Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream

I found this book intriguing, because the authors understand why I like my neighborhood. Even better, they understand why I hate so many new housing projects. This is an important book, as vital as Jane Jacobs' work, and it has some uncomfortable truths to share. The US has become a Suburban Nation; a nation of badly-designed suburbs. The newest, more expensive ones are some of the worst.My neighborhood has houses that are smallish, but sidewalks are everywhere. There are stores within reasonable walking distance, and not too many cul-de-sacs. Three parks are less than a mile away. That means I can walk more than one route to get places. More importantly, others walk the neighborhood too, so I actually meet my neighbors. A neighborhood built almost 50 years ago, the trees are mature (a rarity in Silicon Valley burbs) and provide shade, coolness, and beauty. 8000 square foot lots are neither so small that the houses are crushed together nor so large that walking seems to get you nowhere because it takes too long to pass each property.Contrast this with the new developments going in: miniscule yards (and therefore little greenery), matchstick trees that don't receive any sun, overly wide arterials that offer only one way into or out of the development. Walls around the complex not only keep outsiders out, they prevent insiders from going out, too, unless they get in the car and crowd onto the only access road. Once in one's car, there is no opportunity to talk with neighbors on the inside, either.Before reading Suburban Nation, I still had the same sense of what made a neighborhood compelling and we bought our home accordingly, preferring the old small house over the big new ones despite my need for closet space. Authors Duany, Plater-Zybeck, and Speck articulate these principals clearly and enjoyably. With many photographs illustrating both good and bad examples of city planning, Suburban Nation shows the consequences of bad assumptions as well as bad results. The authors like Winter Park, FL, because its downtown is walkable and residents, most of them retired and many who have given up driving, can easily participate in community life. They hate most of the new burbs being built because there is no there there, there's just a road from here to somewhere else with no central gathering point.Most of the failure of the modern suburb is due to the automobile. Wider roads make a community less cohesive, because a wide road encourages speeding, while a narrow one encourages drivers to slow down, regardless of the posted speed limit. New communities have ridiculously wide roads, which not only lead to unsafe traffic but also discourages pedestrians. Cul-de-sacs, corners, and curves are overly wide as well, to accomodate uneeded 40 foot fire trucks; completely unneeded in a suburb where no building is over two stories but purchased by town councils wanting their fire chiefs to be happy. The net result is a 120 foot walk to cross a st

I am not an architect or city planner, but I believe this book would be an interesting and informative read for anyone. It provides a lot of information and references for a professional and it is a great starting point for an amateur or concerned and active citizen. Additionally (and very difficult to accomplish all three), it is a very pleasant read for anyone else who wants to learn more about designing a neighborhood, how cities form, how to combat environmental destruction or simply why they do or don't enjoy a specific neighborhood.Part of the success of this book for me was the format. There are small pages with wide margins. The margins allow for small black & white pictures directly next to the text they illustrate. The pictures by themselves are not very good, but they illustrate the text very well. Additionally, the authors used two systems of footnotes/endnotes (a system that I have not seen before) that expand and clarify the story very well, without bogging it down. For asides or amplifications, they have footnotes that you can quickly read, after you have finished your current line of thought. These sources are not always completely referenced, sometimes the authors only reference a series, article, or individual book; but if you are interested the source along with some additional thoughts from the authors are available. For the sources they are citing, the authors use a typical endnote system.This book is a call to action. The authors try to explain the current problems with our cities (and consequently our lives) and some of their solutions. They do a very good job explaining their views, and I believe present a very convincing argument that these problems do not have one source or solution. The authors present problems with our cities today as problems that cut across all economic, social, environmental, occupational & cultural boundaries; and that only traditional neighborhoods cut across all these boundaries to solve these problems. The authors do NOT say that only architects or city planners can solve the major problems facing society today. Quite the opposite; they say that only an educated citizenry can solve these problems if they act truly collectively, and the only mechanism that they have seen that brings people together (across the above-mentioned boundaries) is a "traditional neighborhood".I don't believe the authors are Ludites or are in any way opposed to modern technology or science; however, their basic position is that we need to re-read the texts from 100 years ago and stop using the latest gee-whiz-bang theory to design our cities and guide our lives. If fact, they directly state that experimentation is good; but that we should experiment on the rich because if the latest theory is cracked, the rich can always afford to move! Unfortunately, the rich and powerful seem to know that not all of the latest theories come out perfect the first time, so modern society experiments on the poor, with

I've just finished "Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl & the Decline of the American Dream" by architects/planners Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck. It's not just about the spread of sprawl; it's also about the consequent decline in community and public participation, since you can't have a sense of community when you're spread all over the countryside and have no geographic focus. The authors' thesis is that suburban sprawl is cheap only because it is massively subsidized, often, and ironically, by the very people who are forced by economics to remain behind in the cities (they can't afford cars); that the way out of urban-suburban traffic jams it TND, or traditional neighborhood development. They say that you can't build enough roads to handle all of the demand -- indeed, that building more roads, and widening existing roads, causes MORE traffic. You can't tax the property you've paved. And, furthermore, that wider roads encourage speeding and speed-related traffic injury and death, while making pedestrianism unattractive, if not a dangerous occupation. Their solutions, explained and illustrated in the book (favorably mentioning some of my favorite places, such as Georgetown and Old Town Alexandria -- designs that would be illegal these days), include, in no particular order... grid layout for neighborhood streets to lessen dependence on overused feeder roads (and autos, generally) mixed-income residential development to create a diverse community (horrors!) balanced mix of residences, businesses, shopping, recreation, and public buildings so everything is within walking distance (and so older people and children are not stranded, as they are in the suburbs, since they don't drive) narrow two-way streets, with parallel parking, to calm traffic and make sidewalks attractive to pedestrians avoidance of cul de sacs and winding streets, avoidance of wide street turning radiuses (which encourage speeding and endanger pedestrians) higher density development to maximize the usefulness of public transit and minimize dependence on autos (and dry, dignified places to wait for transit) accommodation of site topography and encouragement of unconventional intersections (which calm traffic) civic squares, plazas, a general store (subsidized, if necessary), a school or schools, a post office residences facing the street, with short, inviting setbacks and parking accessed by alleys in the rear (no garages facing the street) a diversity of housing types in close proximity; apartments above commercial space; subsidized housing stylistically similar to the rest businesses fronting directly on the street with only street parking in front (parallel parking on the street) all buildings with flat fronts and simple roofs, and (except for tiny homes) at least two stories tall most parking lots to the rear of buildings, with pedestrian-friendly parking-to-shopping passages (e.g., lined by shop windows) multi-point street

An excellent critique of what's wrong with our suburbs. Two qualities make this book especially valuable:1) while some books commentators attack suburbs and do no more, Duany et. al. offer a middle ground between Manhattan and the status quo, asserting that we can have all the advantages of suburbia without being slave to our cars. (The person who wrote that they want us all to live in "cramped city neighborhoods" must have been reading a different book than I read).2) the most common argument for the status quo is that it is "what people want" and "what the market wants." Duany et. al. show that the status quo is the result not of too little government, but of too much government (though some of their remedies are a tiny bit statist for my taste). Again and again, they point out that sprawl was created by Big Brother's zoning rules, by Big Brother's highway spending, and by Big Brother's wide streets and mandatory free parking.

I must say right out front that I gave this book a product endorsement known as a dust-jacket blurb, because I believe it is a book of terrific importance and high seriousness for a culture that is in trouble and needs help. The trouble is the fiasco of suburbia, and the help is the tremendously valuable service that Andres Duany, Lizz Plater-Zyberk, and their project manager Jeff Speck have done in writing this indispensible book, because it not only describes the American predicament with lucidity and precision, but it prescribes a set of excellent remedies with equal verve and intelligence. The architectural firm of Duany & Plater-Zyberk (DPZ) has shown really remarkable generosity to their colleagues over the past decade, giving away their expertise -- and the fruits of their hard work -- to virtually anyone who asked for it. Practically everything I know about civic design either came directly from them, or from a source they directed me to. I imagine they would have printed and distributed "Suburban Nation" themselves -- if it weren't for the fact that people generally don't feel something is worthy unless there is a price tag on it. But the contents of this book are truly priceless, and I regard "Suburban Nation" as a gift from a heroic and generous firm to their own culture. Like all good ideas whose time has come, the New Urbanist movement, in which DPZ played a major founding role, has been greeted with raspberries and skepticism by the gate-keepers of a beleaguered status quo. Life is tragic, and there will not be a guaranteed happy ending to the mess we have made of our American townscapes and landscapes. It is going to take the moral will of a self-confident and purposeful people to restore the everyday world of our nation. This important book offers good will, encouragement, and tremendous practical knowledge. One sure measure of its success is the opposition it is stirring up from the more culturally psychotic corners of America.