So Long Suburbia!

“The global urgency of reducing greenhouse gases provides the most time-sensitive imperative for reshaping sprawl development patterns, for converting areas that now foster the largest per-capita carbon footprints into more sustainable, less automobile-dependent places.”

 – Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, “Retrofitting Suburbia”

The sheer thought of reimagining suburbia in America is almost incomprehensible. The so-called “American dream” is centered around the notion of securing a 9-5 job in order to afford a house in the suburbs, where you eventually raise a family. This perception was conceived during the post-war era and has held strong ever since.

In the last few decades, the infrastructure of the suburbs has begun to crumble. Aging and underperforming shopping centers, car-dependent roads, and rising housing costs has led us to reevaluate the sustainability of this lifestyle. How do we begin to retrofit and reimagine the suburban landscape? And even if such a task is feasible, how do we convince generations of Americans that this is the right thing to do – despite what they’ve been told their entire lives?

The purely American concept of suburbia seems to be just a fleeting trend in the history of urban development patterns – unless of course we find a way to revitalize it. The key will be incremental changes that feel genuine to the vernacular of a given place. This implies that a retrofit will look different across the country, making the task only more difficult.