Sweet Houses!!!

  “Silicon Valley’s persistently suburban environment exists as a rebuke too much current thought about urbanism. Its tract housing origins, strip development, and workplace enclaves at both high and low ends of the market are far from the dense urban fabric that many scholars offer as the normative description of a good city."

-Margaret Crawford

    Margaret Crawford's essay, Little Boxes, explains how the 1960s song of the same name represents sentiments held by many respected urban planning theorists. They hate the little "boxes in a row" or suburban developments representing consumerism and the American obsession with the status quo. Crawford points out that this is an oversimplification. The neighborhood in particular that the song references was, in fact, a very diverse neighborhood of immigrants. She says the sprawling Silicon Valley "demonstrates that a dispersed landscape predicated on mobility and the continuous construction of banal and repetitive building types is easily adaptable to growth and change. Since both are essential elements of innovation, it is not surprising that innovation flourishes here." Crawford asserts that the suburban landscape helped Silicon Valley bloom. Flexible spaces like large garages helped people like Steve Wozniak kick-start their companies. Many families, including diverse groups of immigrants, have adapted suburban tract homes to their needs. The tract housing boom gave large numbers of people access to homes. Crawford offers a very optimistic view of the suburban dilemma and points out that architects can work within the suburban context to improve things and even learn from them. Either way, suburbs, strip malls, and cars are the most common buildings. No matter what, change cannot happen overnight, and it makes sense to talk about how to meet the "problem" where it's at.