Retrofitting Suburbia, Updated Edition: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs

by Ellen Dunham-Jones, June Williamson

Updated with a new Introduction by the authors and a foreword by Richard Florida, this book is a comprehensive guide book for urban designers, planners, architects, developers, environmentalists, and community leaders that illustrates how existing suburban developments can be redesigned into more urban and more sustainable places. While there has been considerable attention by practitioners and academics to development in urban cores and new neighborhoods on the periphery of cities, there has been little attention to the redesign and redevelopment of existing suburbs. The authors, both architects and noted experts on the subject, show how development in existing suburbs can absorb new growth and evolve in relation to changed demographic, technological, and economic conditions.

Retrofitting Suburbia was named winner in the Architecture & Urban Planning category of the 2009 American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (The PROSE Awards) awarded by The Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers

Genres: Urban Planning, Urbanism, Nonfiction, Urban Design, Architecture, Urban Studies, Urban

274 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 15, 2008

Reviews

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

I see this book as the precursor to getting into more detailed design related to sprawl, specifically Tachieva's Sprawl Repair Manual. I've speculated as to why Dunham-Jones doesn't go as deep as I would have expected, with reference to technicality, and I believe this is because she is professionally an architect and not an urban designer or planner per se. Tachieva excels more at technicality in her book, likely because she spans the fields of architecture, civil eng., and planning.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty good (if dry) catalog of ideas and case studies for condensing (densifying?) the suburbs, although it's pretty uncritical re: the role of private capital and private land w/r/t the lack of affordable options in these rather beautiful urban designs, places that will inevitably house (white) people out of Richard Florida's "creative class." (One wonders how they'd evaluate the density and walkability of tent-cities).

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I just don't like reading textbooks, but I found it hard to stay focused reading this book. In any case it covers a very important topic that will probably see more and more real estate enterprises adopting. I just wish the author looked at smaller case studies where the price point of the entire project wasn't in the hundreds of millions; I think a grassroots movement is the only thing that will shift the car centric urban design trends back into human centric design.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wrote of a review of this book for The Architect's Newspaper: http://www.archpaper.com/e-board_rev....

[Mark Abersold · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping it to be more of a narrative like "Walkable City" but it was more of a textbook like "The High Cost of Free Parking." Unfortunately it wasn't my cup of tea. Only for the wonkiest of urbanism wonks, or actual city planning professionals.

[Zach Welch · Rating 3 out of 5]

retrofitting landscapes in urban downtowns for their revival 🕺🏻🕺🏻🕺🏻🕺🏻

[Irwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

4+. Some solid takeaways as to fixing mistakes of the past in terms of sprawl.

[Emilia P · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uhhh yeah of course I read an urban planning textbook I heard about on NPR. Wouldn't you?
There was a lot of stuff here, some of it more plausible and some of it more useful than other stuff. Basically, trying to get back to sustainable mixed-use residential and urbanizing things that were originally intended solely for commerce...it's a tricky business, but an important one. I think the most interesting stuff to me was talking about how suburbs are built with a particular economic class and even age/generation of people in mind, and it is probably a much better bet to mix types, sizes, and prices of housing so communities don't hollow out completely when the kids grow up or the mix of employment changes/industries leave the area etc. Yeah...I think I understood about 40% of this book, but what I understood was pretty interesting. :)

[Aviva · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great perspective of how to transform our changing suburban environmental. Although I would take 50% of the statements in the book with a grain of salt, the case studies are interesting and worth a quick read. Great for anyone interested in county-level urban planning which will address many of these issues today or in the near future.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was right on point with the article I'm writing and provides some great case studies about how cities and private developers are attempting to re-create versions of urbanism in suburban locations, and on the sites of abandoned or underused suburban retail properties.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone interested in the future of planning and sustainable development.

[Gordon Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent and inspiring book.

[Mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The lazarussing of dead malls is an interesting business.