Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream - Hardcover

Duany, Andres; Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth; Speck, Jeff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0865475571 ISBN 13: 9780865475571

Publisher: North Point Press, 2000

Synopsis

A manifesto by America's most controversial and celebrated town planners, proposing an alternative model for community design.

There is a growing movement in North America to put an end to suburban sprawl and to replace the automobile-based settlement patterns of the past fifty years with a return to more traditional planning principles. This movement stems not only from the realization that sprawl is ecologically and economically unsustainable but also from a growing awareness of sprawl's many victims: children, utterly dependent on parental transportation if they wish to escape the cul-de-sac; the elderly, warehoused in institutions once they lose their driver's licenses; the middle class, stuck in traffic for two or more hours each day.

Founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are at the forefront of this movement, and in Suburban Nation they assess sprawl's costs to society, be they ecological, economic, aesthetic, or social. It is a lively, thorough, critical lament, and an entertaining lesson on the distinctions between postwar suburbia-characterized by housing clusters, strip shopping centers, office parks, and parking lots-and the traditional neighborhoods that were built as a matter of course until mid-century. It is an indictment of the entire development community, including governments, for the fact that America no longer builds towns. Most important, though, it is that rare book that also offers solutions.

About this title

About the Author

Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk lead a firm that has designed more than 200 new neighborhoods and community revitalization plans, most famously, Seaside, Florida.

Jeff Speck is director of town planning for the firm.

Reviews

Like "an architectural version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, our main streets and neighborhoods have been replaced by alien substitutes, similar but not the same," state Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck in this bold and damning critique. The authors, who lead a firm that has designed more than 200 new neighborhoods and community revitalization plans, challenge nearly half a century of widely accepted planning and building practices that have produced sprawling subdivisions, shopping centers and office parks connected by new highways. These practices, they contend, have not only destroyed the traditional concept of the neighborhood, but eroded such vital social values as equality, citizenship and personal safety. Further, they charge that current suburban developments are not only economically and environmentally "unsustainable," but "not functional" because they isolate and place undue burdens on at-home mothers, children, teens and the elderly. Adapting the precepts that famed urbanologist Jane Jacobs used to critique unhealthy city planning, Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck call for a revolution in suburban design that emphasizes neighborhoods in which homes, schools, commercial and municipal buildings would be integrated in pedestrian-accessible, safe and friendly settings. While occasionally presenting unsupported claims--such as that gated communities (of which there are now more than 20,000 in the U.S.) deprive children of gaining "a sense of empathy" in a diverse society--their visionary book holds out hope that we can create "places that are as valuable as the nature they displaced." (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Progressive town planners Duany and coauthors share the fruits of their extensive experiences designing new neighborhoods and community revitalization projects in this cogent and illuminating investigation into the nature of sprawl and the failure of suburbs. They mince no words in condemning the soulless, "repetitive and forgettable" landscape of subdivisions, shopping malls, office parks, and congested roadways that ring our cities, and articulate with great precision exactly how and why such places are detrimental to social health. They contrast traditional neighborhoods--"mixed-used, pedestrian-friendly communities" --where people of diverse backgrounds and economic levels interact, with suburbia, where housing, work, shopping, and public facilities are segregated from one another, so people are forced to drive everywhere. Using numerous examples, the authors explain how and why sprawl has occurred, discuss why the quality of balkanized suburban life is so deplorably low, and offer suggestions for a more viable approach to planning in the immediate future. Place matters, and we can do so much better. Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: North Point Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0865475571
• ISBN 13: 9780865475571
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256