Crosscut.com Blog
Can Suburbs Be Recycled After Burst?
What to do with our new Depression-era 21st century suburbs? What is the future for foreclosed cul-de-sac homes? Is there a future for abandoned Big Box retailers?By Knute Berger Crosscut.com, Guest Writer, 1-16-09
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Allison Arieff of the New York Times has an interesting story about what to do with our new Depression-era 21st century suburbs. What is the future for foreclosed cul-de-sac homes? Is there a future for abandoned Big Box retailers?
There’s a lot to this story, which if you check the comments thread, it immediately became a forum for burbs-bashing. Just burn ‘em down, some say. But Arieff’s pieces asks great questions and suggests the need for planners to think creatively about adaptive reuse not of historic buildings, but of strip malls and residential communities. Retrofitting for greener buildings is a help. Turning McMansions into four-plexes to increase density and create more affordable housing is another. Transforming old Big Boxes into gyms, rec centers, or museums is another. Fortunately, many people on the comments thread contributed their own ideas instead of engaging in knee-jerk hostility.
One of the problems with old-school urban planning is the blank-slate mentality: tear it down and start everything from scratch. One of the problems with suburban and ex-urban development is same mentality: the fields where planned communities would sprout were also seen as blank slates. In America, the era of the blank slate--except as a thought experiment--is over. We now know that natural ecosystems are complicated and so too ecosystems of culture and history; we know the same is true of wildlands and rural landscapes. We’re learning it now with settled suburbia: the challenge is to light up the imagination with the possibilities of adapting them to current tastes, trends, economic and environmental necessities.
The suburbs are still evolving. Can they be recycled? Can some parts be reclaimed as park or preserve? Or will we repeat patterns of bulldozing instead of adapting, cultivating, and re-imagining with the resources at hand?
Knute Berger is Mossback, Crosscut’s chief Northwest native. He also writes the monthly Gray Matters column for Seattle magazine and is a weekly Friday guest on Weekday on KUOW-FM (94.9). His new book, Pugetopolis: A Mossback Takes On Growth Addicts, Weather Wimps, and the Myth of Seattle Nice, has just been published by Sasquatch Books. You can e-mail him at mossback@crosscut.com.
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Comments
My life time passion as been following Chicago ,it has been my kind of town in GOOD TIMES and in Bad. I am a firm believer in reuse, recycle,reduce and preserving The sound infraststructure and the Rail transportation systems that linked Middle Americans
Town to Town Colleges and many other Instituations, buildings,churches and historic Housing. Friendly walkable shopping area's so small business men have a chance. Suburbia needs A PLAN /I am a New urbanist and believe in urban pioneering and Homeblazer. Slow down or stop New develpoment.
Fix the Old stuff, retrofitting solid buildings that are at least 1,000.00 sq. ft. anything smaller probably should be deconstructed reusing the bricks, cabitnets,fixtures WASTE NOT WANT NOT. Solid wood cabiets from the 50's can be stripped and redone. I found a company and there are several that make Granite transformations or reuse Glass or even concreate counter tops.Some of those house's 1960- on are not very well built,the schools are not producing any Genuis and community is non existant. We need to be more European in our thinking and rebuild the cities reuse the schools, churches and help people find work-our factories are gone, many Corporate jobs are also. The Newer 1960's suburbs to me around Chicago were just like that song "ther's a green one and a yellow one and pink one and a Purple one and they are all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same. Our pre Highway society needs to Use what we have. Slow down on the consumption GIVE BACK to the community. Suburbia needs a plan. Urban and Suburban leaders need to work together and go backwards. This country needs to be working together . Some of those homes are past useful construction and Some whole suburbs do need to be Torn Down.
Affordable housing worked well in Hometown , Ill . Coopertive Apts. and small duplex living. I believe the Copertive Apt.s worked best but this is a good model to follow.
Whatever happens, it needs to be "economic" in terms of government involvement -- meaning not one dime of additional subsidy in the form of ecotopian frippery.
You may love the cities and high crime rates and liberalism, but a lot of people don't and that's why we choose to live in towns with populations of 500 to 5,000 or smaller.
We should be cognizant of all the subsidies that have supported the patterns of sprawling development that have gobbled up the land base, including: the Interstate highway system, many of the expeditures on local, state, and federal highways, school transportation obligations, fire protection/fire suppression in developing forested areas (WUIs), law enforcement response to dipersed development, phone bill fees to expand local calling areas, tax breaks for big gas guzzler vehicles, and even insurance rates that don't adequately reflect risk. The list goes on and on, and we haven't even started on those areas where termination or redirection of existing subsidies could provide long term public benefits. In this country, community design should be a logical, coordinated and cooperative effort among private developers and government, so that an efficient and sustainable community can evolve over time.
Thanks for letting us know about this story in the NY Times. It immediately reminded me of a book written by two colleagues of mine -> "Superbia! 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods" by Dan Chiras and Dave Wann (http://www.amazon.com/Superbia-Ways-Create-Sustainable-Neighborhoods/dp/0865714908) shows how you can turn those suburban/exurban/exclusively-residential into more livable, walkable, sociable places that are also (MUCH) more earth-friendly.
My $.02 / Thanks,
PvH