What Happens when the Land Runs Out?

     This week I read the article Retrofitting Suburbia by Ellen Dunam-Jones and June Williamson. The summarization of the article is basically the title, how can we (as a community of architects) reshape suburbia that has been built before us. This couples with the theme in some of the readings a few weeks ago about cities and how to design in the already designed. With undeveloped land running out, I do see a shift in the industry over time where redeveloping/retrofitting existing buildings becomes a primary focus of Architects. This article does a great job of different focuses for retrofitting, such as reducing carbon footprints, creating less vehicle-dependent spaces, and changing programs of abandoned buildings. This transition of focus for architects as a whole makes logical sense to me, but I am curious of when this transition will occur? Will it happen while I am still alive, or will my generation be the last to have access to undeveloped land? Either way, I think a great indicator of when the transition will happen will be when education begins to focus on “retrofit projects.” We experienced some of this with our Cote 10 project in the fall of 2019 where we were tasked to design a community building adjacent to elevated highways. I see this project in hindsight to a reveal of our future, where finding undeveloped land will be scarce and we will have to adapt design strategies to harsher environments like next to a highway.