Don't Fight Against Suburbs, Make Them Better
With the suburban lifestyle clearing entrenched in the American mainstream, planners should stop criticizing suburban living and help address the environmental and societal problems that face the nation's low-density communities.
"Americans have continued to vote with their feet for suburban or exurban landscapes. These Americans now include not only whites, but also a growing proportion of recent immigrants, Asians, Latinos, and African Americans. And it’s not just people who are moving - suburbia is also snagging the lion’s share of new economic growth and jobs."
"Most projections show that the continued increase in the U.S. population and the projected 50 percent increase in space devoted to the built environment by 2030 will largely take place in the sprawling cities of the South and West, areas dominated by low-density, automobile-dependent development of residential, commercial, and industrial space.
For developers, builders, planners, and public officials, the key challenge will be to accommodate this growth in a way that both preserves the advantages of relatively low-density suburban living and addresses legitimate concerns about the environment and about family, cultural, and spiritual life."
- Login or register to post comments
- Email this page
Related News Stories
Mississippi Gulf Coast Three Years On - Aug 31, 2008
Bad Mortgages and Gas Prices = Good For Cities? - Jul 01, 2008
The Incredible Shrinking Home - Jun 19, 2008
Creating a Place for Public Debate of City Planning and Design - Jun 17, 2008
The Reversal Of The American Dream - Jun 16, 2008
California Planning Conference
FYI - Joel Kotkin is the keynote speaker and is giving a session on surbubia at the California American Planning Association annual conference in Orange County in October. Go to www.calapa.org for details. It will be interesting to see if his suburbia ideas will be challenged by the planners attending the conference.
Marc
Cal APA and Kotkin
For the record, here's what the CCAPA 2006 Conference announcement says about Joel Kotkin:
An internationally-recognized authority on global, economic, political and social trends, Joel Kotkin is the author the the newly published, critically acclaimed THE CITY: A GLOBAL HISTORY ... Kotkin is an Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and is a highly respected speaker and futurist ...
Joel Kotkin Warning
The heading doesn't mention it, but this is yet another Joel Kotkin article, and he repeats the same arguments he has made dozens of times before. If you prefer to avoid Joel Kotkin, don't click through.
Charles Siegel
The Same Old Song
I could tell it was Joel Kotkin's apologist spiel without even having to click on the link.
Listen to the Mighty Wurlitzer long enough and you too can play Name That Tune.
Thank you for the warning Charles
The real issue is not so much how to prevent suburban growth, but how to make it more humane and capable of accommodating an increasingly diverse population.
Imagine your mommy never admonishing you to be more careful from now on after she bandages your boo-boo. You could end up resenting your mom later when you realized what she failed to do, as we realize the similar weakness of Kotkin's argument: use a band-aid afterwards instead of preventing the injury in the first place.
Nonetheless, many people continue to choose suburbia. Until they stop choosing, they will continue to move there. Many Americans actually choose anywhere but the city for the schools, safety and space. Ask anyone in my small town.
Best,
D