The above is the provocative headline on a story on cnn.com. After some description of the foreclosures in suburbia, the story focuses on the shifting attitudes of homeowners. “The American dream is absolutely changing,” (Christopher Leinberger, an urban planning professor at the University of Michigan and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution,) told CNN. This [...]
Tag Archives: suburbs
‘Is America’s suburban dream collapsing into a nightmare?’
by Jon Swerens on June 20, 2008, in Culture, Neighborhoods, Urbanism
James Howard Kunstler: The tragedy of suburbia (video)
by Jon Swerens on May 17, 2008, in Urbanism
Anthony, who lives in suburbia but who is a good sport about it, passes along this link to a James Howard Kunstler filmed in February 2004 and posted at TED. As that Web site says: “In James Howard Kunstler’s view, public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the [...]
Philip Bess: Good cities are like pizzas
by Jon Swerens on April 21, 2008, in Architecture, Downtown, Urbanism
During his lecture last week, Philip Bess mentioned a tasty metaphor for good urban living. Comparing a city to a pizza is the idea of Leon Krier, whom Bess calls the most influential traditional urbanist of our time. As Bess says in his book, “Till We Have Built Jerusalem”: A neighborhood is to the larger [...]
Quotes on sprawl from ‘Suburban Nation’
by Jon Swerens on March 30, 2008, in Cul-de-sac culture, Urbanism, Where the sidewalk ends
(Jon) I’ve been reading “Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream,” and have been appreciating the authors’ analysis of suburban planning. Who knows if I’ll agree with their solutions. Here are some quotes from the beginning of the book: Since each piece of suburbia serves only one type of [...]
New Urbanism lecture on YouTube
by Jon Swerens on March 27, 2008, in Philosophy, Urbanism
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwd4Lq0Xvgc] (Jon) Here’s a well-thought-out lecture on New Urbanism by Andres Duany, author of Suburban Nation, The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream — a book I happen to be reading right now and enjoying very much. This lecture is posted in nine parts (often chopped up in the middle of [...]
Suburbia: The next slum?
by Jon Swerens on March 19, 2008, in Neighborhoods, Urbanism, Where the sidewalk ends
(Jon) Next American City points us toward a sobering article in The Atlantic about the effects of the subprime crisis on the nation’s suburbs. “The Next Slum?” says these changes “may turn today’s McMansions into tomorrow’s tenements.” Here are some highlights: At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North [...]
‘Unsustainable housing meets unsustainable finance’
by Jon Swerens on February 5, 2008, in Cul-de-sac culture, Neighborhoods
(Jon) Triple Pundit gives its view on the “sub-prime meltdown,” and it says it’s simply too many people buying too much house with too little money. Look at the areas hardest hit by the sub-prime collapse: “Subdivisions built on the edges of urban areas where once arable land is bulldozed to make way for over-sized, [...]
The problem with escapism
by Jon Swerens on September 29, 2007, in Culture, Philosophy, Urbanism
Eric Jacobsen draws the distinction between the American version of freedom — escapism — and the Biblical definition — liberation: The problem with escapism as a way to deal with problems … is that it cannot go on forever. This is painfully obvious to anyone who has bought a suburban house on the very edge [...]
The battle of Water Song addition
by Jon Swerens on September 26, 2007, in Cul-de-sac culture
If a developer told you he was going to build a gas station on the property behind your house, after you were told by the home builder that the property’s zoned for an office park, what would you do? Some residents of Water Song addition near the corner of Coldwater and Union Chapel roads want [...]
Recent comments