Suburban Transformation

Suburban development keeps growing throughout the U.S. and doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop anytime soon. People are now able to even choose what house they would like out of a catalog, customize minor aspects about it, and get it built almost instantly. As neighborhoods keep growing, more and more cars keep appearing on roads in the area due to grocery stores, work, or shopping malls being too far to walk to or the lack of public transportation that can be used to get to different places. Also, generic apartment complexes are spreading like wild fire in these neighborhoods, creating a new texture to suburbia but not successfully creating an urban environment even with a denser population per square foot.

I do not believe that suburbia will be going away any time soon but I do believe that steps can be taken to make suburbia better in terms of urban design. In my opinion, an example of a good suburban area is a local city from where I grew up: Addison, Texas. While the city is any standard suburban town with plenty of houses and apartment complexes, it has grown a small downtown area filled with restaurants, bars, and other social businesses that bring night life to the area. This give the opportunity for people to drive to this part of town for night life rather than taking the extra time to drive to Dallas to get a similar experience. While public transportation is still a work in progress in the area, bringing a small town allows for a better urban environment for a suburban town.