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Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
A manifesto by America's most controversial and celebrated town planners, proposing an alternative model for community design.
There is a growing movement in North America to put an end to suburban sprawl and to replace the automobile-based settlement patterns of the past fifty years with a return to more traditional planning principles. This movement stems not only from the realization that sprawl is ecologically and economically unsustainable but also from a growing awareness of sprawl's many victims: children, utterly dependent on parental transportation if they wish to escape the cul-de-sac; the elderly, warehoused in institutions once they lose their driver's licenses; the middle class, stuck in traffic for two or more hours each day.
Founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are at the forefront of this movement, and in Suburban Nation they assess sprawl's costs to society, be they ecological, economic, aesthetic, or social. It is a lively, thorough, critical lament, and an entertaining lesson on the distinctions between postwar suburbia-characterized by housing clusters, strip shopping centers, office parks, and parking lots-and the traditional neighborhoods that were built as a matter of course until mid-century. It is an indictment of the entire development community, including governments, for the fact that America no longer builds towns. Most important, though, it is that rare book that also offers solutions.
There is a growing movement in North America to put an end to suburban sprawl and to replace the automobile-based settlement patterns of the past fifty years with a return to more traditional planning principles. This movement stems not only from the realization that sprawl is ecologically and economically unsustainable but also from a growing awareness of sprawl's many victims: children, utterly dependent on parental transportation if they wish to escape the cul-de-sac; the elderly, warehoused in institutions once they lose their driver's licenses; the middle class, stuck in traffic for two or more hours each day.
Founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are at the forefront of this movement, and in Suburban Nation they assess sprawl's costs to society, be they ecological, economic, aesthetic, or social. It is a lively, thorough, critical lament, and an entertaining lesson on the distinctions between postwar suburbia-characterized by housing clusters, strip shopping centers, office parks, and parking lots-and the traditional neighborhoods that were built as a matter of course until mid-century. It is an indictment of the entire development community, including governments, for the fact that America no longer builds towns. Most important, though, it is that rare book that also offers solutions.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 221 reviews
August 12, 2011
This was a great read for me. I learned a lot about why I prefer old-style neighboroods to the suburban sprawl. The authors put words on the unconscious thoughts that I usually have as a I walk around the city.
The book is easy to read and funny at times. Emphasizing how sprawl kills our sense of community and how good town planning can create that sense of community and give its citizens a place to care about.
Here is a random list of things that will improve the sense of place. The book covers each one in more details:
- A neighborhood should be roughly a 5-minute walk from edge to center.
- Hilltops should be celebrated with civic buildings.
- The town center should provide mixed-use buildings.
- Lots should be zoned not by use but by building type. No zoning for office parks VS residential VS shopping centers.
- Schools and other community centers should always be accessible on foot.
- Shops in the town center should not have any setbacks.
- Residential streets should be narrow to calm traffic and make it easy to walk across.
- Curb radiuses should be kept to a minimum and emergency vehicles should be of appropriate size.
- Alleys are useful to hide uglier utilities.
- Parking garages should always go in the back of buildings and residential houses.
The book is easy to read and funny at times. Emphasizing how sprawl kills our sense of community and how good town planning can create that sense of community and give its citizens a place to care about.
Here is a random list of things that will improve the sense of place. The book covers each one in more details:
- A neighborhood should be roughly a 5-minute walk from edge to center.
- Hilltops should be celebrated with civic buildings.
- The town center should provide mixed-use buildings.
- Lots should be zoned not by use but by building type. No zoning for office parks VS residential VS shopping centers.
- Schools and other community centers should always be accessible on foot.
- Shops in the town center should not have any setbacks.
- Residential streets should be narrow to calm traffic and make it easy to walk across.
- Curb radiuses should be kept to a minimum and emergency vehicles should be of appropriate size.
- Alleys are useful to hide uglier utilities.
- Parking garages should always go in the back of buildings and residential houses.
April 2, 2017
This is interesting as a snapshot of New Urbanism at the tail end of the twentieth century, but parts have not aged well. I enjoyed the first half, which diagnosed the problems of sprawl, more than the last half, which offers solutions that often come across as more dogmatic than evidence-supported. The authors are clearly very proud of their planned communities, which they refer to frequently as case studies, but seventeen years after publication it's less clear that those artificial neighborhoods achieved all they strove for. And while they speak frequently of the importance of urban infill and rehabilitation, the meteoric rise of inner city housing values seems to have outpaced their wildest dreams, leaving much of what they have to say about the truly urban environment feeling dated.
September 9, 2020
This book changed my life. I always new everything I learned in this book, but had never been able to put my finger on it. In short, the way we've designed our suburbs since the end of WWII has ruined our country. Experts have been trying to ring the alarm bells since the 1980's, yet we are still under the mind control that a life in the suburbs is the perfect American experience.
In summary, modern day suburbs:
-Make people and cities poorer
-Isolate us from our neighbors
-Cause mistrust of our neighbors (think Treyvon Martin)
-Never improve, are designed to deteriorate
-Are horrifically unsafe for pedestrians (more children are ran over in cul-de-sacs than anywhere else)
-Cause a huge increase in air pollution
-Waste enormous amounts of natural resources
-Are the least visually appealing type of community (garage doors as far as the eye can see)
-Increase racial and economic segregation
-Increase income and educational outcome disparities
-Group residents by age, causing inevitable deterioration over time.
-AND MORE :)
Basically, modern American suburbs are the worst type of community (if you can even call them that) that humans have ever come up with. And we should reconsider the lessons learned from this book before we turn the next batch of land into an Ivory Homes "community." The solutions are out there (many are outlined in the book), and we can make them happen.
In summary, modern day suburbs:
-Make people and cities poorer
-Isolate us from our neighbors
-Cause mistrust of our neighbors (think Treyvon Martin)
-Never improve, are designed to deteriorate
-Are horrifically unsafe for pedestrians (more children are ran over in cul-de-sacs than anywhere else)
-Cause a huge increase in air pollution
-Waste enormous amounts of natural resources
-Are the least visually appealing type of community (garage doors as far as the eye can see)
-Increase racial and economic segregation
-Increase income and educational outcome disparities
-Group residents by age, causing inevitable deterioration over time.
-AND MORE :)
Basically, modern American suburbs are the worst type of community (if you can even call them that) that humans have ever come up with. And we should reconsider the lessons learned from this book before we turn the next batch of land into an Ivory Homes "community." The solutions are out there (many are outlined in the book), and we can make them happen.
December 24, 2008
Clear with good examples (And a very visually pleasing format) BUT the book can be condensed to:
1. Learn lessons from the past.
2. Think beyond self-interest.
3. Believe it can be better.
4. Make it better.
Then again, the American Dream destroys Americans' dreams.
1. Learn lessons from the past.
2. Think beyond self-interest.
3. Believe it can be better.
4. Make it better.
Then again, the American Dream destroys Americans' dreams.
October 3, 2017
Required reading for your local town authorities, or for anyone who wants help understanding why traditional neighborhoods work better than post-war sprawl. Pondering sending one or more copies to the planning department in my home town.
March 28, 2012
Sometimes the ideas Duany and his colleagues discuss here seem ridiculously simple, and one might wonder why they keep repeating the same few simple ideas over and over again. Well, they keep repeating them because people keep resisting them, against all the evidence, against all common sense, against their own lived experience. We just keep doing the same things that have gotten us and our communities (or our suburban sad replacements for communities) into such a mess. Some say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome; by that definition, most of North America, in its suburb-building dimension, is insane. I love my neighbourhood--and it is a neighbourhood, in this book's sense of the term--but it is a tiny pocket of a real neighbourhood in a city made up almost entirely of sprawl of the worst sort. Our municipal government pays lip service to smart growth and transit-oriented neighbourhoods, but they just keep building subdivisions and business parks and ring roads and multi-lane collector roads and box store developments within seas of parking that repeat all the worst mistakes of suburbia; the forces of investment and development keep doing what they've been doing since mid-century, and the planning department spends almost all of its energy fiddling with zoning laws and maximizing traffic flow, then the transportation department tries to plunk transit on top of the unworkable mess created by developers and wonder why people don't get out of their cars. Meanwhile the older areas of the city subsidize the suburbs and property taxes on those older neighbourhoods rise as their prices soar because that's where people really want to live. We're caught in a mess and the mayor's big solution to urban revitalization is to build a giant hockey arena in the middle of downtown (with parking, of course). I just want to scream at them "Read this book!"
January 3, 2023
I had been wanting to read this book for 2 years and am so glad I finally got to finish it. I just wish I had read it when I was still in high school and bemoaning living in my St. Louis exurb far away from school and friends.
This book helped explain why my beloved hometown functions the way it does and why it has declined more than any other city in the US since the 1960s. The extensive government financial and policy support for building the suburbs in the 1950s was in part what caused my city's demise, as the suburbs segregated people by race and income and the city lost its sense of community. Many of the places that people once cared about were abandoned with the vast migration to the suburbs.
The authors note that it is extremely helpful for cities to annex prosperous suburbs, which is what St. Louis should have done after the '60s so that the city would not decline so quickly. Instead, the wealthy suburbs didn't pay taxes or invest any money into the city and the its funding drastically decayed. The authors give examples of cities that annexed their wealthy suburbs and did quite well because they weren't undermined by suburban competition.
I think what really clicked for me about this book is that the authors made it clear that design affects behavior. The suburbs were originally designed around the car and for the middle class white Americans. It's no wonder that so many young Americans today are scratching their heads wondering why they don't feel at home in a place that wasn't designed for them. If we can design cities around pedestrians and provide people with more options for housing beyond the suburbs, everyone could be a lot happier.
I like that the authors didn't say all suburbs are bad, and instead, they even highlighted the things that the subrubs do right. If suburbs are designed to accomodate public transit and with the regional city plan in mind, they can work to support the urban city.
In addition, the authors emphasize that growth is inevitable and rather than trying to stop suburban growth, we should focus on promoting healthy growth. It is largely the responsibility of the government to design better urban policy but also individual citizens to be involved in community planning to ensure their own security and well being.
The concept of the regional city is also extremely important and similar to another one of my favorite urban planning books called The Regional City by Peter Calthorpe. By working as a region, policymakers can ensure that adjacent cities are not competing with one another, but rather cooperating in the development of more sustainable land-use patterns.
I think one of the greatest tragedies of the American suburbs is how they have perpetuated the feeling of isolation. It is so easy to return to your McMansion after a long, tiring day of corporate work and be consumed my your own issues in your own small world. More than ever, American society craves a sense of community, and the authors offer the traditional neighborhood as an answer to this need. At its heart, being a good Urbanist means being a kind and thoughtful participant in society rather than retreating to the comfort of our own suburban home.
Here are some of my other favorite points that the authors made:
1. How the suburbs necesitate car dependency and how things like school, grocery stores, etc. that should be closeby are still far away... How culdesacs and curving roads do not make memorable places and futher necesitate car dependency rather than walkability
2. The key difference in suburbs vs cities of the public realm vs the private realm - in the suburbs your private realm is pristine but the minute you step out of your house you realize you're stuck in a neighborhood of houses that all look the same and there's no escape except by driving away... How people below age 16 and old people cannot function in the suburbs without someone who can drive them everywhere
3. Affordable housing shouldn't look different than regular housing and should not be concentrated (like Pruitt Igoe in St. Louis and other failed housing projects)... even the middle class is facing a housing crisis today as prices climb and the way of achieving the "American dream" is only seen by moving to a slightly wealthier suburb with a bigger house
4. The authors clearly tie mixed use housing and dense urban living to the environmental movement, and urge readers to emphasize this tie to and use the environmental movement as a model for change
5. The issue of gentrification is still very complex, but it's important to note that some development is still better than no development in struggling neighborhoods. From the developers' perspective, it is generally more expensive to develop downtown than greenfield (suburbs) due to challenges including inappropriate zoning, higher land costs, inadequate infrastructure, environmental contamination, historic preseration limitations, complex regulatory frameworks, unweilding permitting, neighborhood politics, higher taxes, etc. Until these disincentives are eliminated, the inner city will continue to be outperformed by the outer suburbs
Below are some of the common-sense planning methods to create traditional neighborhoods:
- A neighborhood should be roughly a 5-minute walk from edge to center.
- Hilltops should be celebrated with civic buildings.
- The town center should provide mixed-use buildings.
- Lots should be zoned not by use but by building type. No zoning for office parks VS residential VS shopping centers.
- Schools and other community centers should always be accessible on foot.
- Shops in the town center should not have any setbacks.
- Residential streets should be narrow to calm traffic and make it easy to walk across.
- Curb radiuses should be kept to a minimum and emergency vehicles should be of appropriate size.
- Alleys are useful to hide uglier utilities.
- Parking garages should always go in the back of buildings and residential houses.
- Cities should come up with master plans to guide and speed up permitting processes
This book helped explain why my beloved hometown functions the way it does and why it has declined more than any other city in the US since the 1960s. The extensive government financial and policy support for building the suburbs in the 1950s was in part what caused my city's demise, as the suburbs segregated people by race and income and the city lost its sense of community. Many of the places that people once cared about were abandoned with the vast migration to the suburbs.
The authors note that it is extremely helpful for cities to annex prosperous suburbs, which is what St. Louis should have done after the '60s so that the city would not decline so quickly. Instead, the wealthy suburbs didn't pay taxes or invest any money into the city and the its funding drastically decayed. The authors give examples of cities that annexed their wealthy suburbs and did quite well because they weren't undermined by suburban competition.
I think what really clicked for me about this book is that the authors made it clear that design affects behavior. The suburbs were originally designed around the car and for the middle class white Americans. It's no wonder that so many young Americans today are scratching their heads wondering why they don't feel at home in a place that wasn't designed for them. If we can design cities around pedestrians and provide people with more options for housing beyond the suburbs, everyone could be a lot happier.
I like that the authors didn't say all suburbs are bad, and instead, they even highlighted the things that the subrubs do right. If suburbs are designed to accomodate public transit and with the regional city plan in mind, they can work to support the urban city.
In addition, the authors emphasize that growth is inevitable and rather than trying to stop suburban growth, we should focus on promoting healthy growth. It is largely the responsibility of the government to design better urban policy but also individual citizens to be involved in community planning to ensure their own security and well being.
The concept of the regional city is also extremely important and similar to another one of my favorite urban planning books called The Regional City by Peter Calthorpe. By working as a region, policymakers can ensure that adjacent cities are not competing with one another, but rather cooperating in the development of more sustainable land-use patterns.
I think one of the greatest tragedies of the American suburbs is how they have perpetuated the feeling of isolation. It is so easy to return to your McMansion after a long, tiring day of corporate work and be consumed my your own issues in your own small world. More than ever, American society craves a sense of community, and the authors offer the traditional neighborhood as an answer to this need. At its heart, being a good Urbanist means being a kind and thoughtful participant in society rather than retreating to the comfort of our own suburban home.
Here are some of my other favorite points that the authors made:
1. How the suburbs necesitate car dependency and how things like school, grocery stores, etc. that should be closeby are still far away... How culdesacs and curving roads do not make memorable places and futher necesitate car dependency rather than walkability
2. The key difference in suburbs vs cities of the public realm vs the private realm - in the suburbs your private realm is pristine but the minute you step out of your house you realize you're stuck in a neighborhood of houses that all look the same and there's no escape except by driving away... How people below age 16 and old people cannot function in the suburbs without someone who can drive them everywhere
3. Affordable housing shouldn't look different than regular housing and should not be concentrated (like Pruitt Igoe in St. Louis and other failed housing projects)... even the middle class is facing a housing crisis today as prices climb and the way of achieving the "American dream" is only seen by moving to a slightly wealthier suburb with a bigger house
4. The authors clearly tie mixed use housing and dense urban living to the environmental movement, and urge readers to emphasize this tie to and use the environmental movement as a model for change
5. The issue of gentrification is still very complex, but it's important to note that some development is still better than no development in struggling neighborhoods. From the developers' perspective, it is generally more expensive to develop downtown than greenfield (suburbs) due to challenges including inappropriate zoning, higher land costs, inadequate infrastructure, environmental contamination, historic preseration limitations, complex regulatory frameworks, unweilding permitting, neighborhood politics, higher taxes, etc. Until these disincentives are eliminated, the inner city will continue to be outperformed by the outer suburbs
Below are some of the common-sense planning methods to create traditional neighborhoods:
- A neighborhood should be roughly a 5-minute walk from edge to center.
- Hilltops should be celebrated with civic buildings.
- The town center should provide mixed-use buildings.
- Lots should be zoned not by use but by building type. No zoning for office parks VS residential VS shopping centers.
- Schools and other community centers should always be accessible on foot.
- Shops in the town center should not have any setbacks.
- Residential streets should be narrow to calm traffic and make it easy to walk across.
- Curb radiuses should be kept to a minimum and emergency vehicles should be of appropriate size.
- Alleys are useful to hide uglier utilities.
- Parking garages should always go in the back of buildings and residential houses.
- Cities should come up with master plans to guide and speed up permitting processes
October 18, 2021
When I first started this book I thought my review was going to be something like - provides a clear explanation of many issues with suburban development but conveniently ignores racism. Then I got to the part where they talk about solutions and actually prescribe things like broken windows policing, forced labor, charter schools... This book is what happens when professional/managerial class white people think the world is created by visionaries and that they are amongst them. I cannot in good conscience recommend reading this book, buy I will say that I now have a much clearer understanding of how gentrification played out in DC and whose playbook they are using.
March 12, 2011
This is an absolute must-read for every American. There is a connection between the built environment and quality of living, public health, economic prosperity and entrepreneurialship. The changes in our building patterns since WW2 have been destructive, unhealthy, and nonfunctional. We can't afford low-density growth in the long run because it costs too much in public infrastructure and makes it nearly impossible for the local economy to survive (i.e.:small-business owners and shops). The book talked about the ills of 'sprawl' which are social and economic, and he discusses the solution, which involves a change in zoning, infill projects (fill in empty spaces), carrots for businesses to build in the city, not in the burbs or on the outskirts, public transportation projects, moratoriams on highway and road bulding, and change in the business practices of large-scale developers. The movement the book started is calle Neo-traditional neighborhood planning and/or NEW URBANISM.
It makes sense: why do you see many more small-business owners in high density, low sprawl cities, coupled with lower energy consumption per capita, higher innovation, without a death in small city neighborhoods? rhetorical question
It makes sense: why do you see many more small-business owners in high density, low sprawl cities, coupled with lower energy consumption per capita, higher innovation, without a death in small city neighborhoods? rhetorical question
November 21, 2011
Give me real, walkable neighborhoods, give me mixed zoning, give me my small house on my small parcel of land and I'm happy. My midsize city has a ways to go before it's truly the anti-sprawl utopia I dream of, but this book left me full of hope of what could be, and made me really understand just why I'd always been so. damn. miserable. in the 'burbs.
August 8, 2016
A quick and easy read that is also thorough and detailed down to the granular level. This book should be a Bible for anyone interested in equitable housing, smart growth, and growing communities through good governance.
February 1, 2020
A coherent and well-sourced argument for ridding America of parking lots. If you've ever stopped to think about why you can't buy a loaf of bread without putting a key in the ignition, this will be an enjoyable read for you.
April 10, 2018
I found the first part of this book incredibly fascinating, as it outlines exactly what about sprawl I have found so disconcerting all my life, and who bears the brunt of the negative consequences of sprawl (children, the elderly, anyone without access to a car). As someone who grew up all her life in a suburb (and quite disliked it), it put into words exactly what I find so unbearable about sprawl—the lack of independence, lack of community, and waste generated in daily suburban life. Thinking about suburbanization and sprawl was also what made me interested in urban planning in the first place, so this book only deepened my interest.
The second half of the book gives many concrete suggestions on steps to take to a. combat sprawl and b. mold growth into something that's healthy and builds community. The authors bring up many examples of what they view as ideal examples of community, but many of them seem to be isolated, predominantly-white enclaves of wealth (such as Celebration, Florida). They do talk a decent amount about urban infill, but they fail to address gentrification and how accessible these "ideal" communities actually are to a wide variety of people. They praise urban areas and its mixed-use development and diverse communities, but I don't see how the communities they praise here are diverse at all.
Overall, very informative and interesting, definitely worth looking into for an in-depth description of the problem of sprawl.
The second half of the book gives many concrete suggestions on steps to take to a. combat sprawl and b. mold growth into something that's healthy and builds community. The authors bring up many examples of what they view as ideal examples of community, but many of them seem to be isolated, predominantly-white enclaves of wealth (such as Celebration, Florida). They do talk a decent amount about urban infill, but they fail to address gentrification and how accessible these "ideal" communities actually are to a wide variety of people. They praise urban areas and its mixed-use development and diverse communities, but I don't see how the communities they praise here are diverse at all.
Overall, very informative and interesting, definitely worth looking into for an in-depth description of the problem of sprawl.
February 18, 2023
The older I grow the more I realize that I actually have to know about urban planning because the environment I live in affects what I’m able to do and how I’m able to grow. This is also particularly interesting because I always think about Europe when I hear about walkable (livable) neighbourhoods but the authors mentioned a neighbourhood in Markham that they originally helped make guidelines for (even if it was altered after they left).
Personally it also makes me slightly more hopeful as I read through the city of London’s new plan for urban design. They haven’t got everything right (mixed use is still lacking) but I can appreciate the direction.
Personally it also makes me slightly more hopeful as I read through the city of London’s new plan for urban design. They haven’t got everything right (mixed use is still lacking) but I can appreciate the direction.
September 9, 2022
Arguing that the suburban dream has not turned out as advertised that American housing, neighborhoods and even cities are being built for cars instead of people, these three architects list what can/should be done to fix Americans’ daily lives.
Why I started this book: Fascinating subject and recommended by the Pantsuit Politics podcast’s book club.
Why I finished it: Execution was terrible, lots of repetition and it didn’t help that this was more than 20 years old. Three stars for the excellent ideas and I will keep looking for better books.
Why I started this book: Fascinating subject and recommended by the Pantsuit Politics podcast’s book club.
Why I finished it: Execution was terrible, lots of repetition and it didn’t help that this was more than 20 years old. Three stars for the excellent ideas and I will keep looking for better books.
June 24, 2019
A fine, if dated, survey of the principles of New Urbansim, particularly as it applies to town planning at the municipal or even regional level. Because of this by-planners-for-planners focus, the book at times feels a little dry and less "tactical" than some of the more recent additions to the corpus of New Urbanism literature. And like other reviewers, I'm less certain than the authors that New Urban neighborhoods, plopped in the middle of (or outside of) sprawl, will succeed long term.
October 24, 2022
1. Read this
2. Become radicalized
3. Become my friend
4. ???
5. Profit
2. Become radicalized
3. Become my friend
4. ???
5. Profit
Read
January 28, 2023...The things you read for research...
May 28, 2024
as someone who knew they didn't like sub developments but didn't know why, this book was an eye opener.
laid out the issues of sprawl in an easy to digest format while also heavily emphasizing how interrelated this issue is with many of the other social issues discussed in America.
loved it.
laid out the issues of sprawl in an easy to digest format while also heavily emphasizing how interrelated this issue is with many of the other social issues discussed in America.
loved it.
March 30, 2014
An eye-opener-I came upon this while browsing at the library only to find my sister has already read and reviewed it. She beats me to everything. The first half of this book is a five star the second half gets mired in more technical aspects of planning and is more of a two star. I am hopeful that the author is right when he concludes that Americans are searching for the communities that they've dismembered since the 1950's and look for small town atmospheres. There is still a visible march to sprawl by the majority of Americans, I fear. Towns with more narrow streets that limit speeds of cars and have mixed use neighborhoods make for a more pedestrian friendly environment and hence a more tight knit community. People- in deep down and repressed parts of their psyches-like to walk to the post office, grocery store and pizza parlor, to get their haircut or take their kids to the playground. Tourism to Disneyland is the example given that people want to visit a small town and walk to shops. (visiting NYC and Boston also come to mind)It seems so absurd to live in a place where to get milk or put your kids on the swings you have to buckle them into car seats, drive, and then find parking.
The most informative part of the book for me was the chapter that said most people have it engrained in them to move to the suburbs to raise their kids in relative safety. It is more dangerous to raise your kids in the suburbs with increased car accidents and increased suicide rates than the problems that can arise in the cities and small walkable towns. (Chapter 7)Kids and teenagers feel isolated in their car centric environments when they must rely on their parents to drive them to every social event. Public transportation is lacking and for these people who fled the city is only for the poor. Teenagers subsequently in the suburbs die at alarming rates from car accidents-1/3 of all teenage deaths. How many times have you read about a car load of drunken teenagers ending up in a ball of flames on prom night? The suburbs are more dangerous and they cause segregation, violence, road rage, inefficiencies, and the fall of the American Empire.
The most informative part of the book for me was the chapter that said most people have it engrained in them to move to the suburbs to raise their kids in relative safety. It is more dangerous to raise your kids in the suburbs with increased car accidents and increased suicide rates than the problems that can arise in the cities and small walkable towns. (Chapter 7)Kids and teenagers feel isolated in their car centric environments when they must rely on their parents to drive them to every social event. Public transportation is lacking and for these people who fled the city is only for the poor. Teenagers subsequently in the suburbs die at alarming rates from car accidents-1/3 of all teenage deaths. How many times have you read about a car load of drunken teenagers ending up in a ball of flames on prom night? The suburbs are more dangerous and they cause segregation, violence, road rage, inefficiencies, and the fall of the American Empire.
October 14, 2019
It's easy to see why this book gets name-checked by other works around (new) urbanism. Clear, approachable, and it even manages to be waggishly funny.
If you live in a suburb and have questions about how it came to be, the forms it takes, and the reasons they shouldn't be designed that way, this is a great read.
If I have any qualms it's that 1) given that it was written in 2003, the writers are blissfully unaware of the economic shitstorm coming their way, they're perhaps a bit too rosy-eyed about economic development and stability, but also, for all the talk of ideology, not as aware of some of their own internalized assumptions about race, class and economic mobility, which is evident in 2) they're pretty excited about broken windows policing (with the caveat that they don't have the research we have about it now). And 3) they trust HOAs to implement thoughtful local solutions rather than reinforce NIMBYism, which is cute.
All in all, still a pretty solid primer on the principles of urban layouts that avoids overly technical jargon and provides concrete steps for activists, planners, architects and policymakers to reclaim our towns from auto-cracy.
If you live in a suburb and have questions about how it came to be, the forms it takes, and the reasons they shouldn't be designed that way, this is a great read.
If I have any qualms it's that 1) given that it was written in 2003, the writers are blissfully unaware of the economic shitstorm coming their way, they're perhaps a bit too rosy-eyed about economic development and stability, but also, for all the talk of ideology, not as aware of some of their own internalized assumptions about race, class and economic mobility, which is evident in 2) they're pretty excited about broken windows policing (with the caveat that they don't have the research we have about it now). And 3) they trust HOAs to implement thoughtful local solutions rather than reinforce NIMBYism, which is cute.
All in all, still a pretty solid primer on the principles of urban layouts that avoids overly technical jargon and provides concrete steps for activists, planners, architects and policymakers to reclaim our towns from auto-cracy.
July 2, 2014
I knew about New Urbanism and its principals before reading this book, and having read some other books on the suburbs and urban design, this wasn't terribly surprising, BUT wonderfully and simply presented here. If you grew up in a suburb that you hated because it was boring, without a place to walk to at night to buy a soda, or you visited cities with amazing vibrant downtown areas and thought - I wish my town could be like this, read this book. There's a quote at the beginning describing the story of New Urbanism and it rang true with how I felt about my own town and other towns:
"This was the best story I had ever heard because even though I had understood it in my heart for years, I had never understood it in my head. I knew that I loved older places like Georgetown and hated newer places like Tyson's Corner, but I had never really asked myself why.
You know good design when you see it, you can feel it, because it makes like better. We've gotten to accustomed to bad design. of sprawl. It's time we start taking back our cities.
July 2, 2011
This is a great book, especially if you agree with its primary thesis about the evils of sprawl (which I do). It must be noted, however, that its snarky tone, (no doubt amusing to the converted) could alienate those who come from a different perspective. Since I am already persuaded, I particularly liked chapter 7, the Victims of Sprawl, which outlined how suburbia causes a lack of autonomoy in teenagers--along with boredom and depression. "Children [in the suburbs] are frozen in a form of infancy, utterly dependent on others, bereft of the ability to introduce variety into their own lives, robbed of the opportunity to make choices and excercise judgement." The chapters on multi-use buildings and multi-use transportation are also especially enlightening.
February 28, 2023
When I first read this book in the early 2000's it was an absolutely seminal piece of work in terms of what would influence my thinking and direction going forward.
Over the years though it has not held up well. While some of the general ideas discussed are still important, it lays out solutions that are great for upper middle class, semi-elite people, but isn't particularly relevant to the working class, or even much of the middle class. Read this if you are researching the changing paradigms in urban planning since the 1980's, but otherwise skip it.
Over the years though it has not held up well. While some of the general ideas discussed are still important, it lays out solutions that are great for upper middle class, semi-elite people, but isn't particularly relevant to the working class, or even much of the middle class. Read this if you are researching the changing paradigms in urban planning since the 1980's, but otherwise skip it.
July 12, 2010
This book clearly describes why urban sprawl is so detrimental to society; the many causes of urban sprawl; and how to avoid it in the future. The only weakness was that it was a bit lengthy, and even I lost my gusto for anti-sprawl rhetoric by Chapter 11. I do recommend it to anyone who finds himself trying to explain why subdivisions are so detrimental but can only respond with "Because they suck!!!"
January 4, 2019
Fantastic! I started this book not realizing that I had grown up in one of the communities planned by the authors and lived just down the street from another one. It was a pleasure to discover that the elements I appreciated in both of these neighborhoods were part of a deliberate design and in fact, a whole philosophy around urban planning.
August 15, 2018
Cool book about urban planning - or the lack of it - and its effect.
The book doesn´t stop there, it offers strategies and ideas on how to repair the urban landscape and make cities livable again.
The book doesn´t stop there, it offers strategies and ideas on how to repair the urban landscape and make cities livable again.
February 9, 2025
i’ve probably wanted to read this book for years. It’s a very easy read. It’s very approachable and I think it will get people thinking about the suburban experiment.
Suburbs have only really been existence for the last hundred years ago, and much heavily utilize after cars became a major part of life in the United States if you go to Europe rather countries, the suburbs, of course, not quite the same as they are in the United States for many reasons, but most importantly zoning laws.
I read the 10th anniversary edition. Despite this book being pretty old being written originally 2000 with the 10th anniversary being in 2010 it’s still very applicable.
The current suburban structure has led to a very expensive infrastructure, it has made us poorer, it affects our safety, it has created isolation. And yet all of this could be improved by a different design choices, and how we build our communities, including the types of structures, the types of parking, the types of road, and more.
If you think about towns that you like to visit or even cities that you like to visit chances are it’s because of a walkable community and compact development near a core town or city. Of course most of these towns and cities are old because laws for the past several decades have largely made these illegal to create new town such as they used to.
we think about old towns that are popular to go to and visit we can think about Charleston Savannah. We can also think about New York City is being very popular to visit and a lot of that is because there are pedestrian, friendly areas, public transportation, sometimes, and mixed used areas that means that living, working, recreating are all in the same areas. In these areas, you don’t typically see a shopping plaza with tons of parking because those would separate walkable areas in our additionally somewhat of an eyesore. The parking would be set behind the building or on the street. Additionally, these older towns usually function on a traditional grid instead of a segregated subdivision plan, which is way more efficient for handling congestion. It would be similar to parallel or series electrical circuitsz
where if you think about sprawl there are subdivisions for housing, there are business parks for business, and there’s commercial areas and these are all separated. Additionally, there’s a ton of parking which separates areas as well.
If we think about the comfort of living in a town or city, a lot of it deals with how easy it is to get about.
Sprawl is what creates a ton of things that we hate but yet we often don’t think of as the cause:
- traffic when towns are now more of a through fair and not a place where people live or a destination, necessarily discrete traffic
- cost: compact cities are of course much cheaper as you don’t need roads way out far or pipes or electricity or other infrastructure.
- are reliance on cars in the United States makes living in the United States exceptionally expensive. When you think about the cost of a single car, you have to add in cost of gas per year, insurance, lease or payments, maintenance. I could easily be 40 K a year when we’re thinking of a time when people are struggling to paycheck to paycheck yet many need two cars in their household to go about their life because we don’t have access public transportation or local communities. The reliance on cars is a large struggle for the middle class.
some additional discussions include how current planning is based on segregation, both in terms of economic class and race. Additionally, this way of living is very difficult for children as well as the elderly. When older people cannot get to a community area and rely on a car this becomes very difficult when they are too old to drive or have disabilities at limiter driving. Additionally, it makes children somewhat of a prisoner in a suburban home because there’s not areas or interesting places to walk to thought they are reliant on their parents cars again makes traffic worse as parents are toting their children to every single thing that they’re involved in from school to after school activities.
Growth can’t be stopped, but I think we can all agree that smarter growth would be preferable.
Suburbs have only really been existence for the last hundred years ago, and much heavily utilize after cars became a major part of life in the United States if you go to Europe rather countries, the suburbs, of course, not quite the same as they are in the United States for many reasons, but most importantly zoning laws.
I read the 10th anniversary edition. Despite this book being pretty old being written originally 2000 with the 10th anniversary being in 2010 it’s still very applicable.
The current suburban structure has led to a very expensive infrastructure, it has made us poorer, it affects our safety, it has created isolation. And yet all of this could be improved by a different design choices, and how we build our communities, including the types of structures, the types of parking, the types of road, and more.
If you think about towns that you like to visit or even cities that you like to visit chances are it’s because of a walkable community and compact development near a core town or city. Of course most of these towns and cities are old because laws for the past several decades have largely made these illegal to create new town such as they used to.
we think about old towns that are popular to go to and visit we can think about Charleston Savannah. We can also think about New York City is being very popular to visit and a lot of that is because there are pedestrian, friendly areas, public transportation, sometimes, and mixed used areas that means that living, working, recreating are all in the same areas. In these areas, you don’t typically see a shopping plaza with tons of parking because those would separate walkable areas in our additionally somewhat of an eyesore. The parking would be set behind the building or on the street. Additionally, these older towns usually function on a traditional grid instead of a segregated subdivision plan, which is way more efficient for handling congestion. It would be similar to parallel or series electrical circuitsz
where if you think about sprawl there are subdivisions for housing, there are business parks for business, and there’s commercial areas and these are all separated. Additionally, there’s a ton of parking which separates areas as well.
If we think about the comfort of living in a town or city, a lot of it deals with how easy it is to get about.
Sprawl is what creates a ton of things that we hate but yet we often don’t think of as the cause:
- traffic when towns are now more of a through fair and not a place where people live or a destination, necessarily discrete traffic
- cost: compact cities are of course much cheaper as you don’t need roads way out far or pipes or electricity or other infrastructure.
- are reliance on cars in the United States makes living in the United States exceptionally expensive. When you think about the cost of a single car, you have to add in cost of gas per year, insurance, lease or payments, maintenance. I could easily be 40 K a year when we’re thinking of a time when people are struggling to paycheck to paycheck yet many need two cars in their household to go about their life because we don’t have access public transportation or local communities. The reliance on cars is a large struggle for the middle class.
some additional discussions include how current planning is based on segregation, both in terms of economic class and race. Additionally, this way of living is very difficult for children as well as the elderly. When older people cannot get to a community area and rely on a car this becomes very difficult when they are too old to drive or have disabilities at limiter driving. Additionally, it makes children somewhat of a prisoner in a suburban home because there’s not areas or interesting places to walk to thought they are reliant on their parents cars again makes traffic worse as parents are toting their children to every single thing that they’re involved in from school to after school activities.
Growth can’t be stopped, but I think we can all agree that smarter growth would be preferable.
January 10, 2018
Like many state departments of transportation, Virginia's discourages its state roads from being lined with trees, which are considered dangerous. In face, they are not called trees at all but FHOs: Fixed and Hazardous Objects.
p 16
In suburbia, there is only one available lifestyle: to own a car and to need it for everything.
p 25
Placing excessive curves and cul-de-sacs on flat land makes about as much sense as driving off-road vehicles around the city.
p 34
Streets that once served vehicles and people equitably are now designed or the sole purpose of moving vehicles through them as quickly as possible. They have become, in effect, traffic sewers.
p 64
Posting speed limits to slow traffic on high-speed roads is futile, because people drive at the speed at which they feel safe - and teenagers drive at the speed at which they feel dangerous. Generally, the only time that people don't speed in modern suburbia is when they are lost, which is, fortunately, quite often.
p 71
The simple truth is that building more highways and widening existing roads, almost always motivated by concern over traffic, does nothing to reduce traffic. In the long run, in fact, it increases traffic ... this phenomenon, which is now well known to those members of the transportation industry who wish to acknowledge it, has come to be called *induced traffic*.
p 88
The question is not how many lanes must be build to ease congestion but how many lanes of congestion you want. Do you favor four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic at rush hour, or sixteen? This condition is best explained by what specialists call *latent demand*. Since the real constraint on driving is traffic, not cost, people are always ready to make more trips when the traffic goes away ... Because of latent demand, adding lanes is futile, since drivers are already poised to use them up.
p 91
State transportation planners, intending to reduce traffic congestion, routinely commission the new roadways that further disperse the population and only make traffic worse. By mistaking *mobility* for *accessibility*, they undermine the viability of both new and old places by focusing entirely on moving cars through them.
p 230
p 16
In suburbia, there is only one available lifestyle: to own a car and to need it for everything.
p 25
Placing excessive curves and cul-de-sacs on flat land makes about as much sense as driving off-road vehicles around the city.
p 34
Streets that once served vehicles and people equitably are now designed or the sole purpose of moving vehicles through them as quickly as possible. They have become, in effect, traffic sewers.
p 64
Posting speed limits to slow traffic on high-speed roads is futile, because people drive at the speed at which they feel safe - and teenagers drive at the speed at which they feel dangerous. Generally, the only time that people don't speed in modern suburbia is when they are lost, which is, fortunately, quite often.
p 71
The simple truth is that building more highways and widening existing roads, almost always motivated by concern over traffic, does nothing to reduce traffic. In the long run, in fact, it increases traffic ... this phenomenon, which is now well known to those members of the transportation industry who wish to acknowledge it, has come to be called *induced traffic*.
p 88
The question is not how many lanes must be build to ease congestion but how many lanes of congestion you want. Do you favor four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic at rush hour, or sixteen? This condition is best explained by what specialists call *latent demand*. Since the real constraint on driving is traffic, not cost, people are always ready to make more trips when the traffic goes away ... Because of latent demand, adding lanes is futile, since drivers are already poised to use them up.
p 91
State transportation planners, intending to reduce traffic congestion, routinely commission the new roadways that further disperse the population and only make traffic worse. By mistaking *mobility* for *accessibility*, they undermine the viability of both new and old places by focusing entirely on moving cars through them.
p 230
February 14, 2024
Sprawl is a disease of mass stupidity and new urbanism, also called neo-traditionalism, can provide a cure. If I were to live my life over again a thousand times, I would pursue a career as an urban planner at least a few of them. I am a current member of Congress for New Urbanism (CNU).
Jeff Speck is articulate and funny. Check out his Ted Talks presentation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6cL5Nud8d7w
You might want to also check out this Ted Talks by Peter Calthorpe, a founding member of CNU: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IFjD3NMv6...
My only qualms are that the position takes growth as a given and is too conciliatory toward the automobile. Regarding growth, I recommend Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter, who explores the inevitability of collapse in terms of diminishing returns. In the short history of civilizations, limiting factors have included fertile agricultural land and healthy forests for energy. To these and others, we add today the limited quantity of fossil fuels.
Instead of growth as a given, I start with peak oil as a given. See authors Richard Heinberg and John Michael Greer among others. The automobile is an insanely wasteful technology that will probably be obsolete within 100 years, certainly within 500. Indeed, even human overpopulation is dependent upon fossil fuels for synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, farm machinery, and transportation.
Therefore, true "smart growth" would utilize our limited supply of cheap, abundant energy to localize and shrink economies and the built environment, rather than expand them. See degrowth, a concept being explored by many visionary thinkers.
Jeff Speck is articulate and funny. Check out his Ted Talks presentation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6cL5Nud8d7w
You might want to also check out this Ted Talks by Peter Calthorpe, a founding member of CNU: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IFjD3NMv6...
My only qualms are that the position takes growth as a given and is too conciliatory toward the automobile. Regarding growth, I recommend Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter, who explores the inevitability of collapse in terms of diminishing returns. In the short history of civilizations, limiting factors have included fertile agricultural land and healthy forests for energy. To these and others, we add today the limited quantity of fossil fuels.
Instead of growth as a given, I start with peak oil as a given. See authors Richard Heinberg and John Michael Greer among others. The automobile is an insanely wasteful technology that will probably be obsolete within 100 years, certainly within 500. Indeed, even human overpopulation is dependent upon fossil fuels for synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, farm machinery, and transportation.
Therefore, true "smart growth" would utilize our limited supply of cheap, abundant energy to localize and shrink economies and the built environment, rather than expand them. See degrowth, a concept being explored by many visionary thinkers.
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