned all together. Planning departments will adapt and remove setbacks. As they are today it's a great location for transit right of ways, etc. I'm optimistic for much of the already built out suburbs, even if the built work is lacking architectural taste. It's where the jobs are and quite frankly most corporations aren't moving their suburban operations back into the city no matter what happens. My opinion is that energy, particularly liquid fuels, will be the catalyst for change in the 'burbs, not planning boards or gov't intervention.
Downtown 500sf condo w/ no yard or parking = $500,000 (plus shitty public schools and higher taxes)
Suburban 3500sf McMansion with .5 acre lot and two car garage = $350,000 (good public schools and lower taxes)
Bitch and moan all you want with a holier than thou utopian line of bullshit, nothing will change. Figure out the numbers and it will change. Not everything is planned. Sometimes shit just grows.
sir peter hall observed the same thing in the 1960's with his famous study of why planning for dense rail-based communities failed outside oslo.
yes, orochi, suburbs are a very old typology, going back to the earliest of cities. even romans had suburbs apparently. and yes suburbs used to be horrible places for poor people to live in squalor. i don't think they were low density, but maybe i just haven't read the right books.
O'Mara's essay points out that historians are learning that suburbia was indeed the result of some nasty policies including redlining and cetera. but while it was all that it was simultaneously a center for civil rights movement in the 60's and the location of many cultural transformations that still affect our culure. like it or not suburbia is where much of our urban/social/cultural history is taking place now.
suburbia is just not that easy to read as black and white.
"why" is important but is pretty well understood and has been for some time. and we as architects have little ability to add to the debate or change the pattern on that level. it is a policy thing. need to become a politician if that is the goal.
The WHAT of suburbia is something architects can at least offer ideas on and maybe even lead to real change because it is more maleable. or so i am coming to believe...
I have no idea how people could possibly want to live stacked up on top of each other. It makes no sense. All that noise, noise, noise, noise. The congestion, the cars, pollution, poor air quality in general, the masses of people along with the high crime rates, bums asking me for a dollar to buy some night train, drugs, gangs, limited personal green spaces, usually no public green spaces , lines at the market places, narrow streets my Honda Pilot has difficulty navigating and that is when I'm not running over rats or people on bikes/roller blades, parking issues, etc so on and so forth ad infinitum.
You might as well be living in a prison IMHO. But that is just me.
since i live in an urban neighborhood (albeit in a mid-size city), i'll just point out the obvious: on the fence has a very skewed and inaccurate take on what an urban neighborhood is actually like.
to add to the suburban evolution path of this discussion, i've been thinking more about how we live in the suburbs now vs how we did in earlier decades. it's sort of a different animal - the carpool, the disconnectedness, the distances to resources...so many things have become farther as they've become bigger. piano lessons aren't from neighbors anymore; they're from a studio across the city. biking freely on the street is less ok than when i used to set up plywood ramps for jumping at the end of the sidewalk where new construction was happening. security as a concern has changed the nature of how suburbs are occupied.
many of the things that we may have liked about the suburbs of the 50s/60s are gone, replaced by a completely different set of things, some of which are better, some not so much.
We used to let our children ride in cars without seatbelts too. For that matter I remember back in the 70's that when my mother would go grocery shopping she'd crack some windows and leave us 5 kids in the car. She'd usually find us out roaming the parking lot. Maybe that is what the writer at sfgate is missing or thinks we should return to.
Sometimes we move foreward and there will always be people who say the old ways are better. They are stuck and need to be moved forcibly and only after do they realize they should have gone sooner.
I'm an undergrad Planning student and I'm graduating in 4 months. What do you all, as professionals who have been working in the field for years, feel might be the best way for me to have a positive impact on the field as I'm getting started? I'm very interested in the interaction between fields of architecture/design and planning, which is why I'm considering an Urban Design concentration if I go for a Masters in City Planning for grad school. Obviously, creating walkable/liveable/sustainable communities has been a major focus for a while (and will continue to be). I already have my LEED AP (for whatever its worth) and feel pretty well versed in that aspect. So with all that, what subareas of planning do you see as the most effective to be in? What areas will keep growing? What are the most pertinent towards what I mentioned as my interests?
key in the article to me is that there is a current sense that the world is more dangerous - and that we act accordingly - but that statistics don't support it.
yes, there are changes of habit based on things we know now, otf. but there are also changes of habit based on perception, not real change in threat.
wow, i love lucy the last urban dwelling television show? really? i commend your lack of television watching since the 1950's orochi. taxes LOWER in the burbs? really? i guess you don't live in NJ. lastly, i live in minneapolis and the life here is much better than the outburbs of msp; dim and scary people of limited intelligence....and all those damn empty strip malls....ack!
Honestly I was only trying to post something that shows all is not rosie in the city. For me the burbs works very well. I've never lived rural so I can not make too many comments regarding that lifestyle. But since my reprogramming at university where the profs pushed urban sprawl theories on me like crack to 13 year old city kids, I refuse to bow down to that kind of tripe.
Really, to each their own though. Big city living is not my thing but many people enjoy it, others are forced to live it while others just haven't decided to pick up and move. Same with burbanites. Some are born into it and don't know why life there doesn't work out for them. They should try something else.
the suburbs for better or worse represent safety from the urban deterioration of mankind which only exists in highly populated urban areas of course. prostitution, armed robbery, murder, homelessness, and drug use are portrayed as urban problems that don't exist in the suburbs. Craig's list prostitution, cocaine use, etc... the highly refined versions of the same crimes don't pose the same imposition on one's rosy view of their own lives when they occur in the suburbs...
Deterioration of urban cores which so many suburbanites proclaim the reason for living in the burbs is infact a product of people leaving the city and not the other way around (people didnt leave the city because of this decay). when an urban centre lacks an affluent population all that is left are the less fortunate. crime and decay begins and yes safety is compromised. flight to the burbs also will never solve the crime problem. it is evident that the first ring of burbs around Detroit are seeing increases in crime rates. People will begin moving further out. its a positive feedback loop... but a return to the city can solve the problem.
As far as living within an urban centre. I mentioned earlier, its not all stacked condos. An urban centre offers a variety of different housing choices. But unlike suburbia they are not grouped into pods. This creates a good diversity in a neighborhood.. As far as the appeal of living in suburbs.. i dont see it. As James Kunstler says it.. we are creating places "not worth caring about" i really believe this to be true. who cares about the generic strip of walmart, bestbuy, home depot, our our shopping malls.. etc etc.. which can be found built exactly the same in every American city.. and it is these stores which make it impossible for independent businesses to survive or compete.
I guess my problem with the way we build our cities is we build a duplicate of the same things, everywhere. i live in Windsor Ontario, i traveled to see a friend in London Ontario a month ago. We decided to go shopping, i ended up at the same group of store we have here in Windsor. not a very interesting shopping trip.
Drive down main street big city USA and you will see home after repeated home for blocks on end. Of course they change the color of the brick so it breaks up the monotany. If that weren't bad enough though, they build the same apartment complex 8, 10 or 12 times creating wonderful cityscapes. The store fronts at most city centers are 2 or 3 window panes of shear glass, over and over and over. Quite impressive and deserving of awe.
beta and steven point out that suburbs aren't either/or proposition. there is nothing inherently wrong with city centers or urban fringe. both have problems, some shared, some specialised.
i have mentioned before, but my home is in tokyo about 20-30 minutes by commuter subway to the city centre. i live in corbusier type place and there is lots of green and walkability and cetera. very comfortable. density is crazy high. within my ward (itabashi) there are apparently 600,000 people, and it is perfectly fine. the densities support all of the new urbanist fantasies and it is great. but this is tokyo, 33 million people huddled together in a single urban conglomeration. it ain't normal, so perhaps it isn't fair to use as a model. there are luckily lots of other examples around the world, probably even close by to everyone on archinect. the point is that city centres and dense development is just a typology not an ambition. same with suburbs.
a better ambition is sustainability - social, economic, environmental. that is an idea that requires neither density nor dispersion to happen and is worth pursuing in any way possible.
i would very much be interested in a thread that was FOR sustainability and not just AGAINST suburbia, or AGAINST the centre. It is a lack of imagination that we can't seem to get past our particular hangups and just start looking forward?
Firstly, look at the difference in land ownership characteristics between urban and suburban/greenfield areas.
The developers of greenfield areas are generally those who take a long term view on development. They take a gamble on urban expansion and population growth and buy large swathes of land to eventually develop. Proximity to existing infrastructure is important, but it is more about future planning changes and predicting influences over land that will increase value.
So they make money in 3 ways - firstly in the natural growth in value over time, secondly in transforming the value of the land by getting planning permission for increased use, and thirdly by physically developing the land and selling parcels at wholesale or retail rates. There also potential there to not only masterplan the land, but also build and sell houses/buildings. There are a range of philosophys of how this gets done [from New Urbanism masterplanning through to 'how-low-can-we-go']
Services and infrastructure are easy to fund because a) the land is 'green' and accessible b) the planning authority wants to provide services because it can charge fees and c) you can pass on costs to the end purchaser once the land is developed. The strip mall comes about to take advantage of a future local population that will be employed and/or use the commercial facilities. This move is actually very important because it raises land values - nothing raises land values more than accessibility to local employment opportunities, but it doesnt matter too much what it looks like or how it functions.
By contrast, look at the characteristics of urban land. It is diverse in quality and size and there are many different owners, all of whom have different and sometimes competing interests. There are a range of planning and servicing constraints, some of which require negotiation with different parties. As a consequence of the different ownership circumstances, sometimes land is too valuable to build upon. There are usually existing buildings, with existing uses. There are usually high degrees of public consultation and interest which represent risk. There are usually authorities ready to pounce upon developers with requirements to upgrade infrastructure.
Urban development is fraught with risk. The idea that if only developers and land owners could be 'educated' then things would be better is naive. Suburbs are built because they are easy. The risks of greenfield development are usually constrained to larger more holistic risks like housing cycles, planning approvals, sales and marketing. Urban development has those risks and a whole lot of extra unknowns.
Please excuse I haven't read through the entire thread yet, but so far everything that I read seems to ignore the fact that a lot of people move to the suburbs because they (at least in Ohio) tend to have better public school systems.
I can't tell you how many of my friends and others I've met in recent years that say they loved living in the city and would totally have stayed there had it not been for the fact that the city public schools sucked ass. Most people I know want to give their kids a good education. I actually have a friend who is waiting until her daughter graduates from high school to move back into the city. She HATES the suburbs. I think until this whole issue is addressed I think you'll have a hell of a late more people fleeing for the 'burbs.... well at least in Central and SW Ohio.
New schools are built as a response to or in anticipation of new populations. Land is cheaper so more money can go into resources and buildings, the latest educational design responses, which attracts teachers and administrators which attracts pupils and parents.
The suburb I live in [which has houses from the 1870's through to present day] is 23km from the city centre. House values are high, and have always been high due to good quality schools.
with everything we know.. how is it possible we are still building suburbs?
why are our cities still allowing non-grid street layouts and single use planning?
why do we build highways that devastate communities?
why are parking lots allowed in front of businesses?
what is going on?
jane jacobs was telling us not to do this almost 50 years ago!! we are still designing our communities and buildings in such a disgusting manner
im so tired of city planners and "heritage committees" asking for ridiculous design features on our buildings when the main reason is we are destroying our communities with HORRIBLE planning.
everyday im disgusted buy planning of our cities and towns, big box after big box... generic everything, everywhere..
how is this STILL happening?!!?
you can't just angrily tell people the way they live is wrong. you have to persuade them of the alternatives.
well mostly because so many people like their cars. and there is a lot of false information out there, and most people have never even heard of jane jacobs. personally, i love living in the city. but there is a certain quality of life attributed to the suburbs as well. there will always be at least some suburbs, because there will always be at least some people who enjoy living that way. you can't force it on everyone.
I think the idea of the suburbs has been perverted a little bit too.
I think a lot of the misinformation about suburbs... just like the misinformation about cities... is arbitrary.
I've been reading a lot about this and the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute and the Pew Institute seem to be very anti-urban. They do make some good points about some misrepresentations about cities as well-- but on both sides the views and information are heavily skewed.
So, I've been trying to go even further back to bring back "historic" subrubs and realizing that by today's standards... they were no where even near affordable.
A gardening book written about the twenties I recently read (A LOT of incidental landscape architecture ideas) was talking about the layout and set up a perfect suburban home.
That each suburban home should be between 1 to 3 acres with two houses, a workshop, a shed, a stable, a coup, 4 fields and a row of fruit trees. A suburban house should have at least two access roads on the edge of the property (a car road and a "country road).
It actually made a lot of sense on "perfecting" suburbanism. Unfortunately though, unless you make six figures... it aint happening.
I've also picked up another book mentioning early suburbanism-- it seems suburbanism was also a religious refuge... as in a refuge from religion itself. It made some points that membership to a country club was crucial to developing a social order within the suburbs. This actually makes incredible sense too.
agfa8x. maybe i should then rephrase my question
why is urban design illegal? why cant we build businesses to the sidewalk? why is the setback on a 90' lot 30' for a single family home or even more for an apartment building? why must my turning radius on my driveway approach be 2 or 3 times larger than that of the existing street corner one block away?
as long as city bylaws ONLY permit suburban development... might as well kiss the thought of any new urban areas goodbye... and the ones we have, for the most part have been devastated by the implementation of suburban elements such as highways, suburban shopping centres with massive parking lots, etc.
this has caused these urban areas to fail and fade way.
le bossman,
i dont feel i am telling anyone how to live.. but as long as we develop our cities with suburban planning methods.. we are failing our existing urban areas, its almost as if the 2 cannot co-exist, and therefore anyone who prefers an urban life, is told that they cannot have it by those who build suburbia.
i agree it can be very frustrating. in my city architects have to fight like crazy for permission to do things that make perfect sense and will result in better public space; but it seems like appalling developments get the green light without the slightest fuss. It seems to be a problem with a lack of architectural and urban expertise in the council departments concerned.
phew, god forbid we should allow a little individuality in our street layout! does this mean we have to outlaw hills and rivers, too? Yikes.
it depends on what you mean by "suburban planning methods" though. single family homes surrounded by a quarter acre with a garage in front and an SUV in the driveway off a winding street to me aren't the problem per se. people can live like this, and still have access to bike lanes, public transportation, be close to work, etc. it's more the speculative, "leap frogging" mentality of what you'd call suburban planning that is the issue to me.
lot's of cities have both thriving urban areas and thriving suburbs. i'd like to see the residential areas of suburbs maybe not so big, so that one can walk from their home to the corner store or the transit stop in under ten minutes. and in any case, my brother and law/sister in chicago live in the city and still drive their audi a4 and landrover everywhere, despite being only a short walk from the el and bus.
a lot of the urban redevelopment that is happening occurs as a result of people who grew up in the suburbs moving back in, i would argue more out of the sexiness of the idea of being in a city, rather than a true desire to live an urban lifestyle. the fact that it looks like a city doesn't mean it always works that way.
money and laziness to me are always the reasons why obsolete ideas continue to proliferate...even when there is evidence and opinion to support otherwise, it's usually easier to maintain the status quo...
until city politicians, planners and developers see how they can gain from doing things a new way, where's the incentive to change? cities can easily release tracts of land for sale with a simple zoning and cash in on the replication of existing blocks...administrative type planners make it happen, and developers cash in on building the same dozen floor plans they have in stock...change always costs money and time...
only when there are people in those three roles willing to take the initiative in wanting more, can there be change...complex mixed-use and higher density zoning requires a lot more work and requires everyone working towards the same goals to make it happen...as architects, we can play an advocacy role to influence change in all three areas, but it's a numbers game of building up a critical mass of support for change as with anything...
for an example of some fairly widely acclaimed urban planning practices that have appeared in the past while, check out the changes that have occurred in downtown vancouver over the last 15 years...larry beasley headed the city planning department during that time and lead an effort to make vancouver's downtown very livable...current mayor is a biking freak and has made some major moves to support bikers by adding to an already good biking infrastructure...and many of the major developers in the city are mature sophisticated companies who are willing to undertake complex projects such as adaptive re-use, sustainable buildings, and brownfields...
change happens, but the speed of it can be lightning fast to glacial, depending on the powers that be where you are...just make sure you do your part if you want it...
am considering moving to the developer side of things to play a more hands on role in shaping projects, rather than waiting for the right clients as an architect...
suburbs are comfortable and desirable to lots of people so i don't expect they will go away. they could be designed better but lots of obstacles make it difficult, which really really is a big problem.
i love your idea spaceman spiff. my guess is you will have to be seriously large to have any real effect but hope you give it a go anyway.
i am not sure why jane jacobs is still being used as source. the cities she knew are not what we have before us anymore. she was also rather annoyingly anti-suburban and exaggerated the reality of inner-city life just a tad.
for a more balanced view of suburbs i recommend dolores hayden's book "building suburbia", and also "the new suburban history", by Kevin Kruse and Thomas Sugrue. william bogart also offers his method for transforming suburbia from within in his book "don't call it sprawl" (bogart is an economist who specialises in suburban trade zones).
"suburbs are comfortable and desirable to lots of people so i don't expect they will go away."
Yeah but I think the reason suburbs are comfortable and desirable is a series of very well crafted lies and great marketing... at least in the US. I mean the last TV show in the US until very recently that portrayed the main characters as reasonable apartment dwelling urbanites was "I Love Lucy."
When we also talk about suburbs, we should probably always include a "visual" reference.
For instance, a lot of people are quick to point out that most of the "business" in the US occurs within suburbs. But how much of that business is considered "quality" business? How much of that business is the result of different conditions within the suburbs themselves? Where in the suburbs is that business actually happening?
I tend to notice that there's been a big business boom in "1st ring" suburbs over the last twenty years. But that's kind of a deceiving idea considering that "1st ring" suburbs tend to not be anywhere to actual suburbia.
Also, I'm leery of all of these books who make claims about "suburbia" being desirable, et cetera. Mostly because most of these books on the general quality of suburbia are "Head of Household" centered... meaning no one asks the wife, kids and other live-ins what they think about their suburban environment.
Some of these books also liberally use Los Angeles as a point and counterpoint for suburban studies as well as Miami. Both of which are two cities highly suburban in nature but dense enough to be functioning cities. They also have special geographical features that play an important part.
So these studies don't take in every kind of suburbia all over the place. "Don't call it sprawl" is a rehash of Gordon & Richardson who rehashed a bunch of other old papers about suburbs vs. urban environments. The researchers here cherrypicked a bunch of data from obscure places to prove a point that suburbia on paper was no different from urban life on a variety of different means. There's a lot of interesting points on and counterpoints on urbanism... but ultimately it was an attack on new urbanism. The paper was written in 1992 originally... which is mildly entertaining considering there was maybe 3 maximum functioning new urban developments in the US.
But these two authors are right that downtown revitalization projects are mostly horrible and contribute considerably to the downfall of cities.
This suburban vs. urban thing mildly grinds my gears because there's a lot of suburban development in the US that has nice street grids and good compactness but... the poster pointed out... have been legally barred from maturing and developing any sort of business core of their own. The other thing is use of land use ordinances to block "secular" "non-family-friendly" activities from happening close to home.
Why do we have so many drunk drivers? Because there aren't many local bars in most of the US.
tl;dr-- how about we start giving people uninfluenced honest answers about many patterns of living with pictures and maps that detail all of the pros and cons that have quantifiable data to back it up?
not sure where most of y'all are living, but here in albuquerque the planners are doing their best to plan livable communities. the problem is politicians and developers managing to always find a way to circumvent the adopted plans by appealing to some free-market and fair-use ideology (i'm only building what the market wants and if you deny me that , you're infringing on my property rights) accompanied by a few violins.
albucrackee is a small town surrounded by a large suburb. but i'd like to be there right now.
Some of the better planned suburban type of developments require a massive input up front. Developers don't want to build a core that is not supported, and by the time there are enough people to support it, there isn't the easily accessible land.
There are, however, plenty of half decent examples around Denver. Honestly, if I were raising a child, I'd move to one tomorrow. No way in hell I'd raise a family in or near a true city!
I like living next to downtown, away from monotonous sprawl, but I also like the peaceful streets and convenience of someone the better planned suburbs that are emerging as viable places for both business and living.
The problem I see is that even if you live in a suburb that has a core of commercial/retail, you start work in one of the offices, but then you transfer jobs or whatever, then it really doesn't matter anymore.
We need a better combination of density and decentralized cores. I would never want to live in the heart of a large city, but I need to be near one for business.
There are examples out there that are attractive, functioning developments with cores that continue to evolve. It isn't all bad and not everyone wants to live in a tiny space in downtown.
orochi, few books say suburbia is good solution.
gordon and richardson may be exceptions, and while i find them disturbing they are also thoughtful. they are however, like jane jacobson, well out of date, as you point out. i didnt see the connection between them and william bogart and his 2006 book on suburban ecoomics, but i can see some similarities now you mention it. however, the thing is that bogart doesn't really make value judgements. he simply points out that it is possible to consider zoning regulations as a kind economic decision that has consequences. those consequences can be measured and manipulated if anyone feels like it. he offers (theoretical) ways to do the latter without involving designers, which i find intriguing. i guess if the big road block is always, "yeah but i need to make money and the free-market is impossible to touch", then it makes sense to start thinking about how to use it to make a change instead of just complaining that people are being irresponsible.
anyway, i honestly think the only way cities are going to get better from now on is if we stop putting suburbia in opposition to the city centers. the fringe IS urban. it is a different typology, but is still urban, and it is better to think of entire cities and regions as planners and architects than to put too much effort into supporting only a single type.
suburbs are popular in other countries too, and not just because of marketing and lies. seriously. that is i would say mostly just wishful thinking, though i sympathise with the sentiment. People chose with their feet and they know the alternatives, but either don't like them or can't afford them (they are not ignorant, and i think the idea they are choosing where to invest life savings in suburban homes because they don't know better is not supportable).
The best example i can think of is the netherlands, which recently gave up its 10+ year effort to create compact communities (basically new urbanism) across the nation. the government there has fantastic powers to control development and they put in great infrastructure, but people, the unwashed masses, chose to ignore the opportunity to live like the government wanted and instead chose to buy cars and drive everywhere and live like THEY wanted. in the face of free-choice the good intentions failed.
holland is not like usa, but is useful example to keep in mind. people make cities, not politicians and not planners, and if we want to make the cities that people make more sustainable then we either need more powerful laws (doubtful), or we need to learn to work with reality. or so i see it in any case.
sorry. way too long a post.
;-)
also consider this. as stated above people like their cars with a/c an ipod plugged in and a texting device of your choice, inside of the car is where many people are truly free to be...
The consensus here seems to be that personal transportation via the car is important to people, as well as their own personal space (their home, and back yard) i think we can provide these elements to everyone without clustering uses into pods and building super highways. if you look at a city like Detroit, Detroit in the 1940's was a low rise city, built on a grid / radial road system. everyone had a car and their own single family dwelling. Yet there were many corridors of commercial though these communities with other commercial and institutional uses scatter within the residential areas. This type of community isn't the efficient urbanism that Jacob's preached, infact she speaks against Detroit in Death and Life... but prior to the flee to the suburbs Detroit had a kind of semi-urban design with urban areas scattered around the city
This allowed people to have a choice. they could live on a quiet residential street with their car and a large house and yard, or they could live in an apartment tower, or over a store whatever. Different economic classes of folks lived in a fairly close proximity.
Despite Detroits racial, economic and highway planning issues all contributing to the collapse of the city, Detroit had something going for it. Even the 1st ring of suburbs were fairly urban.
So would a city built with these principles be so bad for the people who want their new house and SUV? Clearly suburban development isnt going to stop overnight, nor should development be discouraged, even development of greenfield sites.. but can we not delete some of the worst planning concepts from the bylaws?
The worst one.. Single Use Planning ie. residential pods segregating social class, mega shopping centres nowhere near the residential pods, and office / industry parks also nowhere near the residential areas.
The building of highways and high speed roads that devastate communities and the commercial corridors they so often replace.
And many more
yeah well i live in an urban area and i wish my neighbors would shut the hell up for a day.
I was just thinking about this the other day while driving around suburban PA, it doesn't make any sense to me how we came this far with suburban developments. Going way back to the earlier post regarding what a gardening book in the 30 had described as a perfect suburban yard, that really is my opinion of this. I live on a 3 acre plot of land off of a farm in Southern PA. My house is made of stone and organic materials, no vinyl... and so are the other houses around, only when the expansive developers began to infil people on top of each other with crappy homes what are contributing to global environment in a negative way did many of the other problems of america follow, intro big box stores, large parking lots, increase in exhaust not to mention obesity. When you live in a city and you walk everywhere that is proactive for your health so is living in a country area with a big yard that you can play with your dog but when your in the in between where you drive everywhere, and you don't really want to go outside because your yard is small you just sit inside in you're a/c all day. Its a plague. It really bothers me. suburban sprawl of vinyl siding homes with .5 acre plots with mini mansions on them is not helping anyone. its just promoting obesity, fuel emissions, waste of natural resources, and increasing pollution. It doesn't increase social interaction in a positive way either.
A well-written piece suggesting a paradigm shift in the American dream..
"Federal housing policies changed the whole landscape of America, creating the sprawlscapes that we now call home, and in the process, gutting inner cities, whose residents, until the civil rights legislation of 1968, were largely excluded from federally backed mortgage programs. Of new housing today, 80% is built in suburbs—the direct legacy of federal policies that favored outlying areas rather than the rehabilitation of city centers. It seemed that segregation was just the natural working of the free market, the result of the sum of countless individual choices about where to live. But the houses were single—and their residents white—because of the invisible hand of government."
Suburbs today would not exist without the FHA, the interstate highway administration, the big three and home insurance companies and the policies of redlining combining with de-facto segregation to combat the civil rights movement.
But there was no "smoking man" behind it. Just your typical uncontrolled, "selectively" regulated systema dn the people who profited from exploiting it. Can't really help that it happened, and its been happening for the last 60+ years.
Wanna change it? Create profit in the inner city and in mixed use developments, incentivize dense development by removing subsidies on road creation and maintenance, utility expansion. Promote incentives on cleaning up brownfields and urban areas. You know what's attractive to developers, newsmakers, taste-makers? Money. A free lunch.
Besides, meth is already doing a great job turning the low-rent burbs into the "South-Central"s of tomorrow's youth culture.
And Vado, your pesky neighbors are already on their way out - people who live by air-bases (nearly every one located in sub-urban or rural areas) have to put up with their inconsiderate noise every day.
sugrue is great. not sure if he said much in that article though.
federal loans is kind of new as he says. used to be people bought land and built house over decades as they could afford it. black or white (yes racial minorities built suburban homes even then), that was the way it was. don't think those days were necessarily more sustainable, or better. just different.
sometime i wonder if most of the arguments about suburbia are not left over from those days, a hundred years ago and more, before real car use and all the rest.
most of us just dont know enough, including myself, to offer reasonable way out of the mess. maybe the only choice is to jump into the fray and try something out, in all ingnorance, and see what happens. there is not much of that happening though. usually the talk stops with "this is wrong." the hanging question is "what is right?" new urbanism tries to answer but has kind of failed to make a dent over last 20 years. if there is paradigm shift, my guess it is going to happen on its own for reasons we can't predict. that seems to be the way history usually works...
The how and why we got to where we are today:
Dolores Hayden
Building Suburbia:
Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000
Her other good book is:
Dolores Hayden
Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life.
Read these and your urban / suburban answers are there for you.
Some might say that the content on this thread is a good example of the arrogance and powerlessness of architecture.
Why, I will blithely agrue that you are completely wrong on that and will shake my fist in righteous indignation!
But that's about it. I have work in the morning.
suburb is evil, a total waste of earth resource... they release the most co2 per person... ppl shall feel embarass about themselves talking about green whilst living in suburb
btw satellate city is different from suburb... suburb are those who like to pretend that they live in rural n not share with spaces with other species within the 30m zone...
We are still building suburbs because it still is in the financial self interest of those who have the power to build, regardless of what any powerless architects/planners think.
American's are the winner!! congratulations!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjbV9z50gPM&feature=related
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same..................
hayden is good. she has biases that slant the discussion pretty heavily so have to be a bit careful. i like her best because she has gotten over influence of william whyte and his picture of grey-suited drones that most people still associate with suburbia today, so is nice update of the same story told in books like "crabgrass frontiers" for example.
In many ways the "why" of suburbia is less important than the "what", and for that i can think of no one better than herbert gans and his still awesomely intelligent book, "the levittowners" (written as a kind of antidote to folks like William Whyte and Jane Jacobs who more or less just decided suburbia was for morons).
more recently margaret o'mara wrote this exceptional review of how scholars are answering the "what" question. even if you never read the books she writes about her essay asks a lot of very good questions.
While your points are very good and valid, I do believe the question of why is somewhat necessary to this discussion.
However, the kind of "why" brought up from a social sciences standpoint is the wrong kind of "why." I think we should be approaching the question of "why" from a cultural anthropology standpoint.
And this is what most planning theory lacks, a general survey of literature and practical application of the historical method.
That was my point about attitudes-- there was and possibly is a significant driving force behind suburban living. And there's a relatively obvious common theme throughout various forms of media we consume. Whether this theme is benevolent or malevolent is something through discourse we are trying to decide.
But I still think we should look at our past... not just our actions but the cumulative ideas we have had about place. I think this plays an importance issue because, aside from the quantifiable reasoning, attitudes and perception play an important role in validating or facilitation one style of living over another.
"that is i would say mostly just wishful thinking, though i sympathise with the sentiment."
Well consider this... before suburbanism even touched the radar in America, the "suburbs" of 18th and 19th century Europe were awful places. The old saying goes "you couldn't even pay me to do that." Well, in certain circumstances, various governments were paying people to live there. We also need to understand that our idea or correlation and causation is not the same ideas we held in the past.
I find it hard to believe anyone denying that there was deception and malevolence in the practice of planning considering that we had a two-toned country for close to a hundred years. I'd imagine there's all sorts of bullshit, down right evil advertisements from homebuilders in newspapers, magazines and microfiche sitting in a library basement.
If we look at the work of Charles Dickens... almost all of his impoverished characters live in suburbs. Edge cities, suburbs, bedroom communities or whatever you like to call them, low-density tract housing was a feature of poverty in much of Britain as well as continental Europe. There was good reason for this... lower densities and increased density kept the jobs away from the lower classes. But there's more than just that, lower densities prevented the spread of disease, the spread of fire and access to "sanitation."
If Dickens was one of the most widely read authors of the 19th century, we can draw a point that the idea of suburbia and various images presented therein were widely known to the literate individuals of the time.
In fact, there's a lot of general literature that paints the suburbs as a very grim place that stems from the 1830s to the 1870s. This really isn't that long ago. There has to have been some widespread re-imagining of the suburbs between 1850 and 1950.
This is the story we need to tell. We also need to make observations about the observations ourselves as a society we were living in. I've yet to really see a comprehensive literature review about the condition we lived in, how we lived in it and where we learned to live like that.
One thing to consider about suburbs today is that more people work in the suburbs than in core cities. Most commuting is done suburb to suburb. Central core cities are completely avoidable in most major metro areas.
With very few exceptions the cost of doing business for a large company is typically lower in suburban areas than in core cities. Why else did most of the employment added over the past 40 years end up in the 'burbs? Additionally, the exurbs built in the past 10 years didn't pop up because everyone wanted to live 30+ miles from work, people wanted "affordable" single family housing.
Again, core cities and inner ring suburbs are more expensive with few exceptions. Most people would say the direct and indirect expense of living far outside the city still costs less than the expense of living in the city, notably the indirect expense, i.e. smaller/older homes, suspect school district, higher crime perceived or otherwise.
I think over time with rising energy prices the low density suburban model will either be modified or abandoned. There is huge opportunity for in-fill and densification, while newer exurbs might just be abandoned all together. Planning departments will adapt and remove setbacks. As they are today it's a great location for transit right of ways, etc. I'm optimistic for much of the already built out suburbs, even if the built work is lacking architectural taste. It's where the jobs are and quite frankly most corporations aren't moving their suburban operations back into the city no matter what happens. My opinion is that energy, particularly liquid fuels, will be the catalyst for change in the 'burbs, not planning boards or gov't intervention.
Downtown 500sf condo w/ no yard or parking = $500,000 (plus shitty public schools and higher taxes)
Suburban 3500sf McMansion with .5 acre lot and two car garage = $350,000 (good public schools and lower taxes)
Bitch and moan all you want with a holier than thou utopian line of bullshit, nothing will change. Figure out the numbers and it will change. Not everything is planned. Sometimes shit just grows.
what aquapura says makes most sense to me too.
sir peter hall observed the same thing in the 1960's with his famous study of why planning for dense rail-based communities failed outside oslo.
yes, orochi, suburbs are a very old typology, going back to the earliest of cities. even romans had suburbs apparently. and yes suburbs used to be horrible places for poor people to live in squalor. i don't think they were low density, but maybe i just haven't read the right books.
O'Mara's essay points out that historians are learning that suburbia was indeed the result of some nasty policies including redlining and cetera. but while it was all that it was simultaneously a center for civil rights movement in the 60's and the location of many cultural transformations that still affect our culure. like it or not suburbia is where much of our urban/social/cultural history is taking place now.
suburbia is just not that easy to read as black and white.
"why" is important but is pretty well understood and has been for some time. and we as architects have little ability to add to the debate or change the pattern on that level. it is a policy thing. need to become a politician if that is the goal.
The WHAT of suburbia is something architects can at least offer ideas on and maybe even lead to real change because it is more maleable. or so i am coming to believe...
I have no idea how people could possibly want to live stacked up on top of each other. It makes no sense. All that noise, noise, noise, noise. The congestion, the cars, pollution, poor air quality in general, the masses of people along with the high crime rates, bums asking me for a dollar to buy some night train, drugs, gangs, limited personal green spaces, usually no public green spaces , lines at the market places, narrow streets my Honda Pilot has difficulty navigating and that is when I'm not running over rats or people on bikes/roller blades, parking issues, etc so on and so forth ad infinitum.
You might as well be living in a prison IMHO. But that is just me.
Please do not take away my burbs.
since i live in an urban neighborhood (albeit in a mid-size city), i'll just point out the obvious: on the fence has a very skewed and inaccurate take on what an urban neighborhood is actually like.
to add to the suburban evolution path of this discussion, i've been thinking more about how we live in the suburbs now vs how we did in earlier decades. it's sort of a different animal - the carpool, the disconnectedness, the distances to resources...so many things have become farther as they've become bigger. piano lessons aren't from neighbors anymore; they're from a studio across the city. biking freely on the street is less ok than when i used to set up plywood ramps for jumping at the end of the sidewalk where new construction was happening. security as a concern has changed the nature of how suburbs are occupied.
many of the things that we may have liked about the suburbs of the 50s/60s are gone, replaced by a completely different set of things, some of which are better, some not so much.
this may have something to do with where my thinking has gone:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/09/DDIS18KJ9L.DTL
Well, Okay.
We used to let our children ride in cars without seatbelts too. For that matter I remember back in the 70's that when my mother would go grocery shopping she'd crack some windows and leave us 5 kids in the car. She'd usually find us out roaming the parking lot. Maybe that is what the writer at sfgate is missing or thinks we should return to.
Sometimes we move foreward and there will always be people who say the old ways are better. They are stuck and need to be moved forcibly and only after do they realize they should have gone sooner.
I love this post. This is my stuff right here.
I'm an undergrad Planning student and I'm graduating in 4 months. What do you all, as professionals who have been working in the field for years, feel might be the best way for me to have a positive impact on the field as I'm getting started? I'm very interested in the interaction between fields of architecture/design and planning, which is why I'm considering an Urban Design concentration if I go for a Masters in City Planning for grad school. Obviously, creating walkable/liveable/sustainable communities has been a major focus for a while (and will continue to be). I already have my LEED AP (for whatever its worth) and feel pretty well versed in that aspect. So with all that, what subareas of planning do you see as the most effective to be in? What areas will keep growing? What are the most pertinent towards what I mentioned as my interests?
key in the article to me is that there is a current sense that the world is more dangerous - and that we act accordingly - but that statistics don't support it.
yes, there are changes of habit based on things we know now, otf. but there are also changes of habit based on perception, not real change in threat.
wow, i love lucy the last urban dwelling television show? really? i commend your lack of television watching since the 1950's orochi. taxes LOWER in the burbs? really? i guess you don't live in NJ. lastly, i live in minneapolis and the life here is much better than the outburbs of msp; dim and scary people of limited intelligence....and all those damn empty strip malls....ack!
Honestly I was only trying to post something that shows all is not rosie in the city. For me the burbs works very well. I've never lived rural so I can not make too many comments regarding that lifestyle. But since my reprogramming at university where the profs pushed urban sprawl theories on me like crack to 13 year old city kids, I refuse to bow down to that kind of tripe.
Really, to each their own though. Big city living is not my thing but many people enjoy it, others are forced to live it while others just haven't decided to pick up and move. Same with burbanites. Some are born into it and don't know why life there doesn't work out for them. They should try something else.
one word: crime.
the suburbs for better or worse represent safety from the urban deterioration of mankind which only exists in highly populated urban areas of course. prostitution, armed robbery, murder, homelessness, and drug use are portrayed as urban problems that don't exist in the suburbs. Craig's list prostitution, cocaine use, etc... the highly refined versions of the same crimes don't pose the same imposition on one's rosy view of their own lives when they occur in the suburbs...
my .02..
really, well, i think it's a myth.
Deterioration of urban cores which so many suburbanites proclaim the reason for living in the burbs is infact a product of people leaving the city and not the other way around (people didnt leave the city because of this decay). when an urban centre lacks an affluent population all that is left are the less fortunate. crime and decay begins and yes safety is compromised. flight to the burbs also will never solve the crime problem. it is evident that the first ring of burbs around Detroit are seeing increases in crime rates. People will begin moving further out. its a positive feedback loop... but a return to the city can solve the problem.
As far as living within an urban centre. I mentioned earlier, its not all stacked condos. An urban centre offers a variety of different housing choices. But unlike suburbia they are not grouped into pods. This creates a good diversity in a neighborhood.. As far as the appeal of living in suburbs.. i dont see it. As James Kunstler says it.. we are creating places "not worth caring about" i really believe this to be true. who cares about the generic strip of walmart, bestbuy, home depot, our our shopping malls.. etc etc.. which can be found built exactly the same in every American city.. and it is these stores which make it impossible for independent businesses to survive or compete.
I guess my problem with the way we build our cities is we build a duplicate of the same things, everywhere. i live in Windsor Ontario, i traveled to see a friend in London Ontario a month ago. We decided to go shopping, i ended up at the same group of store we have here in Windsor. not a very interesting shopping trip.
Palease spare me this.
Drive down main street big city USA and you will see home after repeated home for blocks on end. Of course they change the color of the brick so it breaks up the monotany. If that weren't bad enough though, they build the same apartment complex 8, 10 or 12 times creating wonderful cityscapes. The store fronts at most city centers are 2 or 3 window panes of shear glass, over and over and over. Quite impressive and deserving of awe.
beta and steven point out that suburbs aren't either/or proposition. there is nothing inherently wrong with city centers or urban fringe. both have problems, some shared, some specialised.
i have mentioned before, but my home is in tokyo about 20-30 minutes by commuter subway to the city centre. i live in corbusier type place and there is lots of green and walkability and cetera. very comfortable. density is crazy high. within my ward (itabashi) there are apparently 600,000 people, and it is perfectly fine. the densities support all of the new urbanist fantasies and it is great. but this is tokyo, 33 million people huddled together in a single urban conglomeration. it ain't normal, so perhaps it isn't fair to use as a model. there are luckily lots of other examples around the world, probably even close by to everyone on archinect. the point is that city centres and dense development is just a typology not an ambition. same with suburbs.
a better ambition is sustainability - social, economic, environmental. that is an idea that requires neither density nor dispersion to happen and is worth pursuing in any way possible.
i would very much be interested in a thread that was FOR sustainability and not just AGAINST suburbia, or AGAINST the centre. It is a lack of imagination that we can't seem to get past our particular hangups and just start looking forward?
There are a few other things to consider here.
Firstly, look at the difference in land ownership characteristics between urban and suburban/greenfield areas.
The developers of greenfield areas are generally those who take a long term view on development. They take a gamble on urban expansion and population growth and buy large swathes of land to eventually develop. Proximity to existing infrastructure is important, but it is more about future planning changes and predicting influences over land that will increase value.
So they make money in 3 ways - firstly in the natural growth in value over time, secondly in transforming the value of the land by getting planning permission for increased use, and thirdly by physically developing the land and selling parcels at wholesale or retail rates. There also potential there to not only masterplan the land, but also build and sell houses/buildings. There are a range of philosophys of how this gets done [from New Urbanism masterplanning through to 'how-low-can-we-go']
Services and infrastructure are easy to fund because a) the land is 'green' and accessible b) the planning authority wants to provide services because it can charge fees and c) you can pass on costs to the end purchaser once the land is developed. The strip mall comes about to take advantage of a future local population that will be employed and/or use the commercial facilities. This move is actually very important because it raises land values - nothing raises land values more than accessibility to local employment opportunities, but it doesnt matter too much what it looks like or how it functions.
By contrast, look at the characteristics of urban land. It is diverse in quality and size and there are many different owners, all of whom have different and sometimes competing interests. There are a range of planning and servicing constraints, some of which require negotiation with different parties. As a consequence of the different ownership circumstances, sometimes land is too valuable to build upon. There are usually existing buildings, with existing uses. There are usually high degrees of public consultation and interest which represent risk. There are usually authorities ready to pounce upon developers with requirements to upgrade infrastructure.
Urban development is fraught with risk. The idea that if only developers and land owners could be 'educated' then things would be better is naive. Suburbs are built because they are easy. The risks of greenfield development are usually constrained to larger more holistic risks like housing cycles, planning approvals, sales and marketing. Urban development has those risks and a whole lot of extra unknowns.
livin' in the city...
you find what you're looking for.
Please excuse I haven't read through the entire thread yet, but so far everything that I read seems to ignore the fact that a lot of people move to the suburbs because they (at least in Ohio) tend to have better public school systems.
I can't tell you how many of my friends and others I've met in recent years that say they loved living in the city and would totally have stayed there had it not been for the fact that the city public schools sucked ass. Most people I know want to give their kids a good education. I actually have a friend who is waiting until her daughter graduates from high school to move back into the city. She HATES the suburbs. I think until this whole issue is addressed I think you'll have a hell of a late more people fleeing for the 'burbs.... well at least in Central and SW Ohio.
totally agree ****melt,
New schools are built as a response to or in anticipation of new populations. Land is cheaper so more money can go into resources and buildings, the latest educational design responses, which attracts teachers and administrators which attracts pupils and parents.
The suburb I live in [which has houses from the 1870's through to present day] is 23km from the city centre. House values are high, and have always been high due to good quality schools.
I live in downtown Los Angeles, where its filthy, smelly, noisy, dangerous and unhealthy..
I'll probably end up in the suburbs when I get tired of this..
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.