this is just another writer jumping on the "suburbs are doomed" bandwagon without proposing any real solutions. renovate mcmansions into rental units??? that's the best she can come up with? yeah, taking the poor/working class even farther away from jobs, public transit, daycare, health care, etc. makes a whole lot of sense. comes off as if the writer's an elitist urbanite who's just trying to dump the urban poor out where nobody will ever hear from them again so the yuppies can finish claiming downtown for themselves. what a joke.
4arch - I agree that the "suburbs are doomed" is getting tiring and I think your correct to point out it's usually coming from a city dwelling "elitist."
I think we can all agree that some of the most recent exurban development probably has little to no future, but suburbs are not going anywhere anytime soon. Nor are they all going to turn into the new "slums" as many speculate.
Every large city in N. America has major companies operating in the suburbs. These businesses aren't going to move anytime soon. If anything the suburbs will develop into their own small town nodes centralized around areas of employment.
My guess is people will trend towards living closer to work, i.e. moving to the suburb where their job is. I highly doubt companies already established in the suburbs will be moving downtown.
Good points being made here. Use of "The Suburbs," or worse-- "Suburbia"-- shows simplistic thinking rather than nuanced understanding of the complex urbanization process in its many forms.
An aerial shot of 4,000 sq. ft. houses on quarter-acre lots, butting up to the edge of crop rows or fields with moo-cows says something, but certainly not everything. What about all the jobs at the urban edge? Not to mention schools, institutions, and major infrastructures?
I'm with TK: if you want a jeremiad, you go to Jeremiah. Kunstler, Krier, (any other K's?), the usual angry old men... they may be nuts, but at least they're entertaining.
I'm with TK: if you want a jeremiad, you go to Jeremiah. Kunstler, Krier, (any other K's?), the usual angry old men... they may be nuts, but at least they're entertaining.
And they're architects who put their money where their mouth is.
oh no but of course suburbia will be saved bu Mc Mansions and
Cul-de-SUCKS! and lots and lots of parking lets take the train to the city and get really shitty!!!
anyone eveer hear that screaching weasel song "hey suburbia"
try and tell us our future's at stake
we're gonna slam dance on your grave
cause we don't give a shit about tomorrow
you say we're a bunch of lazy bums
we just wanna act stupid and have some fun
cause we don't give a shit about tomorrow
hey suburbia [x3]
we're in love with you
we won't end up like you want us to be
but so what 'cause we're always gonna be happy
cause we don't give a shit about tomorrow
tell us we'll regret the things we did
but we're just gonna give you a big wet kiss
cause we don't give a shit about tomorrow
i can't begin to imagine the passionate nimby arguments that would be brought up to change SFR zoning to allow multiple units...
that said, here in albuquerque, we have suncal trying to persuade the state and county to provide TIDD financing in order to develop some 50,000 acres of mesa at the western edge of town. in an area with huge residential vacancies. in an area where the most recent testing has revealed brackish water in the underlying aquifer.
it's almost as if they don't think that the residents here know why the economy has collapsed in the first place. (you think it might have something to do with rampant suburban speculation??)
Kunstler is a very good writer. He's entertaining and that's how he sells books. From what I've read of him it looks like he does his research. A lot of what he says I can agree with, but no, he isn't an architect or has any formal design training. He actually rips architects pretty good. Check out the eyesore of the month on his website. Good laughs...but also good tearing of stararchitects too.
east coast or west coast same difference elitists who would have us live in shipping containers and riding collapsible bicycles while blogging from her gigi swivel chair in between walking her labradoodle and buying fava beans at trader joe's...
if gas prices climb to $10/gallon, much of the exurbs is toast.
until toyota gets us that electric car. then the suburbs will continue indefinitely.
although i think they may lost a little of their punch because today's 20-somethings are seriously bored by the suburbs they grew up in and do not wish to return soon (cultural shift) and because the outer ring is now so far away from the city center that those who work in the city center will not be willing to commute so far.
today's 20-somethings are seriously bored by the suburbs they grew up in
Hipsters in their mid-20's have never wanted to live in the quiet and seculded suburbs...but they do eventually grow up, get married and start families. Gen Xers are heading out to the suburbs in search of better schools, safer neighborhoods, and larger more modern homes. Same thing their parents did 50 years ago. The only difference is today people are requesting more of their suburbs, i.e. new urbanism, pedestrian/transit oriented development, etc. Not that they are always receiving it BTW.
Just because a bunch of condos popped up downtown in the past 10 years doesn't mean there has been any fundamental shift in where people want to live.
Gas prices are largely irrelevant because as I noted before, most of the jobs are in the suburbs. Transit systems are not designed for suburb to suburb commuting. That problem will be addressed through ride sharing, 4 day or 3 day work weeks, vanpools, etc. But, most of all, people will move to the suburb where their job is. The 1st ring suburb I live in is home to many major employers. Thousands of jobs literally withing walking distance of my home.
The 1st ring suburb I live in is home to many major employers. Thousands of jobs literally withing walking distance of my home.
Aqua, you may be right to a certain extent about people in their 20s wanting to live in cities, but then moving to suburbs, but I think there is a much larger segment of the population that is choosing not only to live in cities when they are younger, but settling into cities long-term and to raise families. It is no longer the case that the suburbs are where the better schools and amenities are, in fact it is fast becoming the opposite. I think you're right about first ring suburbs, which are usually connected to the city through mass transit (and in better systems, to each other through a circumferal mass transit line), because these inner suburbs have the same sort of density, amenities, and mixed use development that cities (where people have lived for the majority of the past 10,000 years) have. Outer-ring suburbs that are not walkable, that require long commutes, and that do not have the same amenities as cities, I think, will be in decline in the coming decades as more people choose not perhaps the city, but certainly denser suburbs closer to cities. I think the challenge will be in trying to retrofit the outer suburbs, and I think some of your thoughts about ride sharing and rethinking the traditional work week are good starts, but ultimately it will be a huge challenge and demand major infrastructural and planning shifts.
if i didn't have kids i would not be living on the edge of the center of tokyo. i would be i the center or in london. kids change world view. can't be helped. don't matter if one is hip or not.
kunstler does not really do research, or if he does do it he cherry picks the convenient bits. As an academic he is about as credible as bernard madoff. As journalist? meh. fun to read though, usually.
i understand that point of view, jump, and i know it's true for a bunch of people.
but i also don't want to leave it stand as simply a given: i.e., the 'kids change world view' doesn't necessarily mean that the result is always to shift to the edges. we've chosen to be closer to the middle so that we can walk to our urban neighborhood resources with our kids.
world views may shift, but the key is that there are choices. i wouldn't suggest that the choice of periphery should go away any more than i would agree that the center is somehow less amenable to kids.
Yes, Kunstler's gotten some good traction as a mad-as-hell, Howard Beale type about the virtuous city and the evil suburb. I admire his ability to convert his passion to income, but a scholar he is not. He's a polemicist, who confuses being loud with being correct.
FLM - I agree with you about what I'd call the exurbs. Housing that was largely developed in the past 15-20 years. That's where the lack of density and infastructure really is a hinderance and I do think some of that will eventually be abandoned.
That said every city is unique. Using Dallas, Tx as an example I think most of us would consider Plano a hopeless far flung suburb of McMansions and low density. That's all true, but Plano is also home to several major employers. Frito Lay isn't going to move downtown, but the middle manager that's currently commuting from across town will. So while the core city might densify inside the LBJ Freeway, I think Plano has a future even with it's current low density.
I don't have a family yet, but I'm definetly attracted to introducing my future children to the all that the city has to offer. I see coworkers who do the suburban commute to the city, and even though they live only an hour outside of Chicago, their kids come to the city once a year a less. Really they don't know anything about the city or what is has to offer at all. They might as well be living a thousand miles away in a city of 25,000 people.
though i would say in defense of your friend's choice to live in suburbia, synergy, that the situation you describe is pretty much the POINT of living in suburbia.
the center of cities can be cool. but for who? and what are the tradeoffs?
The city center of tokyo is expensive, as all city centers are if the city is worth living in. but more than that it is polluted, crowded and not friendly in almost every way to the lives of small children. if i were rich, say earning an income of $1,000,000 or more i could overcome those deficiencies with money, and that is what most of the foreign contingent living in the center do (they all make very high salaries and don't mind paying rent in the range of $10,000 to $15,000/month).
personally my preference right now is to live in london. but to live "downtown", say zone 2 even, I would need to earn a lot more money if i wanted to have the kind of lifestyle i can maintain here. So my choices come down frankly to the bang for the buck. instead of london i choose tokyo. in a community where my kids can walk to school on sidewalks (not normal in the city center here), and my oldest can also walk to her swimming school, community center and so on. but we pay for that with a 1 hr commute by subway to work. which is amazing because i am actually about 1 hour closer to the center than many tokyo-ites. !
ok, so my case is a weird example. it is still indicative of the calculations most people make. which is basically what can i get for my money? if the trade off for walkable community is pollution or lots of cars, or higher taxes, etc, then i don't think many will go for it. Kids absolutely come into that picture. Who here would really be willing to give up the chance to give your children each their own room in exchange for life lessons about dirty realism in the city for those same children?
i guess my view of the city is the one that herbert gans wrote of in the 60's, which basically says that we all are making our own cities as we move and buy and sell homes and businesses. and while planners believe they are in control they are not. Which means, we can blame developers and planners and city officials but in the end it is us. WE, collectively, didn't want walkable cities. I am not sure WE still do ( If we did then i am guessing, steven, that you would not be able to afford your inner suburban home).
Perhaps that will change, but then i wonder how? how will it ever be possible to entice people to leave suburbia for smaller rooms, and dirtier air, and higher taxes, and all of those other negative externalities? in exchange for what? for the intellectual reward of living small? for me that is great. my flat is 80m2 and i am content. and there is probably room for a better kind of suburbia somehow. but actually ending suburbia? somehow i just don't see it. not yet anyway. not until we figure out a way to make it actually the better choice and not just intellectually the better choice...
maybe it would be better to just think of ways to make suburbia less damaging to the environment than to simply say it is bad, a priori.
i know that this is a general discussion but i'll just introduce the specific because of jump's question. i think you're making as many assumptions/presumptions as those of us who talk negative about the 'burbs. granted, there are urban areas that reflect those negative externalities you describe. but there are cities that DON'T as well. this is where urban living can really thrive.
our area is decidely mixed income - community leaders and philanthropists mixed with the bohemian crowd, the cheap renters, and everybody in between. the 'highlands', as we're known, bump up against downtown's broadway on one side, flanks a storefront commercial/pedestrian spine, but also has some wonderful examples of olmsted's park system mixed in the middle of everything.
in our case, the fact that we can afford our house was less an issue of affordability than tolerance of the house's age and small square footage. per square foot, our urban neighborhood is one of the more expensive in the city; we just accept that we have to buy a house requiring renovation and that we can't buy the unnecessarily huge interior area we'd buy on the outskirts.
i think that's part of the suburban draw, as much as separation from the city. it's cost: people can afford unused living rooms and three car garages that they use for storage and large back yards that require riding lawnmowers, whereas i have a yard i can mow in 10mins, we use every room available to us, and we have no garage.
it's not a civility issue, from what i can tell. i know most of the people on my street - as well as those across the back alley from me; when we visit friends outside the ring road, they seldom know their next door neighbors beyond 'hi'.
obviously i'm not ever going to choose the suburbs, but those friends out there really love it.
I can't speak of Tokyo or London as I have never visited either, let alone resided in them. But it appears you've made the proper calculations for the lifestyle you wish for you and your family.
I can only really speak of experiences in Chicago. In my opinion, the economics of suburbia are not so simply. When you ask, who would be willing to live in smaller homes, you are making a financial judgment, based on the idea that suburban homes are cheaper, per square foot, than city homes. I'll agree with this. however you need to consider many other factors to get a full economic understanding. For me, my time is extremely valuable. The idea of expending 2 hrs a day commuting to work is not only awful sounding, it is expensive. You aren't getting a better deal on the suburban home, you are just making a different priority choice, for me the time is important, and I'll gladly take a smaller home for the time.
I grew up staying in a bedroom with 3 brothers, and the four of us had a great time, it was small, but I definitely have many more positive memories than negative ones.
The pollution and safety of any neighborhood, suburban or are real risks and would have to come into play in making a proper selection.
In answer to your other question. I'm interested in introducing my children to what the city has to offer, examples would be the museums, conservatories, planetarium, aquarium, etc. as well as the restaurants and cultural areas (Chinatown). There are other benefits, such as concerts, sporting events. Really the list can be quite long. I like a really good steak, I can't find that in the suburbs, it just isn't there.
Steven makes a good point on the variability of cities and urban quality from place to place.
The same is true of places at the urban edge, or even beyond. Here, I avoid using the term "suburb" because it is often used as shorthand for only one kind of place --usually, single-family residential areas in combination with large, auto-dominated shopping centers. That's one kind of suburban landscape, to be sure, but there are others. The "inner ring" suburb someone brought up is another type of landscape --often, denser, older housing with a finer grain, nearer to a range of commercial uses and transit than newer development further out. And other types exist as well, all over, newer and older, single-use or not, nice or not.
Time is important, too. Brick rowhouses built in the late 19th century at the edge of Victorian London were decried as a kind of creeping blight at the time, but now are held up as ideal compact residential neighborhoods. Is that suburbia, or not? Yes then, no now? What happened in between? And what about other "best practices" we advance now that may have unintended consequences down the road?
My point is only to try and get away from "The City" and "The Suburbs" as simplistic, mutually exclusive categories in this kind of discussion. There are good quality environments in both downtowns and at urban edges, just as there are deleterious environments in both locations. Specify.
Sorry for the rant on semantics, but I believe it's important. We architects don't limit ourselves to reductive labels for our stock in trade, "buildings." There is house, tower, highrise, midrise, apartment, factory, shop, church, temple, pavilion, garage, hospital, office, hotel, hut, library, museum, palace, structure, temple, tenement, theater, shack, lean-to... you get the idea. I'm pulling for an equally elaborated nomenclature to broaden the discussion beyond "city" and "suburb." If we're gonna talk about suburbs, then at least add a modifier or two to clarify what kind of place you mean.
right on, citizen. even with qualifying adjectives, it'd be hard, but it'd be a start.
our city is self-defined as a city of neighborhoods. the variety of our neighborhoods' different characteristics are what make us who we are - as neighborhoods AND as a city.
there are other neighborhoods of similar early history as mine - first generation streetcar era, basically - but with completely different character. when you talk about 'the highlands' vs 'frankfort avenue' vs 'germantown', there is a recognized cultural distinction being made that would never be apparent through simple descriptions of the place typology.
you are correct steven to point out that i was using some shorthand for city center issues that are not exactly fair. it was not intentional. apologies. i should also point out that i have no interest in living in a north american suburb. not even remotely. ick.
synergy, what you describe is something covered by an economic theory called the tiebout model. You are right, it is complicated, and for you the calculation takes you to someplace other than the urban fringe. But for many, maybe even most city dwellers, the urban fringe is the answer. How do we accommodate those people in a more sustainable urban form?
i suppose i am just a bit less convinced by the model of density than others because i have lived most of my adult life in big cities where the negative effects are clear. the biggest one is the lack of quality of living space, and even that is being offered for impressively high cost. what i wonder is if we can't do better?
what draws me to the idea of modern suburbia is its foundation in egalitarianism. the price of admittance right now may be a car, but a car is itself an amazing tool for emancipation. so who are we to suggest or even assume that most people will willingly forgo those powers?
we who are educated and relatively well paid can afford to spurn those things, but for most of the world they are amazing luxuries, and so i wonder, can we not do better?
surely there is something to be learned in the entirety of the cities we have built. not just the early suburbs, but all of suburbia, and the center, the whole enchilada?
I personally hate suburbs (American single detached homes ½ acre lots or more stick built from a book of plans purchased in a supermarket using every available shade of tan known to man). The choice to live in a suburb is a personal one. As I see it suburbs were borne from white flight, a deliberate, costly, decision to self segregate, racially, culturally and economically. The other aspect of the suburbs is this notion that by moving further away you are moving away from social ills and other problems. I call this running away from responsibility. Suburbia (see above definition) is all about control. You have your own yard your own pool or hot tub and your own rules. Speaking to your neighbors is weird. People can live side by side and never know who lives next to them. This anonymous environment is the perfect place for mass murder, school shootings drug distribution and manufacture, sexual and domestic assault. Criminals love the suburbs and the statistics prove it but for some reason people still have an image of safety and serenity. Behold the powers of marketing. But something recently has started to happen developers in the City have started marketing the City center as the place to live and gentrification came about.
The best way to judge gentrification in a given city is to track the migration of the gay neighborhoods over time. The gay neighborhoods are the easiest places for white suburban people to assimilate with since the LGBT community is composed of all races and ethic backgrounds. The lack of a racial or language barrier enables white people to settle in with out much difficulty, however the suburbs are just the opposite now, there is no language so race and income are the only things suburban communities can try and control. For example covenants on the price of a house, zoning on how many people can live in a house. And the difficulty minority businesses have getting established in suburban areas.
As long as there are people who want to be amongst similar people there will be a demand for two things, ethic neighborhoods ghettos, and monotonous suburbs.
The best defense against urban sprawl is to stop expanding the interstates. I think once an urban area reaches a 2 hr commute time it will stop growing out and start reorganizing itself into a more sustainable development.
As for people living close to where they work in the suburbs, this is not always the case, often the sitting of corporate HQ is aided by TIFF and other tax incentives that make it very expensive for residents to live there, so people with money who are the decision makers can afford to live close but the majority of workers need to do a reverse commute or a cross commute.
"As I see it suburbs were borne from white flight, a deliberate, costly, decision to self segregate, racially, culturally and economically. The other aspect of the suburbs is this notion that by moving further away you are moving away from social ills and other problems. I call this running away from responsibility."
How does that explain the affluent all black suburbs around Atlanta and Washington? A lot of families there are 'moving away from social ills' but why begrudge them that? And the ideas you post perpetuate the idea that cities=problems and suburbs have none. A lot of deprived inner ring suburbs are even worse off than center cities. Compton is a suburb of LA.
"Speaking to your neighbors is weird. People can live side by side and never know who lives next to them."
That's common in apartment buildings in New York too. Sometimes people just want to be left alone.
"This anonymous environment is the perfect place for mass murder, school shootings drug distribution and manufacture, sexual and domestic assault."
So is anyplace that people congregate.
"The best way to judge gentrification in a given city is to track the migration of the gay neighborhoods over time. The gay neighborhoods are the easiest places for white suburban people to assimilate with since the LGBT community is composed of all races and ethic backgrounds."
Chelsea, West Hollywood and the Castro are notorious for being homogenous and often hostile to non-whites or any gay guy in the wrong tax bracket. No offense, but I think you are taking Richard Florida too seriously.
Sometimes I think the anti-suburb bias among architects is a losing attitude-I don't love the suburbs, but I don't hate them and I don't think they are the repository of all that is wrong with American society. If anything, cities are just as materialistic and venal as the suburbs are accused of being and I sense a smug class bias underpinning a lot of the criticisms (which have been levied for years and haven't advanced anything). As bad as they may be to some people, increasingly they are where the middle class lives, it's all they can afford at this point. Manhattan has the worst income inequality in the country-you are either really rich or you are on welfare in the projects apparently. And a lot of cities have just been rebranded as a playground mall for the wealthy-I don't know how 'sustainable' that is in the long run considering that wages have been steadily falling and people are not getting ahead financially now.
Many great points, odb, not the least of which is the putative and inherent virtue of cities.
Critiques of particular problems in peripheral areas are fine. But lumping the totality of that into a singular category of "the suburbs" or "suburbia" is just too simple.
And so many architects' automatic derogation of all said suburbs seems more fad and fashion than careful understanding and argument.
apparently suburbia was also home ground for some very important shifts in racial attitudes in america. the white flight theory is only a half truth at best, and the pablum version offered by PJN26 rather questionable.
one of the best essays on the role of race and politics in american suburbia was written by Margaret O'mara a few years ago. the article is ostensibly a review of the work of others, but her text is really worth a read in its own right. It is a bit lengthy but the first two pages ask all the important questions and explains why white flight was more fiction than fact.
I have mixed feelings about suburbs, as I grew up in the 'burbs. I've lived in Philly, Boston, and Tokyo, and at this point in my life, I love living in cities. I'm living with the parents in my hometown now, while the economy sucks, and find the suburbs infuriating. I have to borrow my mom's car to get anywhere, there is nowhere to just walk around and see what's happening. But growing up, I can't imagine living somewhere else. Rolling in the grass, playing in the woods, playing with fire in the street, sledding, great schools, swimming in the neighbor's pool, capture the flag on summer nights. You constantly read (and see) all these little bitch kids that are afraid of knives and fire and getting scratches. My friend and I always talk about how back in our day (oooh 15 years ago) kids didn't give a shit. I have scars from getting cut on rocks, slicing my finger open with a sickle, stuff like that. Today's kids are pansies. OOOH grab my Purell, I got some tree sap on my hand! I touched a bug! AHHHH. We used to play "stunt school," where we'd dress up like Indiana Jones, jump out of trees, purposely crash bikes, roll down the hill. And THAT is the beauty of suburbs. But today's bitch kids just get fatter, lazier and more bitchier. That also comes from a lot of parents turning their kids into bitches. We are doomed when the future of instant gratification, weakened immune system, don't know how to solve a problem bitch kids takes over the world.
PJN26, I couldn't agree with your diagnosis of the suburbs. I had a class in college with Jon Archer, (who later went on to write the amazing book, Architecture and Suburbia: From English Villa to American Dream House, 1690-2000 ) and I found myself appalled at how the suburbs developed, evolved and became what they are today. I understand the history of the suburbs as much as Jon Archer has taught me (directly). While some may be unaware of how the city politicians acted in the recent past, segregation was much more than an attitude of individuals. Segregation was also actively pursued by city planners and the suburbs were a played a huge part in segregation. Redlining, Emminent Domain, redistricting, large urban redevelopment projects are all aimed at poor neighborhoods. Chicago is a perfect example of where large urban projects have pushed the poor around (UIC, Housing projects, public transportation, etc).
Atlanta has black suburbs (which happen to be affluent) because segregation in the south was much more blatant than in the north. Atlanta was not a major industrial center. It isn't not going to have the same urban concentration that other major urban centers have and since it's in the south, everyone lived in rural-turned-suburban. Black people had money and since they couldn't move into the affluent white suburbs or neighborhoods, they created their own. In NYC, affluent black people would live in Harlem.
There are studies that have shown how crime occurs in the suburbs at similar rates (per capita) as urban centers. So the myth that cities are more dangerous is untrue. If a person lives in a city, they are not more likely to be the victim of a crime (per capita). Better schools can be found in the more affluent neighborhoods (because they receive money from property taxes).
I think you might have hit on one of the key issues with your last sentence.
Better schools can be found in the more affluent neighborhoods (because they receive money from property taxes).
A huge cause of neighborhood segregation, suburban flight, etc. etc. is education. If we (as a country) address the issues of educational funding inequity in our nation, it would do a tremendous amount by removing a major incentive of segregating and relocating.
agreed synergy, and that system has to, and i believe WILL change sooner rather than later... it shocks me such an unfair funding system has been allowed to operate for so long
no worries citizen. its amazing how much work has been done on suburbia already, a lot of it very well done, like O'Mara's. Such a pity that architects know so little about it.
It is actually amazing how little I learned about the city in architecture school in spite of the fact we had 2 full studios and series of seminars devoted to urbanism (which were very good).
sometimes i think the theories we do learn treat urbanism like a product. that is, as if there were no past to worry about and all we need to do is come up with a new typology to take us into the future. That makes sense with cars, but houses and communities can't be junked and replaced with something better so easily. We are going to have to deal with suburbs as they exist, at some point or other and in that case i am glad to have the work of omara and others to use as starting point...
I agree that the suburban issue is complex but I know from personal experience that even in the early 90s racism or more specifically the fear of others still drives people to move further and further away from the city core. Racism and classisum are still major factors driving some suburban growth. Lately I think the anonymous lifestyle that the most atrocious far flung suburbs foster here in the United Sates is one of isolation and self segregation. As a result anyone can live in a suburb without fears of overt racism since the likely hood that you will speak to much less actually see your neighbors is very slim. This is a relatively new phenomenon thanks to cable, satellite TV and other technology enabled entertainment options now available.
The disastrous urban planning tragedies, not mistakes tragedies helped seal the fate of the urban center, suburban growth was and is still opportunistic and self serving. We can start a new thread on urban planning disasters but this is about the suburbs.
I do think that the best way to deal with suburban sprawl and poor development patterns is to cut off automobile infrastructure expansion. No more ring roads. No new lanes. But I will support more tools.
The other radical idea I hope gains more traction is an effort similar to the national Forest system goes into effect for US farmland. If I was appointed governor of Illinois and was all powerful I would pass legislation that would in effect cut off all state funding for municipalities that chose to issue building permits for sites that are currently productive farmland. The fact is the US imports tons of milk tomato and grain products from China. We are in serious danger of losing our status as a net food exporter some time in the nest few years. Farmland is being lost for rather poorly constructed tract homes and strip malls. I think we need to draw a line and say no more beyond this point. Stop the sprawl and force the existing development to adapt and evolve. We can’t afford to add more food miles to our carbon foot print.
Look at any turn of the century neighborhood in most major cities. They started out as suburbs or tract housing but gradually some houses were torn down, and new buildings were built. Things changed out of necessity and the limiting factor was transit. Now the limiting factor is the interstate system and the limitations of single passenger vehicle use. I see modern suburbs as a cancer and a sickness than needs to be changed or eradicated, the “Bitchy kids” are a symptom of their poor design and worsening problems. The Levittown developments in New Jersey New York and PA are the beginning of the end of the effective suburbs since from that point on the importance of community centers events and “invented” traditions slowly died off and were replaced by self imposed isolation. The only variable here are kids who were given opportunities through school and related activities to socialize. Most kids knew each other and parents most likely meet each other through interactions with their kids. But now kids don’t go out side and play in the neighborhoods as much and the mega schools make friendships difficult to maintain.
Most Suburbs built today are given every amenity possible to promote interaction but technology and personal wealth keeps getting in the way. They build parks but they go unused since each backyard has its own deluxe play set or tree fort. They build walking paths and they do get used but no one speaks so as not to interrupt a cell phone conversation or their favorite song from their I-pods. They build Coffey shops but no-one hardly ever goes there to meet people they don’t know and even if someone did go there to meet new people they will encounter the liquid plasma wall known as a laptop. Private pools and the massive BBQ facilities erected in back yards enable self segregation and give people in the Suburban environment every opportunity to avoid anything unpleasant and anyone different from them. It is one huge fortified comfort zone.
By contrast dense urban areas make it difficult to have a private pool or play ground but they do have the economy of scale to support some exceptional public or shared private facilities. The opportunity for interaction is greater in a relatively dense development.
i quite like my dense urban suburb here in tokyo, so i can't argue with your ambition for something similar for the USA PJN26.
However it sounds to me like you are more worried about modern culture than the shape of the modern city. what makes you assume that planners and even urban form have any impact on how people live their lives? Isn't it more likely that the opposite is true?
I think the environment that is designed and the culture that inhabits that environment shapes and is shaped by each other. Designers have the opportunity to push small things to help the situation but ultimately people need to decide for themselves what they want.
But we can do things like design homes that revisit some classical features such as usable porches, detached garages, Alleys and a section that separates the private from the public not a floor plan. There is a reason the classic Victorian homes had their ground floors 4 feet or more above the street level and it has more to do with privacy than anything else.
I do admit that the Suburban culture is different than it was ten years ago and I worry what it has become will damage social fabric and communities. Things can only go down hill from here.
The "suburbs" aren't either completely good nor completely bad. As I have written in a similar thread, most of my relatives live in a range of suburbs, from post-war inner ring to McMansion developments.
Some of the positives: they are NOT neurotic, isolated people raising spoiled kids, nor was their choice to live in a suburb due to racism; they DO know a lot of their neighbors (although they tend to pick and choose which ones) and have a sense of community; they DO use the walking paths, hiking trails and other amenities available to them; their homes are NOT crap, they are medium-to good builder quality in various materials and they maintain them so they look well cared for.
Some of the negatives: they DO mostly go everywhere by car (mostly because they have no other choice); they DO mainly socialize with people of their own race and economic status, but that's not true in all cases; they actually do go to the coffee shops and stores in their area, and might even talk to their neighbors there, but it is true that the majority of social interactions are pre-arranged with people they already know and take place in homes and yards....and that's maybe the main difference of life in suburbs to life in cities: the serendipitous meeting, the chance event, the unexpected surprise as you walk down a city (or even small town) street. But to say that (most) people who live in suburbs are in some kind of isolated, air-conditioned nightmare, and feel themselves to be so, is pretty much nonsense.
its funny, emilio. gans came to the same conclusion, and even used very nearly the same words as you when he wrote the levittowners in 1967. he was responding to the paranoid vision of suburbia that william whyte gave us with the organisation man (whyte was smart but didn't have a freakin clue what he was talking about) and which people like jane jacobs also described, even though in the case of jane (who i otherwise love) had never even visited a suburba in order to form her opinions about them...
PJN26, with no disrespect intended you are clearly looking for a problem to match your solution and not the other way around. If the victorians had ideas about privacy and community that resulted in particular urban forms or architectural typologies that is fine, but why would you think they still apply to us? shouldn't we come up with our own typologies? i know it is horrific to think so but perhaps suburbia as it exists today, and as flawed as it is today really IS what people want, and entirely reflects our society and even our aspirations.
clearly suburbia is screwed up in a lot of fundamental ways when it comes to environment. but culturally, i find myself entirely incapable of judging anyone's lifestyle. what if richard florida is right when he says community has not disappeared but only changed its outward appearance? According to his research, it is not that community has gone away, but only that we can't see it by the old measurements. Membership in the Elk lodge just isn't the indicator it used to be...
as for urban form controlling behavior i have very grave doubts on that end. the research shows pretty clearly that people do not do what the planners expect of them. they just don't. that is why the netherlands after about 20 years of promoting and planning the compact city have abandoned it AS A NATION. Their new idea is to try to do planning that fits reality instead of reverse engineering a perfect future that can' be reached from here. It isn't sexy but it makes more sense than most plans out there today.
i don't have the answer but somehow i just don't believe it lies in our past. we need to look to the present and the future - and the present includes suburbia in our cities. lets deal with them honestly and with respect for the people who live in them and see what we can do to make the world better. because yelling at people in cars as they drive by is not going to get us anywhere.
Our studio was fortunate to have a guest lecture by the editor of Canadian Architect magazine back in October. He presented a side of Toronto (often called the most multicultural city in the world) that we don't often hear:
1) The suburbs are much more ethnically diverse than the city centre, and
2) suburban density is typically understated, as several generations of an (immigrant) family often life in the same suburban home.
I wish I had the stats in front of me, as he did. I don't think critics of suburbs always do their research, but that's true of anybody with an agenda, right?
I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same for NYC-the income inequality here has risen to an insane level, and New York County (Manhattan) is actually one of the rare counties that is becoming less diverse (whiter) since the last census. And the reverse is happening in the suburbs, especially in New Jersey, they are getting more diverse.
And I personally think the alleged mixing of different groups in large cities is a romantic exaggeration-we use IPods and laptops to ignore those we aren't interested in either.
I agree that trying to completely redefine and reshape the urban and suburban communities based on planning alone is a flawed idea. You can't really predict or fully anticipate the movements, desires, and trends of entire communities. That being said, we can address specific problems that plague both communities. Some changes would help remove the socio economic incentives that cause the unsustainable development in the first place.
Specifically, as I mentioned above, if we take back control of the funding for public services, particularly in education, as balance the system to provide equitable education for a public students, we’ll make it more viable for people to choose to live in different neighborhoods. Right now, operating in the best interest of their children, are forced to move into separated neighborhoods, which propagate the problem.
Of course some people are in favor of this distribution and believe it to be the right way to fund schools, which is the attitude that needs to be fought. There are several proposals for how to improve and balance the public school system such as using vouchers. I am not certain which is the best way to proceed, but educating the public on the possibilities would be a good start.
i understand that argument and agree equity is impt. what i find disheartening is that your starting point appears to be that we need to improve access to good education mostly just to ensure that suburbs won't have an advantage over other areas. you start with an assumption that suburbia is bad, then look for a reason to reduce its place in society.
equity is one of the pillars of sustainability. but shouldn't we be starting with inequity and focus on solving that problem on its own terms? in whatever form is required? if we do that and it turns out the answer is to dismantle suburbia then i am happy to sign up. But what if the answer is something that makes suburbia even more central to urban life? Would that be ok too? If the answer is a-priori an big NO then i would have to conclude you're offering up equity in a self-serving way, and that would be sad.
i guess what i am really hoping for is a generation of planners and architects who are able to step back without that kind of agenda and just set about to fixing the problems in whatever way is required and necesary, letting chips fall as they may. maybe tht is the paradigm shift we are waiting for....?
Perhaps I wasn't clear, although I have my apprehensions about Suburbia, my only point was that it would be good to remove some of the overwhelming incentives that cause suburban flight, urban blight etc. etc. I believe if the neighborhoods offered equitable services, people could make decisions about where to live without being so heavily forced by circumstance.
I am much, much more interested in improving the education system, and other inequalities, for their own merit, than for the reason of changing suburban culture. I only keep bringing them because I personally think they play a key role for why things developed the way the did. So whether you like the way things have developed or not, it is good to have an understanding of why.
"what will save the suburbs"...nytimes
this is just another writer jumping on the "suburbs are doomed" bandwagon without proposing any real solutions. renovate mcmansions into rental units??? that's the best she can come up with? yeah, taking the poor/working class even farther away from jobs, public transit, daycare, health care, etc. makes a whole lot of sense. comes off as if the writer's an elitist urbanite who's just trying to dump the urban poor out where nobody will ever hear from them again so the yuppies can finish claiming downtown for themselves. what a joke.
She's from Dwell, huh? Is that her only qualification? It's a bit thin.
I'd rather read Kunstler's xenophobic rants.
also posted in news a few hours before this thread and previously:the future of suburbia.
4arch - I agree that the "suburbs are doomed" is getting tiring and I think your correct to point out it's usually coming from a city dwelling "elitist."
I think we can all agree that some of the most recent exurban development probably has little to no future, but suburbs are not going anywhere anytime soon. Nor are they all going to turn into the new "slums" as many speculate.
Every large city in N. America has major companies operating in the suburbs. These businesses aren't going to move anytime soon. If anything the suburbs will develop into their own small town nodes centralized around areas of employment.
My guess is people will trend towards living closer to work, i.e. moving to the suburb where their job is. I highly doubt companies already established in the suburbs will be moving downtown.
Good points being made here. Use of "The Suburbs," or worse-- "Suburbia"-- shows simplistic thinking rather than nuanced understanding of the complex urbanization process in its many forms.
An aerial shot of 4,000 sq. ft. houses on quarter-acre lots, butting up to the edge of crop rows or fields with moo-cows says something, but certainly not everything. What about all the jobs at the urban edge? Not to mention schools, institutions, and major infrastructures?
I'm with TK: if you want a jeremiad, you go to Jeremiah. Kunstler, Krier, (any other K's?), the usual angry old men... they may be nuts, but at least they're entertaining.
And they're architects who put their money where their mouth is.
oh no but of course suburbia will be saved bu Mc Mansions and
Cul-de-SUCKS! and lots and lots of parking lets take the train to the city and get really shitty!!!
anyone eveer hear that screaching weasel song "hey suburbia"
try and tell us our future's at stake
we're gonna slam dance on your grave
cause we don't give a shit about tomorrow
you say we're a bunch of lazy bums
we just wanna act stupid and have some fun
cause we don't give a shit about tomorrow
hey suburbia [x3]
we're in love with you
we won't end up like you want us to be
but so what 'cause we're always gonna be happy
cause we don't give a shit about tomorrow
tell us we'll regret the things we did
but we're just gonna give you a big wet kiss
cause we don't give a shit about tomorrow
hey suburbia [x3]
we're in love with you
i can't begin to imagine the passionate nimby arguments that would be brought up to change SFR zoning to allow multiple units...
that said, here in albuquerque, we have suncal trying to persuade the state and county to provide TIDD financing in order to develop some 50,000 acres of mesa at the western edge of town. in an area with huge residential vacancies. in an area where the most recent testing has revealed brackish water in the underlying aquifer.
it's almost as if they don't think that the residents here know why the economy has collapsed in the first place. (you think it might have something to do with rampant suburban speculation??)
Kunstler is not an architect, or a planner, but a critic and journalist. He writes books and gives lectures on what he believes. More power to him.
Kunstler is a very good writer. He's entertaining and that's how he sells books. From what I've read of him it looks like he does his research. A lot of what he says I can agree with, but no, he isn't an architect or has any formal design training. He actually rips architects pretty good. Check out the eyesore of the month on his website. Good laughs...but also good tearing of stararchitects too.
east coast or west coast same difference elitists who would have us live in shipping containers and riding collapsible bicycles while blogging from her gigi swivel chair in between walking her labradoodle and buying fava beans at trader joe's...
if gas prices climb to $10/gallon, much of the exurbs is toast.
until toyota gets us that electric car. then the suburbs will continue indefinitely.
although i think they may lost a little of their punch because today's 20-somethings are seriously bored by the suburbs they grew up in and do not wish to return soon (cultural shift) and because the outer ring is now so far away from the city center that those who work in the city center will not be willing to commute so far.
if gas reaches ten dollars a gallon most everything will be toast.
Hipsters in their mid-20's have never wanted to live in the quiet and seculded suburbs...but they do eventually grow up, get married and start families. Gen Xers are heading out to the suburbs in search of better schools, safer neighborhoods, and larger more modern homes. Same thing their parents did 50 years ago. The only difference is today people are requesting more of their suburbs, i.e. new urbanism, pedestrian/transit oriented development, etc. Not that they are always receiving it BTW.
Just because a bunch of condos popped up downtown in the past 10 years doesn't mean there has been any fundamental shift in where people want to live.
Gas prices are largely irrelevant because as I noted before, most of the jobs are in the suburbs. Transit systems are not designed for suburb to suburb commuting. That problem will be addressed through ride sharing, 4 day or 3 day work weeks, vanpools, etc. But, most of all, people will move to the suburb where their job is. The 1st ring suburb I live in is home to many major employers. Thousands of jobs literally withing walking distance of my home.
Aqua, you may be right to a certain extent about people in their 20s wanting to live in cities, but then moving to suburbs, but I think there is a much larger segment of the population that is choosing not only to live in cities when they are younger, but settling into cities long-term and to raise families. It is no longer the case that the suburbs are where the better schools and amenities are, in fact it is fast becoming the opposite. I think you're right about first ring suburbs, which are usually connected to the city through mass transit (and in better systems, to each other through a circumferal mass transit line), because these inner suburbs have the same sort of density, amenities, and mixed use development that cities (where people have lived for the majority of the past 10,000 years) have. Outer-ring suburbs that are not walkable, that require long commutes, and that do not have the same amenities as cities, I think, will be in decline in the coming decades as more people choose not perhaps the city, but certainly denser suburbs closer to cities. I think the challenge will be in trying to retrofit the outer suburbs, and I think some of your thoughts about ride sharing and rethinking the traditional work week are good starts, but ultimately it will be a huge challenge and demand major infrastructural and planning shifts.
if i didn't have kids i would not be living on the edge of the center of tokyo. i would be i the center or in london. kids change world view. can't be helped. don't matter if one is hip or not.
kunstler does not really do research, or if he does do it he cherry picks the convenient bits. As an academic he is about as credible as bernard madoff. As journalist? meh. fun to read though, usually.
i understand that point of view, jump, and i know it's true for a bunch of people.
but i also don't want to leave it stand as simply a given: i.e., the 'kids change world view' doesn't necessarily mean that the result is always to shift to the edges. we've chosen to be closer to the middle so that we can walk to our urban neighborhood resources with our kids.
world views may shift, but the key is that there are choices. i wouldn't suggest that the choice of periphery should go away any more than i would agree that the center is somehow less amenable to kids.
Yes, Kunstler's gotten some good traction as a mad-as-hell, Howard Beale type about the virtuous city and the evil suburb. I admire his ability to convert his passion to income, but a scholar he is not. He's a polemicist, who confuses being loud with being correct.
FLM - I agree with you about what I'd call the exurbs. Housing that was largely developed in the past 15-20 years. That's where the lack of density and infastructure really is a hinderance and I do think some of that will eventually be abandoned.
That said every city is unique. Using Dallas, Tx as an example I think most of us would consider Plano a hopeless far flung suburb of McMansions and low density. That's all true, but Plano is also home to several major employers. Frito Lay isn't going to move downtown, but the middle manager that's currently commuting from across town will. So while the core city might densify inside the LBJ Freeway, I think Plano has a future even with it's current low density.
Right on Steven,
I don't have a family yet, but I'm definetly attracted to introducing my future children to the all that the city has to offer. I see coworkers who do the suburban commute to the city, and even though they live only an hour outside of Chicago, their kids come to the city once a year a less. Really they don't know anything about the city or what is has to offer at all. They might as well be living a thousand miles away in a city of 25,000 people.
true enough synergy and steven,
though i would say in defense of your friend's choice to live in suburbia, synergy, that the situation you describe is pretty much the POINT of living in suburbia.
the center of cities can be cool. but for who? and what are the tradeoffs?
The city center of tokyo is expensive, as all city centers are if the city is worth living in. but more than that it is polluted, crowded and not friendly in almost every way to the lives of small children. if i were rich, say earning an income of $1,000,000 or more i could overcome those deficiencies with money, and that is what most of the foreign contingent living in the center do (they all make very high salaries and don't mind paying rent in the range of $10,000 to $15,000/month).
personally my preference right now is to live in london. but to live "downtown", say zone 2 even, I would need to earn a lot more money if i wanted to have the kind of lifestyle i can maintain here. So my choices come down frankly to the bang for the buck. instead of london i choose tokyo. in a community where my kids can walk to school on sidewalks (not normal in the city center here), and my oldest can also walk to her swimming school, community center and so on. but we pay for that with a 1 hr commute by subway to work. which is amazing because i am actually about 1 hour closer to the center than many tokyo-ites. !
ok, so my case is a weird example. it is still indicative of the calculations most people make. which is basically what can i get for my money? if the trade off for walkable community is pollution or lots of cars, or higher taxes, etc, then i don't think many will go for it. Kids absolutely come into that picture. Who here would really be willing to give up the chance to give your children each their own room in exchange for life lessons about dirty realism in the city for those same children?
i guess my view of the city is the one that herbert gans wrote of in the 60's, which basically says that we all are making our own cities as we move and buy and sell homes and businesses. and while planners believe they are in control they are not. Which means, we can blame developers and planners and city officials but in the end it is us. WE, collectively, didn't want walkable cities. I am not sure WE still do ( If we did then i am guessing, steven, that you would not be able to afford your inner suburban home).
Perhaps that will change, but then i wonder how? how will it ever be possible to entice people to leave suburbia for smaller rooms, and dirtier air, and higher taxes, and all of those other negative externalities? in exchange for what? for the intellectual reward of living small? for me that is great. my flat is 80m2 and i am content. and there is probably room for a better kind of suburbia somehow. but actually ending suburbia? somehow i just don't see it. not yet anyway. not until we figure out a way to make it actually the better choice and not just intellectually the better choice...
maybe it would be better to just think of ways to make suburbia less damaging to the environment than to simply say it is bad, a priori.
?
i know that this is a general discussion but i'll just introduce the specific because of jump's question. i think you're making as many assumptions/presumptions as those of us who talk negative about the 'burbs. granted, there are urban areas that reflect those negative externalities you describe. but there are cities that DON'T as well. this is where urban living can really thrive.
our area is decidely mixed income - community leaders and philanthropists mixed with the bohemian crowd, the cheap renters, and everybody in between. the 'highlands', as we're known, bump up against downtown's broadway on one side, flanks a storefront commercial/pedestrian spine, but also has some wonderful examples of olmsted's park system mixed in the middle of everything.
in our case, the fact that we can afford our house was less an issue of affordability than tolerance of the house's age and small square footage. per square foot, our urban neighborhood is one of the more expensive in the city; we just accept that we have to buy a house requiring renovation and that we can't buy the unnecessarily huge interior area we'd buy on the outskirts.
i think that's part of the suburban draw, as much as separation from the city. it's cost: people can afford unused living rooms and three car garages that they use for storage and large back yards that require riding lawnmowers, whereas i have a yard i can mow in 10mins, we use every room available to us, and we have no garage.
it's not a civility issue, from what i can tell. i know most of the people on my street - as well as those across the back alley from me; when we visit friends outside the ring road, they seldom know their next door neighbors beyond 'hi'.
obviously i'm not ever going to choose the suburbs, but those friends out there really love it.
Jump,
I can't speak of Tokyo or London as I have never visited either, let alone resided in them. But it appears you've made the proper calculations for the lifestyle you wish for you and your family.
I can only really speak of experiences in Chicago. In my opinion, the economics of suburbia are not so simply. When you ask, who would be willing to live in smaller homes, you are making a financial judgment, based on the idea that suburban homes are cheaper, per square foot, than city homes. I'll agree with this. however you need to consider many other factors to get a full economic understanding. For me, my time is extremely valuable. The idea of expending 2 hrs a day commuting to work is not only awful sounding, it is expensive. You aren't getting a better deal on the suburban home, you are just making a different priority choice, for me the time is important, and I'll gladly take a smaller home for the time.
I grew up staying in a bedroom with 3 brothers, and the four of us had a great time, it was small, but I definitely have many more positive memories than negative ones.
The pollution and safety of any neighborhood, suburban or are real risks and would have to come into play in making a proper selection.
In answer to your other question. I'm interested in introducing my children to what the city has to offer, examples would be the museums, conservatories, planetarium, aquarium, etc. as well as the restaurants and cultural areas (Chinatown). There are other benefits, such as concerts, sporting events. Really the list can be quite long. I like a really good steak, I can't find that in the suburbs, it just isn't there.
porn
Steven makes a good point on the variability of cities and urban quality from place to place.
The same is true of places at the urban edge, or even beyond. Here, I avoid using the term "suburb" because it is often used as shorthand for only one kind of place --usually, single-family residential areas in combination with large, auto-dominated shopping centers. That's one kind of suburban landscape, to be sure, but there are others. The "inner ring" suburb someone brought up is another type of landscape --often, denser, older housing with a finer grain, nearer to a range of commercial uses and transit than newer development further out. And other types exist as well, all over, newer and older, single-use or not, nice or not.
Time is important, too. Brick rowhouses built in the late 19th century at the edge of Victorian London were decried as a kind of creeping blight at the time, but now are held up as ideal compact residential neighborhoods. Is that suburbia, or not? Yes then, no now? What happened in between? And what about other "best practices" we advance now that may have unintended consequences down the road?
My point is only to try and get away from "The City" and "The Suburbs" as simplistic, mutually exclusive categories in this kind of discussion. There are good quality environments in both downtowns and at urban edges, just as there are deleterious environments in both locations. Specify.
Sorry for the rant on semantics, but I believe it's important. We architects don't limit ourselves to reductive labels for our stock in trade, "buildings." There is house, tower, highrise, midrise, apartment, factory, shop, church, temple, pavilion, garage, hospital, office, hotel, hut, library, museum, palace, structure, temple, tenement, theater, shack, lean-to... you get the idea. I'm pulling for an equally elaborated nomenclature to broaden the discussion beyond "city" and "suburb." If we're gonna talk about suburbs, then at least add a modifier or two to clarify what kind of place you mean.
right on, citizen. even with qualifying adjectives, it'd be hard, but it'd be a start.
our city is self-defined as a city of neighborhoods. the variety of our neighborhoods' different characteristics are what make us who we are - as neighborhoods AND as a city.
there are other neighborhoods of similar early history as mine - first generation streetcar era, basically - but with completely different character. when you talk about 'the highlands' vs 'frankfort avenue' vs 'germantown', there is a recognized cultural distinction being made that would never be apparent through simple descriptions of the place typology.
totally right citizen. the definitions are dangerous ground, as are the assumptions. Bruegman is famous for offering reasons for that point of view and i would also offer up the work of an interesting economist named william bogart. if anyone is interested in an alternative view of urbanism this interview is pretty good as introduction.
you are correct steven to point out that i was using some shorthand for city center issues that are not exactly fair. it was not intentional. apologies. i should also point out that i have no interest in living in a north american suburb. not even remotely. ick.
synergy, what you describe is something covered by an economic theory called the tiebout model. You are right, it is complicated, and for you the calculation takes you to someplace other than the urban fringe. But for many, maybe even most city dwellers, the urban fringe is the answer. How do we accommodate those people in a more sustainable urban form?
i suppose i am just a bit less convinced by the model of density than others because i have lived most of my adult life in big cities where the negative effects are clear. the biggest one is the lack of quality of living space, and even that is being offered for impressively high cost. what i wonder is if we can't do better?
what draws me to the idea of modern suburbia is its foundation in egalitarianism. the price of admittance right now may be a car, but a car is itself an amazing tool for emancipation. so who are we to suggest or even assume that most people will willingly forgo those powers?
we who are educated and relatively well paid can afford to spurn those things, but for most of the world they are amazing luxuries, and so i wonder, can we not do better?
surely there is something to be learned in the entirety of the cities we have built. not just the early suburbs, but all of suburbia, and the center, the whole enchilada?
I personally hate suburbs (American single detached homes ½ acre lots or more stick built from a book of plans purchased in a supermarket using every available shade of tan known to man). The choice to live in a suburb is a personal one. As I see it suburbs were borne from white flight, a deliberate, costly, decision to self segregate, racially, culturally and economically. The other aspect of the suburbs is this notion that by moving further away you are moving away from social ills and other problems. I call this running away from responsibility. Suburbia (see above definition) is all about control. You have your own yard your own pool or hot tub and your own rules. Speaking to your neighbors is weird. People can live side by side and never know who lives next to them. This anonymous environment is the perfect place for mass murder, school shootings drug distribution and manufacture, sexual and domestic assault. Criminals love the suburbs and the statistics prove it but for some reason people still have an image of safety and serenity. Behold the powers of marketing. But something recently has started to happen developers in the City have started marketing the City center as the place to live and gentrification came about.
The best way to judge gentrification in a given city is to track the migration of the gay neighborhoods over time. The gay neighborhoods are the easiest places for white suburban people to assimilate with since the LGBT community is composed of all races and ethic backgrounds. The lack of a racial or language barrier enables white people to settle in with out much difficulty, however the suburbs are just the opposite now, there is no language so race and income are the only things suburban communities can try and control. For example covenants on the price of a house, zoning on how many people can live in a house. And the difficulty minority businesses have getting established in suburban areas.
As long as there are people who want to be amongst similar people there will be a demand for two things, ethic neighborhoods ghettos, and monotonous suburbs.
The best defense against urban sprawl is to stop expanding the interstates. I think once an urban area reaches a 2 hr commute time it will stop growing out and start reorganizing itself into a more sustainable development.
As for people living close to where they work in the suburbs, this is not always the case, often the sitting of corporate HQ is aided by TIFF and other tax incentives that make it very expensive for residents to live there, so people with money who are the decision makers can afford to live close but the majority of workers need to do a reverse commute or a cross commute.
"As I see it suburbs were borne from white flight, a deliberate, costly, decision to self segregate, racially, culturally and economically. The other aspect of the suburbs is this notion that by moving further away you are moving away from social ills and other problems. I call this running away from responsibility."
How does that explain the affluent all black suburbs around Atlanta and Washington? A lot of families there are 'moving away from social ills' but why begrudge them that? And the ideas you post perpetuate the idea that cities=problems and suburbs have none. A lot of deprived inner ring suburbs are even worse off than center cities. Compton is a suburb of LA.
"Speaking to your neighbors is weird. People can live side by side and never know who lives next to them."
That's common in apartment buildings in New York too. Sometimes people just want to be left alone.
"This anonymous environment is the perfect place for mass murder, school shootings drug distribution and manufacture, sexual and domestic assault."
So is anyplace that people congregate.
"The best way to judge gentrification in a given city is to track the migration of the gay neighborhoods over time. The gay neighborhoods are the easiest places for white suburban people to assimilate with since the LGBT community is composed of all races and ethic backgrounds."
Chelsea, West Hollywood and the Castro are notorious for being homogenous and often hostile to non-whites or any gay guy in the wrong tax bracket. No offense, but I think you are taking Richard Florida too seriously.
Sometimes I think the anti-suburb bias among architects is a losing attitude-I don't love the suburbs, but I don't hate them and I don't think they are the repository of all that is wrong with American society. If anything, cities are just as materialistic and venal as the suburbs are accused of being and I sense a smug class bias underpinning a lot of the criticisms (which have been levied for years and haven't advanced anything). As bad as they may be to some people, increasingly they are where the middle class lives, it's all they can afford at this point. Manhattan has the worst income inequality in the country-you are either really rich or you are on welfare in the projects apparently. And a lot of cities have just been rebranded as a playground mall for the wealthy-I don't know how 'sustainable' that is in the long run considering that wages have been steadily falling and people are not getting ahead financially now.
Many great points, odb, not the least of which is the putative and inherent virtue of cities.
Critiques of particular problems in peripheral areas are fine. But lumping the totality of that into a singular category of "the suburbs" or "suburbia" is just too simple.
And so many architects' automatic derogation of all said suburbs seems more fad and fashion than careful understanding and argument.
newflash most architects live in the suburbs! they drive into their city offices and talk about going green.
apparently suburbia was also home ground for some very important shifts in racial attitudes in america. the white flight theory is only a half truth at best, and the pablum version offered by PJN26 rather questionable.
one of the best essays on the role of race and politics in american suburbia was written by Margaret O'mara a few years ago. the article is ostensibly a review of the work of others, but her text is really worth a read in its own right. It is a bit lengthy but the first two pages ask all the important questions and explains why white flight was more fiction than fact.
I have mixed feelings about suburbs, as I grew up in the 'burbs. I've lived in Philly, Boston, and Tokyo, and at this point in my life, I love living in cities. I'm living with the parents in my hometown now, while the economy sucks, and find the suburbs infuriating. I have to borrow my mom's car to get anywhere, there is nowhere to just walk around and see what's happening. But growing up, I can't imagine living somewhere else. Rolling in the grass, playing in the woods, playing with fire in the street, sledding, great schools, swimming in the neighbor's pool, capture the flag on summer nights. You constantly read (and see) all these little bitch kids that are afraid of knives and fire and getting scratches. My friend and I always talk about how back in our day (oooh 15 years ago) kids didn't give a shit. I have scars from getting cut on rocks, slicing my finger open with a sickle, stuff like that. Today's kids are pansies. OOOH grab my Purell, I got some tree sap on my hand! I touched a bug! AHHHH. We used to play "stunt school," where we'd dress up like Indiana Jones, jump out of trees, purposely crash bikes, roll down the hill. And THAT is the beauty of suburbs. But today's bitch kids just get fatter, lazier and more bitchier. That also comes from a lot of parents turning their kids into bitches. We are doomed when the future of instant gratification, weakened immune system, don't know how to solve a problem bitch kids takes over the world.
Jump,
Thank you for linking to the O'Mara essay. A well-written, succinct summary of the suburban myth and its successes and failures.
And an awesome ode to suburban childhood, hasselhof. I love it!
PJN26, I couldn't agree with your diagnosis of the suburbs. I had a class in college with Jon Archer, (who later went on to write the amazing book, Architecture and Suburbia: From English Villa to American Dream House, 1690-2000 ) and I found myself appalled at how the suburbs developed, evolved and became what they are today. I understand the history of the suburbs as much as Jon Archer has taught me (directly). While some may be unaware of how the city politicians acted in the recent past, segregation was much more than an attitude of individuals. Segregation was also actively pursued by city planners and the suburbs were a played a huge part in segregation. Redlining, Emminent Domain, redistricting, large urban redevelopment projects are all aimed at poor neighborhoods. Chicago is a perfect example of where large urban projects have pushed the poor around (UIC, Housing projects, public transportation, etc).
Atlanta has black suburbs (which happen to be affluent) because segregation in the south was much more blatant than in the north. Atlanta was not a major industrial center. It isn't not going to have the same urban concentration that other major urban centers have and since it's in the south, everyone lived in rural-turned-suburban. Black people had money and since they couldn't move into the affluent white suburbs or neighborhoods, they created their own. In NYC, affluent black people would live in Harlem.
There are studies that have shown how crime occurs in the suburbs at similar rates (per capita) as urban centers. So the myth that cities are more dangerous is untrue. If a person lives in a city, they are not more likely to be the victim of a crime (per capita). Better schools can be found in the more affluent neighborhoods (because they receive money from property taxes).
21Ronin,
I think you might have hit on one of the key issues with your last sentence.
Better schools can be found in the more affluent neighborhoods (because they receive money from property taxes).
A huge cause of neighborhood segregation, suburban flight, etc. etc. is education. If we (as a country) address the issues of educational funding inequity in our nation, it would do a tremendous amount by removing a major incentive of segregating and relocating.
agreed synergy, and that system has to, and i believe WILL change sooner rather than later... it shocks me such an unfair funding system has been allowed to operate for so long
suburbs are the city too, aren't they?
no worries citizen. its amazing how much work has been done on suburbia already, a lot of it very well done, like O'Mara's. Such a pity that architects know so little about it.
It is actually amazing how little I learned about the city in architecture school in spite of the fact we had 2 full studios and series of seminars devoted to urbanism (which were very good).
sometimes i think the theories we do learn treat urbanism like a product. that is, as if there were no past to worry about and all we need to do is come up with a new typology to take us into the future. That makes sense with cars, but houses and communities can't be junked and replaced with something better so easily. We are going to have to deal with suburbs as they exist, at some point or other and in that case i am glad to have the work of omara and others to use as starting point...
I agree that the suburban issue is complex but I know from personal experience that even in the early 90s racism or more specifically the fear of others still drives people to move further and further away from the city core. Racism and classisum are still major factors driving some suburban growth. Lately I think the anonymous lifestyle that the most atrocious far flung suburbs foster here in the United Sates is one of isolation and self segregation. As a result anyone can live in a suburb without fears of overt racism since the likely hood that you will speak to much less actually see your neighbors is very slim. This is a relatively new phenomenon thanks to cable, satellite TV and other technology enabled entertainment options now available.
The disastrous urban planning tragedies, not mistakes tragedies helped seal the fate of the urban center, suburban growth was and is still opportunistic and self serving. We can start a new thread on urban planning disasters but this is about the suburbs.
I do think that the best way to deal with suburban sprawl and poor development patterns is to cut off automobile infrastructure expansion. No more ring roads. No new lanes. But I will support more tools.
The other radical idea I hope gains more traction is an effort similar to the national Forest system goes into effect for US farmland. If I was appointed governor of Illinois and was all powerful I would pass legislation that would in effect cut off all state funding for municipalities that chose to issue building permits for sites that are currently productive farmland. The fact is the US imports tons of milk tomato and grain products from China. We are in serious danger of losing our status as a net food exporter some time in the nest few years. Farmland is being lost for rather poorly constructed tract homes and strip malls. I think we need to draw a line and say no more beyond this point. Stop the sprawl and force the existing development to adapt and evolve. We can’t afford to add more food miles to our carbon foot print.
Look at any turn of the century neighborhood in most major cities. They started out as suburbs or tract housing but gradually some houses were torn down, and new buildings were built. Things changed out of necessity and the limiting factor was transit. Now the limiting factor is the interstate system and the limitations of single passenger vehicle use. I see modern suburbs as a cancer and a sickness than needs to be changed or eradicated, the “Bitchy kids” are a symptom of their poor design and worsening problems. The Levittown developments in New Jersey New York and PA are the beginning of the end of the effective suburbs since from that point on the importance of community centers events and “invented” traditions slowly died off and were replaced by self imposed isolation. The only variable here are kids who were given opportunities through school and related activities to socialize. Most kids knew each other and parents most likely meet each other through interactions with their kids. But now kids don’t go out side and play in the neighborhoods as much and the mega schools make friendships difficult to maintain.
Most Suburbs built today are given every amenity possible to promote interaction but technology and personal wealth keeps getting in the way. They build parks but they go unused since each backyard has its own deluxe play set or tree fort. They build walking paths and they do get used but no one speaks so as not to interrupt a cell phone conversation or their favorite song from their I-pods. They build Coffey shops but no-one hardly ever goes there to meet people they don’t know and even if someone did go there to meet new people they will encounter the liquid plasma wall known as a laptop. Private pools and the massive BBQ facilities erected in back yards enable self segregation and give people in the Suburban environment every opportunity to avoid anything unpleasant and anyone different from them. It is one huge fortified comfort zone.
By contrast dense urban areas make it difficult to have a private pool or play ground but they do have the economy of scale to support some exceptional public or shared private facilities. The opportunity for interaction is greater in a relatively dense development.
i quite like my dense urban suburb here in tokyo, so i can't argue with your ambition for something similar for the USA PJN26.
However it sounds to me like you are more worried about modern culture than the shape of the modern city. what makes you assume that planners and even urban form have any impact on how people live their lives? Isn't it more likely that the opposite is true?
I think the environment that is designed and the culture that inhabits that environment shapes and is shaped by each other. Designers have the opportunity to push small things to help the situation but ultimately people need to decide for themselves what they want.
But we can do things like design homes that revisit some classical features such as usable porches, detached garages, Alleys and a section that separates the private from the public not a floor plan. There is a reason the classic Victorian homes had their ground floors 4 feet or more above the street level and it has more to do with privacy than anything else.
I do admit that the Suburban culture is different than it was ten years ago and I worry what it has become will damage social fabric and communities. Things can only go down hill from here.
The "suburbs" aren't either completely good nor completely bad. As I have written in a similar thread, most of my relatives live in a range of suburbs, from post-war inner ring to McMansion developments.
Some of the positives: they are NOT neurotic, isolated people raising spoiled kids, nor was their choice to live in a suburb due to racism; they DO know a lot of their neighbors (although they tend to pick and choose which ones) and have a sense of community; they DO use the walking paths, hiking trails and other amenities available to them; their homes are NOT crap, they are medium-to good builder quality in various materials and they maintain them so they look well cared for.
Some of the negatives: they DO mostly go everywhere by car (mostly because they have no other choice); they DO mainly socialize with people of their own race and economic status, but that's not true in all cases; they actually do go to the coffee shops and stores in their area, and might even talk to their neighbors there, but it is true that the majority of social interactions are pre-arranged with people they already know and take place in homes and yards....and that's maybe the main difference of life in suburbs to life in cities: the serendipitous meeting, the chance event, the unexpected surprise as you walk down a city (or even small town) street. But to say that (most) people who live in suburbs are in some kind of isolated, air-conditioned nightmare, and feel themselves to be so, is pretty much nonsense.
its funny, emilio. gans came to the same conclusion, and even used very nearly the same words as you when he wrote the levittowners in 1967. he was responding to the paranoid vision of suburbia that william whyte gave us with the organisation man (whyte was smart but didn't have a freakin clue what he was talking about) and which people like jane jacobs also described, even though in the case of jane (who i otherwise love) had never even visited a suburba in order to form her opinions about them...
PJN26, with no disrespect intended you are clearly looking for a problem to match your solution and not the other way around. If the victorians had ideas about privacy and community that resulted in particular urban forms or architectural typologies that is fine, but why would you think they still apply to us? shouldn't we come up with our own typologies? i know it is horrific to think so but perhaps suburbia as it exists today, and as flawed as it is today really IS what people want, and entirely reflects our society and even our aspirations.
clearly suburbia is screwed up in a lot of fundamental ways when it comes to environment. but culturally, i find myself entirely incapable of judging anyone's lifestyle. what if richard florida is right when he says community has not disappeared but only changed its outward appearance? According to his research, it is not that community has gone away, but only that we can't see it by the old measurements. Membership in the Elk lodge just isn't the indicator it used to be...
as for urban form controlling behavior i have very grave doubts on that end. the research shows pretty clearly that people do not do what the planners expect of them. they just don't. that is why the netherlands after about 20 years of promoting and planning the compact city have abandoned it AS A NATION. Their new idea is to try to do planning that fits reality instead of reverse engineering a perfect future that can' be reached from here. It isn't sexy but it makes more sense than most plans out there today.
i don't have the answer but somehow i just don't believe it lies in our past. we need to look to the present and the future - and the present includes suburbia in our cities. lets deal with them honestly and with respect for the people who live in them and see what we can do to make the world better. because yelling at people in cars as they drive by is not going to get us anywhere.
Our studio was fortunate to have a guest lecture by the editor of Canadian Architect magazine back in October. He presented a side of Toronto (often called the most multicultural city in the world) that we don't often hear:
1) The suburbs are much more ethnically diverse than the city centre, and
2) suburban density is typically understated, as several generations of an (immigrant) family often life in the same suburban home.
I wish I had the stats in front of me, as he did. I don't think critics of suburbs always do their research, but that's true of anybody with an agenda, right?
Just to be clear, he was talking about Toronto specifically, not all suburbs in general.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same for NYC-the income inequality here has risen to an insane level, and New York County (Manhattan) is actually one of the rare counties that is becoming less diverse (whiter) since the last census. And the reverse is happening in the suburbs, especially in New Jersey, they are getting more diverse.
And I personally think the alleged mixing of different groups in large cities is a romantic exaggeration-we use IPods and laptops to ignore those we aren't interested in either.
Jump,
I agree that trying to completely redefine and reshape the urban and suburban communities based on planning alone is a flawed idea. You can't really predict or fully anticipate the movements, desires, and trends of entire communities. That being said, we can address specific problems that plague both communities. Some changes would help remove the socio economic incentives that cause the unsustainable development in the first place.
Specifically, as I mentioned above, if we take back control of the funding for public services, particularly in education, as balance the system to provide equitable education for a public students, we’ll make it more viable for people to choose to live in different neighborhoods. Right now, operating in the best interest of their children, are forced to move into separated neighborhoods, which propagate the problem.
Of course some people are in favor of this distribution and believe it to be the right way to fund schools, which is the attitude that needs to be fought. There are several proposals for how to improve and balance the public school system such as using vouchers. I am not certain which is the best way to proceed, but educating the public on the possibilities would be a good start.
synergy,
i understand that argument and agree equity is impt. what i find disheartening is that your starting point appears to be that we need to improve access to good education mostly just to ensure that suburbs won't have an advantage over other areas. you start with an assumption that suburbia is bad, then look for a reason to reduce its place in society.
equity is one of the pillars of sustainability. but shouldn't we be starting with inequity and focus on solving that problem on its own terms? in whatever form is required? if we do that and it turns out the answer is to dismantle suburbia then i am happy to sign up. But what if the answer is something that makes suburbia even more central to urban life? Would that be ok too? If the answer is a-priori an big NO then i would have to conclude you're offering up equity in a self-serving way, and that would be sad.
i guess what i am really hoping for is a generation of planners and architects who are able to step back without that kind of agenda and just set about to fixing the problems in whatever way is required and necesary, letting chips fall as they may. maybe tht is the paradigm shift we are waiting for....?
Jump,
Perhaps I wasn't clear, although I have my apprehensions about Suburbia, my only point was that it would be good to remove some of the overwhelming incentives that cause suburban flight, urban blight etc. etc. I believe if the neighborhoods offered equitable services, people could make decisions about where to live without being so heavily forced by circumstance.
I am much, much more interested in improving the education system, and other inequalities, for their own merit, than for the reason of changing suburban culture. I only keep bringing them because I personally think they play a key role for why things developed the way the did. So whether you like the way things have developed or not, it is good to have an understanding of why.
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