SAVE A HORSE, STOP SUBURBIA

In Dunham-Jones and Williamson’s article, “Retrofitting Suburbia, Urban Land, Sustainable Suburbs”, they argue that in order to revitalize the suburbs, they need to become more urban. They urge their readers to create environments that can reduce the vehicle-miles traveled, reduce land consumption, increase transit efficiency, add green space, increase diversification and housing types, and have an “urban node”, claiming that “the larger, denser, and more urban the redevelopment, the greater the ability of its designers to change the existing development pattern”.

Even other notable designers such as Jeff Speck state that suburbs and rural areas are destroying our health, environment, and future. Speck states that only living in a “walk-able city” can solve problems such as economic spending, transportation, obesity, asthma, car accidents, carbon emissions, electric consumption, gas consumption, standards of living, and most importantly – urban sprawl.

However, by transforming these suburban areas and creating more urban mini-cities, I have to wonder if that is actually helping. Many Americans strive for the “American Dream” of owning their own house with a garage, a backyard, and neighbors that let you can borrow sugar. Not many people associate the “American Dream” with renting a third floor apartment in the middle of a busy city. If they do include the big city in their dream, they envision a penthouse suite, or Gatsby style mansion on the outskirts of the city.

My biggest worry is that we will re-urbanize these suburban spaces only to create more ‘suburbs’ on outskirts of these new mini-cities. While people like Speck, Dunham-Jones, and Williamson claim that revitalizing these areas will help prevent urban sprawl; I fear it will only speed it up. When urbanization sprawls further, what happens to the rural areas we are trying to protect?

I grew up in a mostly rural area. I had friends that lived on farms and friends that lived walking distance to their daily activities. Between the two, I found that the people who lived closer to the “urban nodes” used their cars more often, as they did not want to walk 10 minutes to the store when they could drive only 2 minutes and have their grocery shopping completed faster. Even now, after living 3 years within walking distance to the store and visiting the store twice a week, I only walk to the store once every few months. I have seen farmlands become the new subdivision because people do not want to live in the city because of the noise, crime, costs, etc… I have seen small communities try to urbanize and fail, and others that have succeeded only to create new subdivisions further into the rural areas.

Because of this, I do not believe in re vitalizing suburbia.

You cannot have walk-able mini-cities without creating further sprawl. All we can do is eat up the rural areas until there is no further space to spread. If the suburbs are failing – let them fail. Instead of creating new mini-cities, destroy the failing areas and create acres of new green recreation spaces.

Since sprawl is inevitable, let’s give back to nature – not just take from it.