Retracting The Suburbs DNR Order…
One of the ideas that has captured my interest focuses on what do we do after all the peak-oil theorists and Kunstlerites predictions come true. What happens when the suburbs become the unsustainable, darwinian-rejects that people believe them to be and the folks flock back to a more urban existence?
We’ve got billions of dollars invested in this type of land development, in what J.H. Kunstler calls “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” So, does any rational human being expect political leaders to just walk away from this expenditure?
If not, what do we do with it? It has proven itself unviable for long-term inhabitation without huge injections of a finite resource. The low density of the ‘burbs are terrible for transit and human interaction fostering any sort of notion of community. So what now?
This is a question the online magazine Inhabit.com and Dwell magazine posed, in the form of Reurbia: A Suburban Design Competition;
With the current housing crisis, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and rising energy costs, the future of suburbia looks bleak. Suburban communities in central California, Arizona and Florida are desolate and decaying, with for sale and foreclosure signs dotting many lawns. According to the US Census, about 90% of all metropolitan growth occurred in suburban communities in the last ten years. Urbanites who loathe the freeways, big box stores and bland aesthetics stereotypical of suburbia may secretly root for the end of sprawl, but demographic trends indicate that exurban growth is still on the rise.
In a future where limited natural resources will force us to find better solutions for density and efficiency, what will become of the cul-de-sacs, cookie-cutter tract houses and generic strip malls that have long upheld the diffuse infrastructure of suburbia? How can we redirect these existing spaces to promote sustainability, walkability, and community? It’s a problem that demands a visionary design solution and we want you to create the vision!
Calling all future-forward architects, urban designers, renegade planners and imaginative engineers:
Show us how you would re-invent the suburbs! What would a McMansion become if it weren’t a single-family dwelling? How could a vacant big box store be retrofitted for agriculture? What sort of design solutions can you come up with to facilitate car-free mobility, ‘burb-grown food, and local, renewable energy generation? We want to see how you’d design future-proof spaces and systems using the suburban structures of the present, from small-scale retrofits to large-scale restoration—the wilder the better!
They’re at the finalists stage at the moment, so I’m afraid that you can no longer send off your interpretation. However, it is a nice time to see what folks are thinking of when they envision the worlds largest adaptive re-use project. Here’s a handful of some of my favourites:
There is a movement of reusing abandoned malls for community spaces. EX-BOX will allow the building to be self-sustaining by providing energy and space for public events. It provides renewable energy by maximizing the solar exposure with the use of various angles. By plugging in the programs that add density to the empty space and provides better environment, the space will bring people and allow community events.
Greyfields, dead malls and ghost boxes are increasing, and they are affecting the suburban community negatively. Compared to an urban environment, suburbia is less efficient and less interactive with its neighbors.
Rather than taking the traditional, additive approach to solving problems, the Entrepreneurbia model simply abolishes poorly conceived zoning laws to attract forward-thinking small business owners and start-up companies. The result is a community of entrepreneurs who transform inefficient single-family dwellings and purely decorative landscape spaces into intelligent home-based businesses.
Rigid zoning laws have created many of the problems typically associated with suburban sprawl. Possibly the largest of these problems is the segregation of residential and commercial spaces. The problem is fairly straight forward. When people do not live, work, shop and eat within walking distance of where they live, extensive transportation infrastructure is needed to allow people to regularly travel greater distances.
In Entrepreneurbia, such problems do not exist. Entrepreneurbia abolishes poorly conceived zoning laws to attract forward-thinking small business owners and start-up companies. The result is a community of entrepreneurs who transform inefficient single-family dwellings and purely decorative landscape spaces into intelligent home-based businesses. From chic shops & showrooms to designer offices, award-winning restaurants, and even boutique farms the new residents of Entrepreneurbia infuse once sterile suburbs with a distinctive sense of character & community.
Eventually, individual Entrepreneurbia communities become self-sustaining as entrepreneurs open profitable businesses that satisfy the needs of the community. This eliminates the need for cars to complete necessary daily activities. Meanwhile, public transit routes are updated, allowing residents to conveniently & sustainably travel between the Entrepreneurbia communities and into the urban cores.
The C3 initiative will “re-colonize” suburbs by adding localized and micro versions of retail, energy generation, water efficiency, community organization, and economic development. C3 colonies utilize existing/built environments but look inward and generate energy, water conservation, community and revenue as a sustainable micro-society.
The suburbs have failed to provide the same value to society they initially intended. In fact, we are now seeing that suburban sprawl is having adverse affects on the growth of our cities and towns.
They are forcing dependence on cars and high-carbon emission energy sources, decreasing the ability for people to be apart of localized community, and even contributing to the country’s challenge of obesity. This model has to change.
The C3 initiative looks to retrofit existing suburbs, and set the tone for new developments that will generate the key factors for a healthy, sustainable, contributing and fulfilling residential life.
These factors are: Community, Commerce, and Conservation.
As C3 colonies come to maturity, we will see them evolve to have different specialties in the goods and services they offer to neighboring communities. We will see them become a major contributor to the true implementation of a working energy micro-grid. Also, we will see the re-invigoration of sustainable communities in our country where people know one another; walk to where they shop, and contribute to their society and economy.
So? What do you think?
Is there any salvation for the suburbs? Are any of these ideas plausible?
We’re going to have to address this issue sooner rather than later. Windsor’s suburban dwellers, even though there are some of us who enjoy teasing and vilifying them, are - and will continue to be - Windsorites. All of us deserve to live in peaceful, livable communities with amenities close by and actual choices available to us, not just those of us who live in the “core”
Many thanks to Paul for sending along the link to this design competition!
Tags: competition, Suburbs, Urban Design
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Very cool post. I hope James reads it. It is one of the reasons why I am not as pessimistic as I believe he is. Although I agree with Kunstler that it is wrong to believe that New Technology equals New Energy, I do believe mankind’s creativity will lead to some incredibly interesting new ways to deal with our problems
Necessity is the mother of invention.
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
Much like how it has been over the past three or so thousand years. That is why I find statements such as “what happens when the suburbs become the unsustainable, darwinian-rejects ” or “Is there any salvation for the suburbs” to be completely ludicrous.
What happens is that people respond and people change. If you look at a City like Toronto you see buildings that were single-unit dwellings 70-years ago that are now multi-unit or multi-use dwellings. How many people drive down Wyandotte, Ottawa or Erie know that many of the commercial buildings are nothing more than zero-lot line additions to a house?
The “suburbs” will evolve just like the rest of the urban environment has been evolving.
O.K. I’ll bite. First here are some questions to think about.
1. What parts of the city do you think qualify as “suburban”?
2. What parts of the city can, could or do contain employment zones?
3. Which areas of the city presently have a concentration of people and adjacent existing or potential employment zones?
4. What parts of the city are we willing to write off?
Personally I like to count on what I have in hand rather than hope someone or something will come along to save me. Keep that in mind as you think about the above questions. As bad as things have been lately I still strongly believe that worse is yet to come. I’m not a doomer, really I would love to wake up tomorrow and find that everything has worked out and we’ve returned to happy motoring and growth as the standard metric for everything. Unfortunately some very bad decisions have been made and we will have to pay a considerable price for them. For example government budgets running deficits at all levels in nearly every major country. In Canada the GST was introduced last time we ran a deficit. This time we’ve taken deficit to a whole new level and we’re not done yet. The cost of just servicing that debt, let alone paying it down will be crushing, something will have to give.
Don’t bet on jobs lost now coming back. People that lost money last year will have to work longer before they retire. Companies have taken action to make themselves more efficient, shedding jobs, closing facilities that were not profitable enough.
Vincent is right people and cities do change to reflect their reality. The thing is if Windsor becomes a city with fewer jobs (happening now) and more retirees on fixed incomes (projected 1/3 of population in the next bit) what will our new reality be?
Ahh but James, I have the experience of simplifying my life and finding that I was a happier man for it. I don’t think and don’t even want us to continue on in the same way. I believe that by losing our ability to drive as much or our 500 channels of television, we will walk and bike more solving the obesity epidemic at the same time. Not only that, by building exercise as part of the method of going to and from places we will replace the need to go to the gym to walk on a treadmill gaining an hour a week of extra free time to spend with our families.
Many of the results of our new found problems will turn out to be solutions to other problems.
I am hopeful that people will come up for new uses for Ghost Boxes and Dead Malls that will be far more beneficial than simply mining these places for construction materials.
I think we both agree about many of the changes our future brings, I just see them as opportunities.
Retirees will be forced to become part of an active aging community as the alternative will be scary.
I once visited the Hopi Indian Reserve in Arizona and was told the story that these people had the choice of any area to locate their reserve. That they knowingly chose an extremely harsh environment. when asked why they chose that area, when land was available that was far more easy to cultivate they answered:
This land is so difficult to live on that no man could possibly survive on it trying to go it alone. This difficulties of cultivating this land will FORCE us to become a close nit community and FORCE us to work togehter simply because our survival will depend on it
These changes will force us to work together and become community minded once again since the alternative will be pain and death.
Ahh but Mark, there is a difference between choosing to change your lifestyle and being told “your lifestyle will change”.
In my last post I discussed “The Problem”. Some people know there is a problem, some people can fathom the actual breadth and width of the problem but, unfortunately most people are oblivious to “The Problem”.
Look how everyone cried when gas hit $1.40/l. Everyone looked to blame the government or the oil companies or the countries that own the oil. Few decided it was time to change.
Look how everyone cried in the U.S. when their ARM mortgage reset and their payments became unmanageable. Now look at RE in Toronto or Vancouver today. Mortgage rates at the lowest they can go and first-time buyers taking out the largest mortgages they can at zero down and 40 year amortization. Guess what’s going to happen in 5 years when interest rates have gone higher (because that’s the only way they can go) and these young families have zero equity. How are they going to feel about changing their lifestyle?
Many people in this region are waiting for the new border crossing project to begin. They believe that this project will single-handedly rescue us. They believe the 15,000 jobs fairy tale (Dwight Duncan in the Star yesterday threw out 23,000 jobs). There are literally hundreds of people signing up for construction training because they believe they will get (are entitled to) one of the 15,000 “jobs”. Here’s a fun fact - Boston’s Big Dig at its PEAK employed 5000 workers. The Big Dig was a much more complicated and difficult undertaking than our border road and bridge and only had a maximum of 5000 workers, for a seven year project. How are Windsorites going to feel about changing their lifestyles because there wasn’t actually jobs for everyone?
Aboriginal people have a reputation for wisdom and understanding, for reverence of nature and a culture of community. I doubt the nobility of the average person that finds out he “has to change his lifestyle” when some jackass in an office took home $700 million last year.
http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ap6saKW9XWVI
I think that the 15,000 jobs will appear as one of the last attempts to hold onto our old way of doing things. The DRIC Road is basically a conglomerate of jobs put together being done at the same time whereas the Big Dig was done more in progression.
However its after that where you and I are more like minded on the change that is coming.
I don’t think there’s that big of a difference in choosing to change and having it forced upon you. I believe that was the wisdom of the Hopi Leaders who made a choice to that had them tell their people their lifestyle would change.
The only difference is in our world our leaders are cowards compared to the Hopi. Our leaders are too afraid to tell us that we will be forced to change and are waiting to have the CHinese tell us through their upcoming refusal to lend us more money.
Windsor Star, August 9, 2009
“Border project payoff: 15,185 jobs” by Ellen Van Wageningen
“The border project is expected to create 22,778 jobs in Ontario, it says. Of the 15,185 jobs in Windsor and Essex County, 9,294 will be directly related to construction and 5,891 will be indirectly related. Those numbers are based on each job lasting one year. So if the project takes five years, it would create the equivalent of 1,859 full-time direct jobs each year.”
They estimate that there will be enough work for 1,859 people to work full-time for 5 years (the length of the project). There is a big difference between 1,859 people working full-time for five years and “15,000 jobs”.
It’s that kind of bullshit that will have people very pissed off. It is that level of anger that will make the difference between choosing a lifestyle change and having a life altering change forced upon us.
It is the courage to face the truth that everyone believed Barack Obama would bring. So far, he has not delivered and our neighbours to the south are starting to get antsy.
I’m sure that the numbers are all B.S. but I don’t think we’re very close to having change thrust upon us. I think there may still be one last boom and bust left in the way we do things now.
As inflated as those numbers you mention are you still have to add the widening of Manning Road, the Malden Road Lasalle work, the widening of the expressway, Howard Underpass. We will see the most construction at one time in history
I know its anecdotal but everyone I talk to that has been on the 401 notices a dramatic increase of the amount of trucks. Last month I barely drove by a dozen trucks and now we’re back to being boxed in by them.
From what I read the collapse in the automotive production from approx 16 million cars and trucks per year to approx. 9 million is also overblown. As soon as the inventory of used cars are depleted, they are expecting the new annual production to rise back to 12 million per year.
Sure it will never go back to the old highs but that increase still represents a 30+ increase in car production from current levels
We still have one or two dead cat bounces left in us.
Update: Reburbia’s 20 Finalists announced:
Link to list of finalists: http://www.re-burbia.com/finalists/