Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream

Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck

While walking around listening to this book, I couldn't help but get mad. I was in older neighborhood in Seattle that would probably be in the 99th percentile of "least suburban blah". Yet, there was still ample evidence of suburban destruction. Streets were wider than needed. There was use segregation, too much space for cars and areas without pedestrian crossings. I passed the old library building in a mixed urban area and was reminded that the new library is a few blocks away on a larger, more "blah" piece of land. (It is still in a pedestrian friendly area - just not as appealing.) The school district has been busy building "mega schools" and talking about shutting down and consolidating schools. I also passed people using electric scooters on the sidewalk. Sure, these are better than cars, but they are impinging on people space, not car space.

The book focuses on the pitfalls of suburbanization and the good parts from Congress of New Urbanism. Suburbanization has been heavily influenced by government policy. It is based heavily on car transport and is not scalable. In the past, developers were revered. Today they are villainized. New development brings in more traffic and more conflict for scarce resources. In the past, development would include building up of many public goods. New development would provide new neighborhoods to walk in, new travel routes and new public amenities. Now, development is mostly an isolated subdivision. These cars get funelled on to existing streets increasing traffic. They crowd the existing mega-schools. It is a negative, not a positive.

It is a depressingly huge uphill battle to get liveable walkable communities. People don't want their subdivision connected to others. Developers follow the generic process. They want to build their ultra-large mass-produced houses on needlessly winding streets. City code requires abundant parking spaces and shuns mixed use. Economies of scale in production encourage more of this development. This is more expensive in the long run. However, in the long run, most of these residents will have moved out to the next ring of suburbs and the inner ring will be left to decay. 

Attempts to remedy the problems of suburbanization often focus on the periphery without addressing the true concern. Transit systems are built with big park and ride lots. Why take transit if you are already driving part of the way? Electric cars are treated as a solution to pollution, but fail to address the big problem of all the resources they require to build and drive on.  Small pedestrian friendly parts of town are built, but are primarily accessed by driving from remote subdivisions. Many of the more livable areas could not be built today because they are against the codes. Unsustainable American subdivisions are also spreading throughout the world. How can we fight against people's greed and laziness to actually build something sustainable and livable?