Just Like A Suburb -- Only Bigger

Has suburbia become a way of life? Fast Company takes a harsh look at Denver's megasuburb, Highlands Ranch.

1 minute read

June 18, 2001, 7:00 AM PDT

By Chris Steins @planetizen


"Back in the 1960s, the suburbs were a place to escape from -- a plastic trap. Now the generation that fled "little boxes made of ticky-tacky" has its own suburban reality -- and its own question: Is this the future that we want to live in?... Many of the people who have moved to Highlands Ranch are among the first generation of children ever raised in suburban subdivisions. In the 1960s, when many of these residents were growing up, Pete Seeger was on their record players, singing about the plastic existence of the suburbs, warning about empty lives lived in "little boxes made of ticky-tacky ... and they all look just the same." Plenty of people who felt trapped inside that world promised themselves that they would never end up in such a soulless setting -- and that they would certainly never make their own kids live there."

Thanks to Congress for the New Urbanism

Friday, October 7, 2005 in Fast Company

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

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