Shift in Suburban Thinking

“What Americans say they want is shifting…Studies using a technique that analyzes the trade-offs people make in choosing where to live show that a significant segment of the population wants something different from the standard…In particular, these studies focused on not just the house in isolation, but the entire community and the way life would be lived there.” (Leinberger, 2008 p.92) Although Americans still move to the suburbs they don’t seem to be satisfied with their living conditions. The shift is a result of the only option people have because it is too expensive to live near the city.

“According to a recent market research, most ordinary Americans, though still favoring detached, single-family homes, are increasingly fed up with the congestion and sprawling commercial development […] they would prefer neighborhoods clustered around a downtown or village center” (Phillip J. Longman U.S. News & World Report 27 April 1998, p.22).

The problem with suburbia today is that it has lost its community and connection with the urban core. Every house, strip mall, and big box stores, looks the same and it’s lacking social space. A successful urban city is one with a variety of people, culture, and environmental features which creates a healthy community of diverse and tolerant people. The future of suburbia is in jeopardy due to the disconnection between architecture and the user. Stern addresses another misconception about urbanism; “Urbanism is about human life. It is not about human form. It is not about art movements” (Tschumi, 2003 p.21). We are at a point where growth, migration, mobility and climate are forcing us to rethink the key elements of urbanism and bring back a sense of place to our abandoned cities and suburbs.

“Anton Nelssen, a Princeton-based researcher and professor at Rutgers University, began these trade-off studies in the 1980s and 1990s. He invented a methodology he called ‘visual preference surveys.’ He asked consumers to rate a series of two contrasting photographs from the general geographic area where they lived; the first photos showed drivable suburban places (e.g., a strip mall, a large-lot single-family house, a business park) and the second photos showed the same uses but in a walkable urban condition (e.g., a Main Street shopping area; higher density single-family housing on a smaller lot; a vibrant, walkable business district). The vast majority of people taking Nelessen’s survey preferred walkable places over drivable sub-urban places “(Leinberger, 2008 p. 92-93).

It seems that people want to have a suburban lifestyle but still enjoy urban living. The question I pose is can the two coexist or will one overpower the other?

We can get up in the morning, get in our car, and drive to work without encountering any other person face to face. Is this the American Dream? […] residential areas are segregated by economic class, age, and race. Is this the American Dream? “It is obvious that the housing industry has not been a social/family/ community-oriented process, but merely a way of doing business and making a profit” (Smith, 1995 p.18).

References:

Leinberger, C. B. (2008). The option of urbanism : Investing in a new American dream. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Tschumi, B., & Cheng, I. (2003). The state of architecture at the beginning of the 21st century. New York: Monacelli Press.

Walkability in Suburbia

Growing up in Brooklyn, NY, everything we needed was within a miles radius from corner stores which we called “Bodegas” to schools and if you wanted to venture out you could ride the subway or take the bus. Owning a car in New York City was not necessary and those who did used it for recreation. My grandfather owned and car and ten years later when it was given to me it only had twenty thousand miles on it, people in the city always walked to where they wanted to go because it was cheap and convenient. I never understood the lifestyle of suburbia until I was twenty-five years old and moved to Tampa, Fl; here you depended on a car as if they were your legs and public transportation was almost non-existent. Just recently I started to take notice of the problems in suburbia and “walkability” was one of them. The other day I was at a stop light a noticed a young couple with a baby trying to cross the street. They were probably headed to the local Target but their mission looked impossible because the streets were so wide and the cars were so fast. I had to question why the suburbs are accessible to only those who have a car. I never had this problem living in Brooklyn. Yesterday, I overheard an overly excited girl talking to her friend on the phone about her new college experience. She was excited that her new school had sidewalks and the mall was only a mile away. This made me think of all the possibilities people would have if suburbia walk were accessible to people more than vehicles.

Brief

Problem Statement:

Architecture and “The American Dream” have been neglected by America’s suburban neighborhoods leaving suburbia with an over abundance of houses, cars, and strip malls. Suburbia was once a place where families could obtain “The American Dream” and live minutes from the city. Today, suburban neighborhoods have created a large gap between the public and the city becoming merely a buffer spaces between major cities. In result, suburbia has lost its urban identity and connection to the city. Lately, suburban living has been associated by cost vs. location; the further away you live from the city the less expensive it is to reside, causing people to live further away from the city. As a remedy to urban sprawl, retrofit along with adaptive reuse needs to take place, creating hybrid urban communities.


Questions:

1. How to bring back urban living to an uncontrollable suburbia?

2. What can be proposed to conserve land and reduce the amount of sprawl?

3. How to fill the gaps left behind by urban sprawl and bond suburbia to the city?


Objectives:

• To design an urban archetype that can serve as an example of retrofitting suburbia.

• To reduce the spread of urban sprawl by retrofitting abandoned and underutilized structures for dwelling, working, and social activities.

• To reduce the dependence of cars in modern day suburbia and create a walkable community.


Purpose:

• To meet the needs of modern day people and redefine “The American Dream”.

• To stop the spread of urban sprawl and reduce emissions and energy consumption.

• To find a new purpose for the strip malls and the factories suburbia abandoned.


Process/Program:

• Study the typology of suburbia

• Study the urban fabric of Tampa, Florida and its suburbs