Strengthen advantages and provide daily convenience

I was born in a big city and live there for around 22 years during which I also lived in the suburban area or rural area with my grandma because of visiting relatives for a kind of short time. There is an interesting phenomenon, family living in the urban always go to suburban during the weekend, they prefer finding a place with beautiful landscape and sitting on the lawn or side of the lake eating some food with their family members and looking at their kids running and playing games. On the other side, those living in the suburban area looking forward to going to big city when they have time because of various big malls and a huge amount of entertainment facilities, like cafeteria, restaurant, salon.  

There is another interesting thing happening, at least in China. Young people hope to develop their career in the big city due to the better chances and resources, while those elder people who have retired and have a lot of saving prefer buying or renting a house in the suburban area in order to have a quiet and easy life without competition and stresses anymore comparing with city life.

I have to say, no matter urban or suburban, both of them have their own charms. So I think the retrofitting of suburban should focus on two aspects, the first one is maintaining current residence and attracting potential residence. The second one is attracting people from city to visit them which can bring more activities. I think the strategies talked in the weekly articles, such as adaptive reuse of box can make the first aspect become better and better. From my perspective, developing natural landscape at the same time is also a good way. Providing city people with more special suburban experience may also convert some of them to potential residences. Some young people leave the suburban area to develop their career, some elder people come back to the suburban area may be not a bad thing.