



The 20th century labyrinth that disconnected entire generations from reality and from the outside. It is a failed urbanistic design that has fueled for decades the real estate markets, but that came with a very high cost, both socially and economically.

Everybody always wanted a nice house with a nice green backyard where to raise a family. This has been for many years the dream of the middle class, the ‘American Dream’ in a lot somewhere outside the city core, outside downtown and all the chaos it comes with. However, this ‘dream’ is now fading in the background as house prices sores like kites off the coast of Cornwall, and the job market does not provide as much as it did for the Baby Boomers: this is North America.

Whether it is square, rectangle, or round; suburbia has been out of control devouring millions and millions of acres around the large North American cities. It does not matter the shape you make it; it does not matter if each ten years you develop a new traffic plan to improve ride timing, because the problem is suburbia in itself and how it has radically changed society through their living habits.

Living in suburbia usually implies that the average citizen belongs to a family where a couple has a child or two. There are two cars, at least, and the first thing you see when you approach your home is the driveway and the garage door; the door is barely visible. Yes, because suburbia is part of the old concept that originated right after World War II, where people were promised the ‘dream’ of owning a part of their country, where a relative wealth could have been perceived.

The issues of running suburbia have gone through the roof, especially since we started asking question on the quantity of energy that it required to spawn, and it requires to exists, but also the amount of waste that it produces. We also have to include that each time a suburban sprawl is born, services must be connected to each home, thus producing a lot of CO2 and waste just to create roads and pipe lines. But we cannot forget that suburbia is made of units that barely look different from each other, and only if you have a car you can move throughout it. If you depend on public transportation you already realized that living in suburbia is out of the question.

But suburbia’s main issue is the ability to seal its citizen in closed environment, barely allowing them to enjoy the outdoors. You wake up in your house where the a/c runs and the windows are sealed; you enter the garage and you get inside your car where you turn on your a/c without rolling down the windows, then you arrive at your workplace and you probably park underground where from there you pick the elevator, press a button and reach your floor, where you are yet again in another environment that has sealed windows and the a/c is always on.

Suburbia does not compromise on the fact that it has no common areas where people can meet. The labyrinth is a infinite repetitions of driveways, garage door, and roofs. Eventually you will meet a convenience store and a fast-food restaurant on your way to the busy highway, but guess which suburbia doesn’t have those?

Sustainability is the key word to understand the future of suburbia, and whether it should be ditched all together in favor of a better solution. So far we have seen how and why the suburb-sprawl places people in a less denser status than midtown or downtown. Green backyards and empty roads are alternated by wooden fences and stop signs; it is a scenario that offers a worrisome facade on the future of society that lives in these habitats, and has little or virtually no contact with those living around.

The issue is that suburbia has isolated people and families form their peers in the name of privacy, ego, and status. It is at stake the mental hygiene and stability that has been tainted with the quick one-pill remedy, where every solution is at hand in only one session. We have to acknowledge that suburbia has ‘cooked’ people’s personality with its urban isolation from others. We have to acknowledge that generations were living bound to suburbia and its limitations that affected those living there. A 1974 studyconcluded that those living in the suburb found no benefit, compared in living in high-density areas. It is possible to say that the side-effects have generated a symptom of emotional or psychological challenges affecting thousands of individuals who live isolated, or with little contact in these low-density residential areas.

“Cul de sac” is the term used to define roads that lead nowhere.

-We have to acknowledge that suburbia has ‘cooked’ people’s personality with its urban isolation from others. We have to acknowledge that generations were living bound to suburbia and its limitations that affected those living there.-

The suburban family will spend every year more and more time in their car; their daily routines are dictated by the use of a vehicle even for the simplest of the errand. The whole picture teaches us that road congestion is a phenomena that has been persisting, and it is here to stay unless we stop adding more lanes to “resolve” the traffic problem. Driving is part of the suburban life-style that has always seen families riding station wagons or SUVs, and spending a considerate amount of money in gas and insurance, which is something that pleases the oil, auto, and insurance business. Only using four wheels you can complete your tasks because public transportation in low-density areas is not well developed, but why? Simply because of the physical spaces that separate people from their destinations:kids from their school, a mother from her work, a father from shopping at the grocery store. These are distances that are increasing and are costing the environment more and more. But north America is a car-culture nation and so is suburbia with its wast gaps that separates roads from the doors of a supermarket or a mall; in between a humongous parking lot that is one patch of tar.

The horizontal development has abused the territory, and created these tar gaps of dead space.

When families live in a house large enough where the members spend their time in separate rooms, then proceed to invest an obsessive amount of time in front of the television seeking entertainment from boredom; the result can be detrimental to the point where people’s social skills will weaken and depends from external agents like the media as a substitute for culture, and social websites for companionship. Each house will slowly forge a unique mindset that is the derelict of their old family values and traditions, but with the common traits that TV and the internet provides: the values of entertainment television and its sub sequential trends on the web.

Hundreds of channels and nothing to watch: the ‘culture’ that is feeding entire families for generations.

– …seeking entertainment from boredom; the result can be detrimental to the point where people’s social skills will weaken and depends from external agents like the media as a substitute for culture, and social websites for companionship.-

This cycle has been going on for quite a long time, ever since the establishment of suburbia as a middle class standard appeared, and most likely we can pin-point it during the second post-war period in the western world, at the start of the ‘economic boom’. The exponential factor of this phenomena is alarming; the north American house market is bubbled, and people will react with poor judgment once suburbia cannot collapse. Living in the suburb has for many years represented the success of entire families, who long have waited to invest big on a house, kids, and cars. Now we face the reality that this formula is not sustainable anymore; our mental and physical health are resenting the toxic elements that linger in the air, that are the byproduct of creating and maintaining the insatiable suburbia.

In the last posts we discussed the phenomena of bad design/architecture applied to cities, with an emphasis on the suburb. The wrong decisions that shaped the construction of cities in the last forty years, have also shaped people and their behavior. This problematic can be identified in a pyramid where each corner represents the main players: politicians, construction market, people. This component of three forces is subject to each other in the outcome of cities and their design; mostly because their interaction is based on the basis of a demand/supply issue.

The case for beauty can be summarized in a quest to design better cities, better roads, and better housing. Aesthetic is fundamental in building a better living space because it will impact the way society behaves in private and in public; so it is essential that a rethinking process happens to improve the expanding metropolis. Beauty does not only come in the form of fancy condos or houses, but it is a gathering of good practices that designers and architects must accomplish to deliver a good product. We can define such improvements by reworking certain city areas that are either abandoned or in a state of decay; however, planning future expansion with a grain of salt to avoid the mistakes of the past.

The Pruitt-Igoe social residential housing built in the 50s in St. Louis.

-“Beauty does not only come in the form of fancy condos or houses, but it is a gathering of good practices that designers and architects must accomplish to deliver a good product.”-

The Northern American landscape has two major feature in building design: brick building, and concrete building; where the former is the result of the post industrial era, while the latter is the representation of modernism. These two style have invaded cities of all size by becoming standard practices from architects; most likely it is a compromise of costs and style. However, both of them have ‘plagued’ cities turning entire areas a sort of commemoration of the monolithic style, making the distinction between industrial areas and housing areas less and less noticeable.

A classic example of urban failure was the Pruitt-Igoe housing built after WW2, where thousands of people took residency and at the same time created a bad experience, due to segregation and the eventual rise of crime in that area. The style of the flats is the outcome of poor modernism architecture that purely served for its functionality, discarding the aesthetic and the social aspects. After its slow decaying that spawned more social despair, the buildings were demolished in 1972 opting for a more horizontal housing project. This example did not inspire architects and politicians to stop building these brink and cement monstrosities, in fact, this housing model continued to spawn as a quick solution to fix the problematic of people and families that cannot afford homes.

Entire areas were built without considering the human factor, without understanding nor asking themselves:”Would I actually like to live here?”. For a long period developers did not build condos or houses, they kept building containers with the cookie cutter and turned entire areas into labyrinths, where you have to access with a car because distances between points of interests are too long. On top of this problem the poor choice of architecture style contributed in the creation of grey areas, where concrete structures ate green zones.

Boston City Hall plaza, a huge space where nobody stops by.

-“For a long period developers did not build condos or houses, they kept building containers with the cookie cutter and turned entire areas into labyrinths…”-

A clear example of bad design is the plaza surface where Boston City Hall is located; a waste of space that offers no chance for people to hang out, or to experience public space infrastructure: it does not allow people to use public space. Notice the small patch of trees on the left. This is why it is time to rethink how we design urban spaces, especially those spaces where we spend the majority of our time. Cities must now become ‘pedestrian friendly’ and with less cars, so points of interests can be reached by foot or by public transportation. Bike lanes will create paths for safe space to ride for work or for pleasure.

The case for beauty should be seen as the intent and action to beautify and to transform cities into more functional spaced. There is no need to go back to neoclassical building style that allowed many European cities to thrive, but to use the latest technologies and designs to build better cities. Urban areas that come out from their grey scale and slum condition will positively impact the citizens and allow people to share public space without fear of degradation and crime.

Now in the 21st century we can see how a change is much needed to improve the quality of people in cities. There is the ability to use greener energy solutions to build better homes and to upgrade old ones. New materials that have been designed can now help the reduction of energy consumption; however, these elements are part of the big picture that has other paths. Some effective solutions can be characterized as such:

direct intervention from city halls on the slowing of the suburban sprawl;

stop the ‘cookie-cutter’ design of home development;

examination and evaluation of abandoned areas that can be reused;

rethinking of the current grid system;

rethinking the design for which city plans are executed;

redesign roads and living areas around people and not cars;

create common areas where citizens can interact and have experiences;

improve public transportation from downtown all the way to suburbia;

prioritize green areas over the grey ones.

Tax the CO2 emitters if they exceed a certain quota.

These are essential directions that can be directly taken to reduce the damage of bad urban planning.

In the end the real solution beyond good design and good architecture, is to convince mayors, councilors, and representative, that the best investments are those who will give results in the long run, but more important is the issue that sees politicians trading campaign votes with quick solutions that can be armful for the city and its people.