![]() As an article in The Atlantic Cities put it: “We have engineered walking and bicycling out of our communities,” making them “the most dangerous and least attractive option.” Beyond the extreme distances characteristic of suburbia (its poor “ destination accessibility”), consider the hazard of just crossing the street: cars on multiple lanes that whip past your face, nonexistent intersections or sidewalks. What about walking, or bicycling? But then again, no. Although 61% of Erie County’s population lives beyond the 42 square miles of the city-center, rapid transit exists only within city limits.” As one Blogger bemoaned: “ Sprawl means stranding.” In suburbia, public transportation is rare or nonexistant. Imagine, if you will, that for the financial burden, the price of gas, the difficulty in attaining a license, you don’t have a car. What are your options? The suburbs are almost perfectly designed to make the lives of the “disencarchised” poor as miserable as possible. So let’s think about that idyllic suburban lay-out for a second: consider how it was designed, and for who (Commuters and Soccer Moms, ostensibly), and how it has grown along long, linear corridors. It’s hard to imagine what it really means to be poor in Suburbia, especially when the ‘burbs persist in seeming so darn idyllic. With the housing market folding and those jobs dwindling, suburban poverty, in ten years, has increased by 53%. ![]() However, those most affected by the Recession are the nearly 10 million people in suburbia who were living below the poverty line before 2000, including many new immigrants who flocked to the suburbs for the availability of low-wage construction/service jobs. Many are newly-impoverished: home-owners who lost their nest-eggs, who are chained to mortgages they can’t afford. For the first time, suburbs have a higher percentage of the nation’s poor than cities. Thanks to the Recession, this myth has become too obvious, too uncomfortable, to ignore. Save this picture! © Brookings Institute via CNN Money Read about the Myths and Truths of Suburbia, after the break… If architects are to “save” the suburbs, and redesign them based on their multiple realities, they’ll have to start by separating themselves from the myth. Its myth – of wealth, whiteness, a steady-job in the big city, and a space to call your own – keeps getting in the way of the big-picture: the thousands in need of change. Herein lies the great complication of suburbia. He seems to say, it’s just too difficult, that, ultimately: “suburbanites like the suburbs.” There are suburbanites like these, who believe nothing’s wrong, who shudder at the word “density.” But who are they? The ones jammed “by the dozens” into single-family homes? The ones scraping to make ends meet? But Davidson ends with a defeatist conclusion. It’s these conditions that are making thousands flee to cities everyday, making headlines predict the “ death of sprawl.” ĭavidson makes the case, and I agree, that the suburbs and architects need each other – now, more than ever. Poverty and violence, boarded windows and weedy lawns, immigrants jammed “by the dozen into houses conceived for the Cleavers.” In “ Can this Suburb be Saved?,” New York Magazine critic, Justin Davidson, begins by painting a bleak but realistic picture of suburbia today.
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