Adapting Agrestic and Reusing Suburbia

Margaret Crawford’s statement that the history of the urban growth patterns in Silicon Valley “challenges urban scholars who believe that productive social interaction can only take place on crowded sidewalks in walkable cities and that sprawling landscapes cannot foster diversity,” seems to contradict her core argument for why the tract housing developments worked in the first place – density.  This method of rapid sub-urbanization via “the continuous construction of banal and repetitive building types” may have catalyzed growth in Silicon Valley and other parts of the country, but now today’s generation and the generations of tomorrow are left with the consequences of haphazard urban sprawl. Today much of suburbia around the country is vacant or underutilized because of its inflexible design. In their article “Retrofitting Suburbia” Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson explain that the current vacancy throughout much of suburbia is due to the fact that “American suburban development patterns are so highly specialized for single uses that their layouts are resistant to incremental adaptation.” 

Here is where I find the contradiction in Crawford’s argument that the “sprawling landscapes” of suburbia with their lack of density can foster a level of diversity similar to a dense urban environment. Crawford argues that density is not necessary, but if anything her example of the tract housing developments disproves that the level of diversity achieved in Silicon Valley was done so without urban density.  In her description of the housing developments she writes, “their lightweight construction allowed easy alterations as immigrants occupied garages and built additions to accommodate large families.”  Therefore, I would argue that it was tract housing development’s ability to be adapted post-occupancy in order to increase density that contributed to the diversity and success of Silicon Valley. Although Crawford argues that rapid suburbanization has produced architecture that is easily adaptable and retrofitted, the number of vacant suburban strip malls and shopping centers seems to disprove that and without the ability to adapt suburbia we will be unable to achieve the necessary level urban density. As we look toward a future where global climate change and diminishing oil supplies demand greater urban density, how can we urbanize in a way that is socially and environmentally responsible, yet also malleable enough to allow for adaptation and retrofitting by future users?