If some of the readers of my last post have their way, suburbia could eventually evolve into something straight out of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel “The Road,” where a desolate, polluted land is dotted with abandoned homes and buildings that have been stripped of all valuable parts, and lawlessness (and cannibalism) rules the streets.

Others, who advocated letting the land take over, might enjoy reading Alan Weisman’s vivid description of how that process would work in “The World Without Us”: “[P]ipes burst but if you lived where it freezes and rain is blowing in where windows have cracked from bird collisions and the stress of sagging walls … eventually the walls lean to one side, and finally the roof falls in.” (There’s a terrific video on www.worldwithoutus.com that shows “Your House Without You”: mold and bugs jump in immediately, wildlife moves in by year 50, plant life takes over by about year 100.)



Though a healthy contingent of commentators on “What Will Save the Suburbs?” advocated either burning suburbia down or simply letting nature take its course, the opinions offered ran the gamut from using them to relocate displaced Palestinians to turning them into self-sustaining communities.

Other ideas? Here are a few: Mind your own business, city dwellers! Start a cult. Move the homeless in. Turn all those homes into schools. Sack the planners! (Alternatively, please don’t vilify planners.) Convert these homes to low-income housing (or don’t even think about such a crazy idea). Rezone. Give contractors the incentive to build better and greener. Transform those homes into satellite prisons. Let people work from home one day a week. Watch now as the “white flight” begins! Stop driving and walk more!

And one of my favorites: Put all the McMansions into abandoned big box stores for greater energy efficiency, creating an instant community in the process.

One unanticipated discovery that became clear from the commentary was just how deep an animosity exists between urban dwellers and suburbanites. Perhaps “saving” was the wrong verb to use in the title. True, there are many fantastic suburbs (I grew up in one) but that doesn’t negate the reality of places like Rio Vista, Calif., where an upscale 855-home development called Hearth and Home at Liberty (a name so cruelly ironic it surpasses irony altogether) was abandoned last year, leaving graded streets, a few model homes and little else. Exploring what to do with the extreme — semi-abandoned, half-built subdivisions from Merced, Calif., to Lake County, Fla. — was done with the broader intention of rethinking how all communities might better be designed, built and experienced.

This is not unexplored territory; good ideas abound, but most remain just that — great theory, little practice. Some suburbs get it right; some cities do, too. But too many, especially in recent years, just haven’t.

Housing starts were off 15.5 percent in December. Whether they return to “normal” later this year, or next year, or the year after that, it is crucial that the industry learns from its recent mistakes, which have ranged from overbuilding to product homogeneity. New (and existing) homes and communities, and the people who reside in them, whether they’re on Lexington Avenue or Quail Ridge Lane, can benefit from any number of creative ideas, designs and efforts already underway not just from the “housing industry” but from your friends and neighbors, too.

Richard Register has been thinking about the imperative of ecological urban (and suburban) redesign for decades. The author of “Ecocities” and founder of Ecocity Builders, Register advocates returning healthy biodiversity and agriculture to cities, and designing them in such a way so as to bring convenience and pleasure to walking, bicycling and transit. He explains that we should now be thinking about strategies for removing development: “It’s time for an intelligently phased withdrawal from it. This can happen by default or by design. By default would be a catastrophe.”

In their recent book “Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs,” architects and academics Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson ) would agree. They see suburbia itself as flawed (which die-hard suburbanites may not appreciate) and, like Register, they recommend urban strategies to solve suburban problems.

The book’s numerous case studies show that this strategy has its merits. Increasing density, transit and walkability often (though not always) can help to revitalize struggling communities like MetroWest in Vienna, Va., which shifted from 69 houses to 2,250 transit-oriented residences (suburban renewal seems impossible by the way without a serious acknowledgment of the need for density), and Mashpee Commons in Mashpee, Mass., once a shopping mall but now a New Urbanist-style development with varied housing and open-air retail.

While many in the development/building/construction industries continue to argue the financial impossibility of sustainable developments (and insist that consumers aren’t really interested in sustainable homes), KRDB architects in Austin, TX, went ahead and proved them wrong with SOL (solution-oriented living) Austin. Included in the 38-home, net zero energy development are 16 affordable modular housing units (for cultural and economic diversity), tree plantings and community parks, joint-access drives (to reduce impervious cover), varied setbacks (so, unlike most developments, one isn’t confronted with a sea of identical houses but rather a more heterogeneous array). Recognizing a trend away from larger homes for both economic and environmental reasons, the architects have designed the largest property at 1,816 square feet, the smallest at 1,090.

Free Green is a service that offers what most developers won’t: green home plans to home-buyers. Free green home plans from “Comfortable Cape” to “Suburban Loft.” And they’ll help find builders to build them. Consumer interest and demand in greener homes seems to be driving change in the industry — a sort of bottom up approach to innovation. So if you can’t find a subdivision offering the house you want, Free Green is helping facilitate a proactive alternative.

In keeping with this apparent new era of personal responsibility, the only-slightly-tongue-in-cheek collective Wannastartacommune.com started by Stephanie Smith, Buckminster Fuller-acolyte and founder of the green design lab, Ecoshack, gives a new attitude to an old idea, urging residents of cul de sacs or condos to come together with their neighbors to share resources. Suggestions for collaboration include a shared compost pile, weekly potlucks, neighborhood recycling programs, barter services and shared childcare. Their pilot project, Cul-de-Sac communes, is already underway.

This tendency — let’s call it extreme neighborliness — is so old-fashioned as to seem innovative. Startlingly basic and wholly actionable, it’s a bright spot in a dark time.