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Summary: It has changed my life.
Review: There have been 2 books that I have read in the last year that I can say have changed my life, the first being "Frozen Republic" by Daniel Lazare and Suburban Nation that I just finished the other day. I have felt for a long time that something was radically wrong with the way America developed its "real estate" after World War II having listened to Pete Seeger sing about sprawl in his "Ticky Tacky" houses on the hill. It was a revelation when I read Specks, Plater-Zyberk... work and saw the incredible amount of research that went into the book. I firmly believe that the course of action we have embarked upon is unsustainable for the long term,I just hope the whole thing doesn't implode in the meantime. My next item of busines is to convince my CEO boss that he has to change his mind about mass transit and other development issues and come on board to help affect change across the board in the way we order our physical environment. I would recommend this book to anyone who is serious about becoming involved in citizen participation in the smart devolopment movement.
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Summary: Good Read for All Those Interested
Review: Dean at the University of Miami School of Architecture, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, her husband and partner, Andres Duany, and associate Jeff Speck at DPZ have hit the nail on the head with this work. It uses photographs, drawing, facts, and humor to describe the devastation caused by suburban sprawl, but also offer the remedy: the New Urbanism. Every aspect of sprawl's detriment, from societial homogonization to traffic are discussed. Rather than simply condemning sprawl, though, the New Urbanism is championed: a return to the traditional neighborhood that has been effective everywhere from Seaside, FL, to Kentlands, MD, to downtown Los Angeles. The New Urbanism has been implemented everywhere from the traditional suburb area to the inner cities. Even HUD has adopted the New Urbanism that is discussed here.
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Summary: Urban Planning can be Fascinating!?!?!!
Review: I bought this book for information -- I never expected it to be thoroughly fascinating as well. I couldn't put the darn thing down.I spent my childhood in suburbia but fled for the city as soon as I moved out on my own. "Why???" my parents asked in alarmed tones. I could never properly articulate it. Now I can just hand them a copy of "Suburban Nation." As the authors explain, I was looking for a community, not just a collection of houses on a cul-de-sac. The authors do a fantastic job of explaining how everything we've done for the past 50 years (restrictive zoning, massive highways, poor planning) has worked against creating cohesive communities. They also lay out strategies for reclaiming our cities and making them livable once more. You'll never look at another "master-planned" neighborhood the same way again.
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Summary: What Do Minivans and High School Shootings Have in Common?
Review: DPZ describes the banal, dependent existence fostered by the modern, auto-centric suburb, where civic culture resides at the shopping mall and wheels are the key to citizenship. In auto-centric suburbia, the minivan symbolizes the utter dependency of kids on their parents, for every aspect of mobility or activity. Without transportation, kids are banished to the television, and its sordid buffet of cultural decay. Lacking independence, vital public life, self esteem, or real culture, many teens develop anti-social, suicidal, or even homicidal reactions. We all know the despair that suburbia has wrought; DPZ explains how the designed and built environment can either foster a rich, cultured life or foment a dull, exasperating existence. Rarely has the connection between design and society been so clearly elucidated. This book should be excerpted and placed in every prospectus provided to potential homebuyers in auto-centric suburbs. A Truth-In-Advertising label, as it were. Maybe then, consumers would demand better, cities would plan better, developers would build better. Used car lots would accumulate bloated inventories of minivans and SUVs, and our high schools could breath easy again.
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Summary: Belated response to Jack Daly
Review: Jack, Jack, Jack...Do Americans really PREFER suburbia as you claim? Or has there been little else in the way of choice over the last 50 years. When we talk of the inner city, what do people dislike about it? Easy access to shopping or eats by foot, public transportation, or parks? No, it's "undesirable people" (you know, the ones we deserted). I doubt it has anything to do at all with urban design. The trash? People, not cities, are dirty. The county roads and expressways out here in the burbs ain't too spiffy either, pal. The basic argument of the New Urbanists is not that they want everyone living in stacked sardine cans with no car, but that all forms of urban design should be available to everyone, including those who actually like "the magic of the city" (thanks Chris Alexander) with all its sights, sounds, smells and colors...people or otherwise. I thought the beauty of capitalism is that we get to choose what we want to buy. Right now, suburban subdivisions are the only things most people can buy. Duany et al. do a superb job of summarizing why traditional town planning works and why it should be made available to anyone. The book is a kind of slide show on paper, with very helpful "call-outs" and photos out on the borders. It is the definitive starting place for anyone wanting to know what is wrong with the way America builds these days. You know, Jack, soon I'll be building "quaint" cheek by jowl places. When your boredom in the burbs gets the best of you, come see us. In the meantime, enjoy your cable, six-pack and loaded Smith & Wesson.......
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Summary: If I were a billionaire...
Review: Buying a copy of this book for everyone in America is the fourth thing that I would probably do if I suddenly became a multi-billionaire. Suburban Nation clearly outlines what may be the single greatest (and possibly least known) threat to our Republic: suburban sprawl. More and more, we are living our lives in little compartments of the world. We separate our living spaces, where we attain our goods, where we make our living, and our civic institutions from each other in distinct pods surrounded on every side by dead seas of parking lot pavement and connected by costly and inefficient "collector roads". The authors of Suburban Nation clearly outline how this came about (although they shy away from controversy by consigning certain arguments to the footnotes). The suburban sprawl model is costly and inefficient. It is also socially destructive. If we do not change the way we build our communities, (and it is a stretch to characterize much of suburbia as being a community in anything but name only.) we as a nation will only suffer further social decay. The reason I like this book so much is that it does not just whine about our current situation. It presents logical solutions to problems and encourages all readers to get involved in bringing about change. In fact, the great solution proposed is an old model: the traditional neighborhood. Traditional neighborhoods are not built alongside a "collector road" but connected by street networks, where a five minute walk, rather than a thirty minute drive, can take bring you to the goods and services you need for day to day existence-or even *gasp*-your workplace. In the traditional neighborhood the streets are narrow and pedestrian-friendly. More than that, the neighborhood's interconnecting street system provides (in a much less costly way) for less traffic congestion than the "collector road" that suburbians are forced to use. Neighborhoods also help to diffuse a lot of the social ills brought on by the divisiveness of suburbia. Neighborhoods have mixed housing usages in any given area and are not homogeneously restrictive like subdivisions. Neighborhoods have a clear center of civic life focused on commerce, culture, and governance allowing for better life as a community-as more people become included and involved... I'm beginning to ramble...read the book for yourself. It is extremely worthwhile for anyone who cares about this country or the people who live in it. If that is you, buy this book; 'cause I'm not a billionaire yet.
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Summary: very well done
Review: An excellent critique of what's wrong with our suburbs. Two qualities make this book especially valuable: 1) while some books commentators attack suburbs and do no more, Duany et. al. offer a middle ground between Manhattan and the status quo, asserting that we can have all the advantages of suburbia without being slave to our cars. (The person who wrote that they want us all to live in "cramped city neighborhoods" must have been reading a different book than I read). 2) the most common argument for the status quo is that it is "what people want" and "what the market wants." Duany et. al. show that the status quo is the result not of too little government, but of too much government (though some of their remedies are a tiny bit statist for my taste). Again and again, they point out that sprawl was created by Big Brother's zoning rules, by Big Brother's highway spending, and by Big Brother's wide streets and mandatory free parking.
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Summary: Suburban Nation defines and attacks sprawl
Review: Suburban Nation is an excellent book. It is must-read material for all planners, architects, urban designers, traffic engineers, developers, neighborhood activists, environmentalists, historical preservationalists, and city officials. Anyone interested in reducing traffic congestion, clearing smog, stopping farmland loss, and presevring neighborhoods will find a wealth of knowledge within Suburban Nation. Not only is this book one of the best criques of the past 50 years of sprawl building, but it is also one of the best sources of the solutions. This book is in a class among the great urban liturature of Jane Jacobs and James Howard Kunstler.
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Summary: Not quite what I was expecting.
Review: So I see this book in the library and, being suburban residue myself, I decide to read it. "Maybe I'll find myself in here." What I was expecting was some sort of theoretical analysis of why Americans choose (or are led to believe they choose) to live in suburbs, maybe a historical-sociological-psychological perspective etc. etc. This book is not that. Instead, it presents the reader with the series of external events that have led to the suburban status quo--nationwide dissemination of ill-conceived zoning regulations, specious reasoning regarding the results of street-widening, insecure Unionized fire chiefs, etc. I was tantalized when they hinted at an automobile industry plot, but it was not developed. To be honest, this book is probably more accurate and more pragmatic than the book I thought I was checking out, but I was prepared for an ideological critique and so found the actual contents a little dry. I think that the book suffers a little from this lack of ideological inquiry--often one encounters lines like, "Some people just genuinely prefer suburbs," lines which seem to function as patches that mask a lack of deeper analytical probing. Take this passage from p. 63: "For evidence, consider Disney World, where a disproportionately large number of suburbanites choose to spend their holidays. Why do they go there--for the rides? According to one Disney architect, the average visitor spends only 3 percent of his time on rides or at shows. The remaining time is spent enjoying the precise commodity that people so sorely lack in their suburban hometowns: pleasant, pedestrian-friendly, public space and the sociability it engenders." This seems like naive reasoning--the authors' explanation for why people in fact go to DW in no way necessarily follows, and no further argumentation is provided. For a much more incisive perspective on Disney World, read Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation." The authors shy away from questioning anything more than the externals of laws and market forces, and it ends up as a surface analysis. Maybe that's all there is to it, but I am inclined to think not. One more thing: these people designed Seaside, Florida, which is where the Truman Show was filmed, and for a reason. I have been there, and it is frightening. This community is paralyzingly antiseptic. The level of perceived control is incredible: nothing is left to chance, nothing is unplanned; the aleatory has been banished. In short, an oppressive development. Everything seems contrived, made out of plastic. (Shivers). The authors seem like they have good hearts. What happened? The other neighborhoods they developed sound similar, too. I don't know what to make of it. Overall--lucid, almost too-lucid writing style; good symptomatic history of sprawl, but lacking in deeper analysis; their aim is worthwhile and valuable and so I can only criticize their means. Worth reading.
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Summary: Dedicated to the Automobile Slave; Slumming in Suburbia
Review: Somehow the suburban ideal and the resulting slavish dependence of the automobile has always lacked appeal. Now I know why! If we could get the automobile slaves out of the vehicle long enough to even just look at the pictures in this book, perhaps a dialogue could begin. Strong evidence that the suburban sprawl is not working, finely diagramed. The myriad of rules and regulations that are designed to protect property values actually contribute to the Dysfunctionality. The ultimate obsolescence of the suburban neighborhood, which will not grow old gracefully given the quality of the buildings, the traffic patterns and layout, the unsatisfactory and ugly shopping centers, and the lack of vision on the part of the leaders. Just slums with no infrastructure. What isn't mentioned (except in cursory terms) is the abysmal failure of the inner school city school districts. This one issue alone contributes hugely to the suburban allure, and is so hugely "broken" in many cities that it will have to be addressed for any real movement to begin. For this reader, it was probably a case of preaching to the choir. This could very well be the game plan for the future, if any developers or city planners or suburbanites are paying attention. Actually, probably ought to put it on audio, so they can listen to it in their cars.
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