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.