Mixed-Use Suburbs

In an excellent, provocative essay, Allison Arieff wonders what could become of the subdivision and the McMansion in the near future:

For a long time now I’ve been obsessed with suburban and exurban master-planned communities and how to make them better. (Me too.) But as the economy and the mortgage crisis just seem to get worse, and gas prices continue to plunge, the issues around housing have changed dramatically. The problem now isn’t really how to better design homes and communities, but rather what are we going to do with all the homes and communities we’re left with.

While there is extensive precedent for how to rehabilitate old, urban, buildings and neighborhoods, the regeneration and transformation of the suburbs of the late 20th century is uncharted territory. For example, what will happen to the Martha Stewart subdivisions of North Carolina, when no one wants them anymore? Or that of Thomas Kinkade, "painter of light"?

Cue David Byrne singing an updated version of "Life During Wartime": Heard about about Orange County? Heard about Phoenix? Heard about Alpharetta, GA?

In urban areas, there’s rich precedent for the transformation or reuse of abandoned lots or buildings. Vacant lots have been converted into pocket parks, community gardens and pop-up stores (or they remain vacant, anxiously awaiting recovery and subsequent conversion into high-end office space condos). Old homes get divided into apartments, old factories into lofts, old warehouses into retail....

But similar transformation within the carefully delineated form of a subdivision is not so simple. These insta-neighborhoods were not designed or built for flexibility or change.

So what to do with the abandoned houses, the houses that were never completed or the land that was razed for building and now sits empty?

You may notice that the title of Arieff's piece is a bit of a misnomer. She doesn't frame the argument in terms of "saving" the suburbs: it's about their evolution, not their preservation.

Read the rest.

Comments

[The Urbanophile]

Two architects, Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, just published a book on this topic called "Retrofitting Suburbia". It's about using new urbanist solutions to redevelop older suburban areas, with lots of case studies. I recently posted a review of this:

http://theurbanophile.blogspot.com/2009/01/review-retrofitting-suburbia.html

[Chris]

A great review--everyone, go check it out!

Thanks, Urbanophile!

[cvilletomorrow]

I just stumbled across this last night. It is a great read, and I'm glad that some smart people are already starting to think creatively about a solution.

I also appreciate how Arieff is realistic about the prospects. Many of us would love to enhance transit access, densify, add in public space, mixed-uses, etc. That's the ideal situation, but there are so many exurban houses now in existence, its hard to imagine that strategy working across the boards. The approach will have to be a multifaceted, and I'm curious to see what ideas starting springing up in the future.