Reburbing the Suburbs

There's been a growing conversation about the future of suburbia in America, driven in no small part by the expectation that a car-driven society will soon become unsustainable and the more immediate impact of an economic backlash against the very consumer model that built our more modern suburbs.

BLDGBLOG just posted a tidbit about a new ideas competition called Reburbia:

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!

Reburbia is sponsored by some of the more innovative voices in modern design out there, including inhabitat and Dwell.

Naturally, this made me think of Richmond with its incredible sprawl of recent years -- massive housing blocks carved out of once-distant counties like Powhatan and Amelia, huge shopping complexes rising up out of western Chesterfield and Henrico. But it also made me think of Koln, Germany, where I spent a summer during high school riding whatever passed for a metro/light rail system from Germany's version of suburbia to the center city. Koln had long strings of villages cascading outward from its core, connected by trains.

I could re-imagine a Richmond with a rail/hub transportation system with one main east/west line essentially running along Broad Street/Main Street from Church Hill to the Goochland County line, and three north/south lines following 288 (western Henrico and Chesterfield), Powhite and I-95. But eyeballing an aeriel view of the region, there would still be vast tracts of surburban property sitting outside of those corridors and their interconnected hubs.

And as the Baby Boomers make their way into assisted living facilities or the downstairs bedrooms of their middle-aged Gen X children over the next 15 years, I wonder what sort of smart planning is going to be needed to help shape new population patterns that are smarter, more efficient, and account for a significant drop in housing demand for the foreseeable future.

It'll be interesting to see what emerges from the Reburbia project.

Comments

[Scott Burger]

I have said it before on the local Sierra Club blog, Richmond needs figure out how to repurpose all the giant box stores. I am surprised more local bloggers have not discussed Goldman's idea for Shockoe Bottom: Leverage high speed rail and other amenities to create a state of the art medical center.

[Marc]

I seem to recall reading a news article a few months back about modern-day communes who have taken over homes at the end of cul-de-sacs in half-finished developments. Just like the hippies of the '60's, they are retreating from society, cooperating, and growing their own food - but instead of living on farms in the middle of nowhere, they're living in ready-made structures. McMansions are inherently wasteful when they're occupied by just one family, but cram 10-20 hippies in there and now it's a lot more energy-efficient. You could use some of the other tracts of land for veggie gardens or even livestock. (Maybe Real World could set their next season in an anonymous suburb instead of a hip city!) Instead of a reurbanization, it'd be a deurbanization. Make land use patterns a little more like Europe, where you have cities and you have countryside, but you don't have as much sprawl bleeding between the two. Thinking in the real long-term (i.e. decades out), if urban living continues to become more desirable and suburban living continues to fall from favor, I wonder if the suburbs will end up with the same problem that cities had back in the '60's-'80's: falling population, poorer residents, increased crime, too many school/fire station buildings, etc. One bit of good news, in the short term, is that retailer hhgregg is taking over some of the old Circuit City locations. So while big boxes may eventually go the way of the dinosaur at least they won't be abandoned relics fouling up Chesterfield/Henrico in the short term.