Saved by sari
Revenge of the Suburbs
Suburbs are about the leisurely conquest of space, an alternative to the uncomfortable density of the city. They seem to run free from history itself, offering a sense that nothing was there before. But the illusion of tranquility frays at the edges: the neurosis required to maintain so neatly manicured a lawn, the pristine sidewalks that nobody wa
... See moreHua Hsu • Stay True: A Memoir (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Suburbia is not for the most part a naturally occurring settlement pattern, and the suppression of density and traditional urban forms, in most places for coming on a century now, has made it impossible to divine public opinion. Our opinions are shaped by our surroundings and possibilities. In different circumstances, we can be different people. Of... See more
You Can Take It With You
Brian Wiesner added
Critics of suburbia, by contrast, worried that its dull uniformity would do corrosive damage to the American psyche. In the words of the American urbanist Lewis Mumford, writing in 1961, suburbia was “a multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at uniform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste, inhabited b
... See moreTom Standage • A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
After all, cities are where people are supposed to have serendipitous encounters—as the writer and critic Jane Jacobs said, “The metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.” By comparison, the cliché goes, people become more atomized the farther they move from urban environments into the clinical, safe,... See more
Allie Conti • Do Yourself a Favor and Go Find a ‘Third Place’
Starting around 2006, young Americans seemed to be turning against the suburban lifestyle and flocking instead to city centers. Meanwhile, immigrants and the urban poor were moving out to the suburbs—a phenomenon called the Great Inversion by the urbanist Alan Ehrenhalt. But then population growth rates in America’s suburbs started outpacing those
... See moreTom Standage • A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
People like living in suburbs. At the moment, it means being dependent on a car to do almost anything, but that is widely considered a price worth paying for a bit more space and privacy, and the opportunity to own your own home. Millions of suburban dwellers have voted with their feet—or, it is more accurate to say, with their cars.
Tom Standage • A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
The picture of a successful town presented here is of a place that has given up any hope of surviving without the patronage of people who live elsewhere, that is, in cities—where, presumably, actual things are still being made.
phil christman • Small-Town USA
Keely Adler added
Looking further ahead, some urban planners are imagining how suburbs might evolve. Alan Berger, codirector of the Center for Advanced Urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggests that if efforts to retrofit suburbs and reduce car dependency pay off, the paved area (in the form of roads and parking lots) in future suburbs could be
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