The suburban boom was born, and through the next thirtyfive years _changed the face of America. There were also forces that fueled the boom during these next years.... Government policy favored decentralization through such programs as the highway building program, the most massive public works program in history. Increasing mechanization and larger units of production in agriculculture and improved transportation and food processing reduced the need for the traditional truck farming base around central cities. Farmland was converted to housing and shopping centers with no apparent ill effect on the food supply·or cost. For producers; suburbs offered convenient, predictable markets for their products. Indeed, modem marketing researchers can predict consumption patterns from zip codes. The suburbs demanded massive new investments in new energy-supply and distribution facilities, but with plentiful supplies of oil and natural gas, and with favorable long-term returns, utilities eagerly geared up to service the new markets. Their strategy was to encourage consumers to use more energy so·that that new capacity would be fully used. (In the 1950s, utility company offices gave a~ay light bulbs.) For a long time, the suburban pattern seemed to be the perfect expression of the American ideal: a healthy, secure, .convenient, and pleasing place for young families to fulfill their aspirations for the good life. The frequent moves demanded by the job meant that one could move from one familiar environment to another three thousand miles away. The goal was few surprises, a ready-made community of people with similar backgrounds and jobs, and steady progress toward material · well-b~ing:· a mass participation in the American dream. Our basic premise is that the present form of the suburban city is grossly wasteful in its use of energy, materials, and land; and thus-under conditions of increasingly scarce and expensive resources-its form must adapt to more frugal and sustainable patterns. Changing demography and living patterns render the present form increasingly unstable and dysfunctional. Perhaps it is the persistence of the forces that brought the suburban folJI) into being-forces that are embodied in both ideals and values, as well as physical form and func-. tioning mechanisms-that makes the transformation of suburban form such ~ challenging problem. Village Homes in Davis, California converts land saved through narrow streets into community_ food production area. (FROM: Sustainable Communities) Summer 1986 RAIN Page 33 Berkeley's traffic barriers are an attempt to. balance the street as a traffic carrier with more convivial neighborhood needs. (FROM: Sustainable Communities) Redesigning the Suburban Fabric How can existing suburban form begin to adapt to another set of values-conservation, cooperation, placecenteredness, more expensive basic activities-values which we believe will become more important in the coming years? The acceptance of these values and their expression in built form are the basis for the creation of sustainable communities. We have articulated the most basic building blocks of the suburban city: (1) the limited-access highway linking together an entire metropolitan region of suburban cities and providing commuter access to industrial and commercial workplaces; (2) the strip arterial lined with commercial services; (3) the regional shopping mall and commercial center; and (4) the block pattern of detached houses designed for nu-· clear families. We started by considering the residential pattern and suggesting some adaptive strategies for redesign. The Suburban Block A first strategy is aimed at deemphasizing ihe importance of the street. In the typical suburban block, much of the total Ian~ area is wasted. Streets that serve only local traffic are usually oversized. Typically, th~re are two lanes for traffic, each 12 feet wide, and two parking lanes·each eight feet wide, for a total width of forty 'feet, not including sidewalks. In most cases, streets transect neighborhoods until they reach arterials. One design solution is to remove many of these through streets, limiting parking to clusters at the end of the now dead-ended streets. Solutions similar to this have been carried out in Europe, while Berkeley, California, pioneered the reduction of through traffic in residential neighborhoods by installing traffic barriers. The results of this redesign of streets are fewer accidents, a better use of outdoor space, and a greater neighborliness, in addition to making land available for,other uses such as food production and common outdoor activities. A similar approach is illustrated in the Village Homes community in Davis, California. The intention of the designer-developers, Mike and Judy Corbett, was to provide narrow streets and allocate the space saved to commonly shared baclcyard areas. Their plan was compromised to meet local standards~ The houses, instead of being oriented to the street, generally have a small private fenced
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