Suburbia at the speed of Model-T.

 “ American suburban development patterns are so highly specialized for single uses that their layouts are resistant to incremental adaptation.” 

Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson

“Retrofits also face many challenges, including addressing gentrification, producing architecture that lives up to cultural aspirations, and constructing the infrastructure to support the changes.” 

Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson

Since I started the Architecture program at Clemson, I have driven to Highlands, NC (where I used to live) several times during the past three years. Every time I do that, I have to drive through a small town called Walhalla, SC. During these trips, one of the most interesting aspects to me is to observe many house styles, and how many types of abandoned buildings there are in that little town. However, there is a particular pre-fabricated house from a kit sold by the retailer Sears that has always caught my eye. The reason is the way the windows and the porch face the lot and the street. It just feels like someone got the wrong floor plan to put on that lot!

According to Marx, in capitalism if you are not growing, you are decreasing. If you don’t find ways to produce faster, more beautiful, better, you are going to fail. Therefore, the way I always see suburbia with these pre-fabricated houses is reminiscent of Henry Ford's concept of the model T.  To me, the suburbia is a proletarian village with the Model-T twist idea and make-over. Just a better image.

In "The Retrofitting Subur,” the authors (Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson) list some interesting solutions used in the US to reconnect abandoned neighborhoods during the economic downturn. Most of them were successful. But what happened to towns like Walhalla and downtown Seneca? It seems that someone tried to retrofit these downtowns as well, but failed.

Growing up in a country which is in constant economic downturn, I saw many solutions being tried that did not work at certain times, but worked in other times. As an example, using saturated oil in cars in the 80’s was unlawful. Today, cars in Brazil can use three types of combustible, which largely depends on the price: natural gas, gasoline, and ethanol.  The laws had to be changed in order to accommodate changing fuel consumption patterns. And I believe building codes have the same issues. What ideas can be applied for the time being that are not breaking the laws?

I don’t live in a house that I would call "architecture", but I know that I am lucky to have what I have compared to not having a place to live, or having to live in a slum for lack of resources.  Sometimes I look at suburbia as a fake way of living. However, after living in the US for this long, I also believe, as in the text of “Retrofitting Subur” that someone was trying to create a better solution. Maybe, the idea of suburbia backfired, the same way the production of cars did (too many of them, and too much of pollution) However, it seems that until something drastic happens, laws and ways of thinking are not going to change.

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