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Page added on March 7, 2016
What if the suburbs went on forever?
Suburbia has a bad name. As a form of development, it’s associated with sprawl and waste, oversized homes, cookie-cutter communities, and a dreary dependence on automobiles. Yet suburban land is also where most people live — not just in the United States, but around the world — and a new exhibition at MIT argues that it’s time to start thinking seriously about what suburban development should look like.
“We think urban planning doesn’t focus enough attention on suburbia, it focuses on making dense cities denser, which is where a minority of the world’s population wants to live,” says Alan Berger, professor of landscape architecture and urban design at MIT and curator of the exhibition. “What we’re saying is we should focus on where the majority of people are choosing to live, which is not a compact and dense lifestyle.”
The idea that the suburbs are the future is at odds with major currents of academic thought and popular culture. There we imagine people piling into ever-higher high-rises, either as part of a sleek utopia, or a grimy end-of-days scenario. In both cases, the future is set in cities. But that projection is at odds with trends on the ground. According to a 2014 United Nations report, only one in eight urban dwellers world-wide live in dense megacities. The rest live in flat, distributed settlements outside of city centers, which Berger believes is a trend that will continue for decades.
“At the very precise moment that we’re looking and focusing on cities, one can ask, well, what about the rest,” says Pierre Belanger, professor of landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. “If you take all the cities in the world, you could fill up India. My question is, what about the rest.”
“The rest” is the subject of the “The Future of Suburbia” exhibition, which runs through April 2 and is being put on by MIT’s Center for Advanced Urbanism, where Berger serves as co-director. The exhibition features several parts, including photographs and video of suburban development around the world, and a model of what a well-planned suburban area of three million people might look like in the year 2100. Conceptually, the most unique feature of the model is that it presents a suburban area as a place unto itself — just like we’re accustomed to thinking about cities as places unto themselves — with no necessary attachment to any urban center. At the same time, the exhibition proposes ways in which the suburbs can provide services and ecological systems that support the city center — rather than simply serving as bedroom communities.
“We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about suburban development as being primarily made up of cul de sacs, single family houses, parks and schools,” says Belanger, “but there are other patterns of development in the peripheries of these metropolitan areas that are not necessarily dependent on the [city] core.”
The model is created in a polycentric design, with nodes of dense development, and attention throughout to aspects of planning that would allow a large suburban area to fully support itself in addition to its nearest center cities. Berger imagines this sustainability could be achieved through new smart energy microgrids, hydroponic food, and autonomous driving technologies deployed across the broad suburban plain.
“The whole thing works metabolically as holistic system,” Berger says. “The suburbs are actively providing resources like energy, storage, and waste disposal, and all those systems are built into the form of suburbia.”
It’s a vision that turns on a major reimagining of what we understand by the term suburban—or, as Belanger prefers it, sub-urban — development. The MIT exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of a book, “Infinite Suburbia,” whose title gets at this idea. Now we think of the suburbs in terms of sprawl, and assume that after a certain distance, the concept exhausts itself. By contrast, the MIT exhibition asserts that, if developed correctly, there’s no reason the suburbs can’t go on forever.
20 Comments on "What if the suburbs went on forever?"
efarmer on Mon, 7th Mar 2016 12:05 pm
Inertia. The exploded concentric rings of suburbia around major cities have very high taxation value and consumer desirable locales in the outer rings and sometimes the close in rings as well. This puts neo suburbia outside the proven cash cow rings and therefore not adjacent to be symbiotic to the urban core. I see that as what we could do if we hadn’t done the big suburban sprawl. With manufacturing largely dimininished and information technology largely able to overcome the need for urban density for work efficiency, why does this theory seem to think the suburban environment is a way of preserving the unsustainable large urban environment anyway? Methinks it is because planners are often urban animals and everything outside the city is their blank canvas…
Gluing it all together with autonomous vehicles because the big sprawl from ICE transportation slew mass transit in the 1950’s and 1960’s? This whole scenario drips with big gobs of nope.
A network of live work communities beats a neo suburbia as arising as the lungs and intestines of dense urban all to hell IMHO.
rockman on Mon, 7th Mar 2016 12:15 pm
They need to define “suburb”. Most think of it as an area distal from the city center to which the majority suburbanites commute to work. In the case of Huston there are heavily populated areas 25+ miles from downtown. And while a portion of those folks commute downtown a very large % doesn’t: those areas have become major employment hubs. And not just for consumer services but business and manufacturers. They could easily be described as small towns unto themselves. Like the Woodlands north of Houston: there is almost nothing in d/t Houston that isn’t available in the Woodlands. What makes defining such areas even more difficult due to the “annexation” laws in Texas. Unless incorporated for many years a suburban area can suddenly become part of the city of Houston overnight. In fact it’s possible for Houston and Dallas (240 miles north of H) to share a city limit boundary one day. And there are entire municipalities, like the city of Bellaire, that’s less than 5 miles from d/t H, that is entirely surround by the city of H.
IOW it ain’t your granddaddy’s suburb any more. And Houston ain’t NYC or Boston.
Davy on Mon, 7th Mar 2016 12:23 pm
No, but slum sprawl will. Suburban sprawl has reached its end. As the global world quickly descends into a dark period of depression and decay. Fancy shiny new suburban sprawl will be history. Sure we will still see some here and there but in aggregate the trend will be ending.
What will be increasingly common is sprawling slums and camps of displaced people’s driven from unsustainably and uninhabitable areas. This will be driven by localized carrying capacity breaches at all global mega urban areas. These urban areas will by necessity depopulate. These populations will migrate to wherever they can find basics.
This will be also driven by climate change issues of sea level rise, flooding, and drought. We are also going to likely see natural events that destroy large populated areas without funds to rebuild.
If you live in a big city get out while you can. It takes 5-10 years to relocate properly and that may be all the time we have.
Revi on Mon, 7th Mar 2016 12:48 pm
I think the suburbs will turn into the kinds of tiny farms and gardens you see outside of cities in the global south (used to be called the third world). Outside of Guatemala City there are fancy suburbs and there are shantytowns which have some gardens and small farms. We are going to have to live off of what we can buy and sell, but also what we can produce. Even if suburbia doesn’t make it as a place to drive to a job it might make it as a kind of a truck farming, slum dwelling place with access to the city. I think it’s happening already in places like Detroit.
Revi on Mon, 7th Mar 2016 12:50 pm
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Guatemalacityvolcanoes01.jpg
penury on Mon, 7th Mar 2016 3:29 pm
Just another example of the true believers thinking trees will grow to the sky and no matter how much you drink the glass will always be half full.
rockman on Mon, 7th Mar 2016 3:41 pm
In fact I can give an even better example of how the burbs in some areas will be (and are today) THE place to live: my home town…New Orleans. Long before Katrina showed up the city of NO was heading down a very bad path. The only illusion that seemed to tell a different story was the tourist $’s in the French Quarter. IOW without the tourists NOLA would be another Detroit these days. Which is exactly what the parts outside of the Quarter were like even before the hurricane. NOLA was just the opposite of Texas with regards to annexation: the city became “landlocked” by the suburbs…some of which or a few miles drive away. As business moved out so did the better paying jobs. Thus zero expansion capability meant all those tax $’s also escaped.
One of the last places you would want to be when TSHTF is in the center of town. I grew up in that neighborhood 60 years ago and it was rather crappy then. And it hasn’t gotten better with age. LOL. Maybe some cities might be a refuge when times truly get bad. Maybe even Houston. But NOLA…it’s barely livable today (and even before Katrina) let alone how it will be in the future. But se of the thoughts might be valid for certain cities. But to speculate about cities vs suburbs: that generality doesn’t seem to work very well.
J-Gav on Mon, 7th Mar 2016 3:51 pm
What if? They won’t, the rest is verbiage.
bug on Mon, 7th Mar 2016 4:06 pm
How does a person use the word “forever”
like this? Forever , like in a long unending time.
So in 6 billion years suburbs will still be functioning ? With planning it will go on?
JFC, what a simpleton article.
makati1 on Mon, 7th Mar 2016 7:13 pm
Suburbs:
First, the dream of every 50s American, as sold to them by the elite propaganda.
Then the long commute to anything begins to be too expensive.
Then the burbs start to decay and crime moves in.
Then the burbs are unlivable due to lack of utilities and water.
Then…
Anonymous on Mon, 7th Mar 2016 7:18 pm
This article is a great example of having-my-suburban-cake-and-eating-it-too. I learned nothing new from it, except the author seems to feel that suburbia is more of less fine as it is, it just needs smart cars and a few more amenities thrown in. Otherwise, I get the distinct impression this guy has nothing to really say, besides, Suburbs ok, just add some green-wash and some re-branding. Despite the authors assertion, with the numbers we are looking at globally, even if unlimited resources existed to build green-wash suburbs for everyone, its just not possible. The consume too much land, and too many resources-notably water. He never addresses the population issue or water at all.
Suburbia is not sustainable now-and no magical tech is coming along to reverse that trend.
GregT on Mon, 7th Mar 2016 8:14 pm
“The rest live in flat, distributed settlements outside of city centres, which Berger believes is a trend that will continue for decades.”
The suburbs of my youth, decades ago, are now urban sprawl. The rural areas back then, are the suburbs of today. Three decades later.
twocats on Mon, 7th Mar 2016 8:26 pm
The suburbs of my youth, decades ago, are now urban sprawl. The rural areas back then, are the suburbs of today. Three decades later. [gregt]
well said gregt
The model is created in a polycentric design, with nodes of dense development, and attention throughout to aspects of planning that would allow a large suburban area to fully support itself in addition to its nearest center cities. Berger imagines this sustainability could be achieved through new smart energy microgrids, hydroponic food, and autonomous driving technologies deployed across the broad suburban plain. [article]
this idea isn’t actually all that bad, and is a structure that, even without the high tech add ons, could have been a lot less energy intensive then the society we eventually created. The problem is that cities were still the cores of cultural and economic development and it would have required a huge decentralized shift to develop these “nodes” as places where people would have wanted to spend most of their time. Wasn’t gonna happen (culture), not gonna happen (energy).
rockman on Tue, 8th Mar 2016 7:11 am
mak – “Then the burbs are unlivable due to lack of utilities and water.” Again too much generalization IMHO. The folks in the Houston and New Orleans suburbs will be have better lives then the inner city folks when the situation gets really bad. What you saw in New Orleans after Katrina will pale in comparison because it won’t get much help from the state or the feds when the whole system get shocked and those agencies are dealing with much bigger and widespread problems. Houston took in thousands of Katrinites…that won’t happen when TSHTF here. It will have to fend for itself which means it will “die” very quickly.
Not sure how it is in your part of the world but in Texas the burbs tend to be fully independent of the central city dynamics: their own power, fuel, food, fire and police protection, etc. And in many cases most of the income is isolated from the inner city. Essentially that’s where the money is which means that’s where the power is.
As I said: Houston and NOLA suburbs are different from many others burbs.
makati1 on Tue, 8th Mar 2016 8:06 am
Those burbs are full of built-for-profit houses made of cardboard, sawdust and plastic and have a useful life of about the length of the mortgage, if they are maintained. They are not built to last generations or centuries. All too soon they will be too expensive to maintain and the banks will own tens of millions of piles of decaying trash.
makati1 on Tue, 8th Mar 2016 8:28 am
Dream on Rockman. There are no places immune to the coming decay and abandonment. When utility pipes burst and are not repaired, the water will stop flowing. The cities will empty faster than the burbs, but there will be no place for any of them to go. Where will the money come from to make major repairs in a shrinking tax base? The materials? The people when there is no paycheck?
Have you even considered TOTAL collapse? I think not. You are afraid to even think about a 3rd world life where the stores are closed and your income/savings/retirement is gone the way of the Dodo. Where there is no medical services at any price. No food stores, no clothing stores, etc. Cannot happen? Really? It is more likely to happen in the Western countries than anywhere else on earth, especially America. LMAO
Some current events on http://ricefarmer.blogspot.fr/
“The Economic Collapse Of South America Is Well Underway”
“Obesity In America: As Healthcare Costs Rise, Hospitals Weigh New Ways Of Caring For Larger Patients”
“Chronic stress spreads cancer, Monash University study finds”
“America’s Ruling Classes: No Fear, No Caution, No Prudence”
“The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism”
“Sea level rises incur compounding costs”
“Cities Of Refuge: Why Are People Creating Hundreds Of Places Of Refuge All Over America?”
“About That ‘Revised’ Q4 GDP—-29% of Growth Due To Health Services Spending” (US)
“It’s Not Just the GOP – The Democratic Party is Also Imploding”
Practicalmaina on Tue, 8th Mar 2016 11:02 am
Makati I think you are missing the point about the US. I understand all of the huge issues you just stated, but saying we have further to fall just because we abuse the excess so much may not be an accurate statement. I live in a sleepy state, what was a nice area by many standards. I know many people who have died from pills, heroine, booze or violence. When the food truck stops shit will get bad, but some of the most destructive shit for young people in my area will get better. No more car accidents, no more overdoses from drugs from the opposite side of the world. I do not know anyone who has starved to death yet but I know people who have died due to industrial pollution giving them cancer.
You point out obesity and dropping iq, those both could be related to industrial pollution as well.
makati1 on Tue, 8th Mar 2016 7:29 pm
Practical, yes, dropping IQ and obesity are both diet related. I see no future for the young in any country. I am 71. My kids will never see that age, and my grand kids will be lucky to see 50, barring nukes falling around them. Their kids, if any, will never see 40.
In the US, heart trouble and cancers already take out far more people than drugs or car accidents by a multiple of 10 or more. And they will be on the upswing when stress and pollution multiply due to the conditions they will have to live in.
Drugs will always be available until there is no one to consume them. Many are native to the US and when there is no enforcement of drug laws, they will be locally produced. Alcohol has been around for at least 10,000 years and will be around until the last grain is gone.
We will be long gone before pollution is cleaned out of the atmosphere, soil and water. It will only increase with the end of commercial treatment plants, sewage systems, and nuclear waste management. Not to mention Climate Change and Global Warming.
There are times I wish I had not fathered two kids. I love them, but I fear for their future and that of my six grandkids. It is not going to be easy.
Practicalmaina on Wed, 9th Mar 2016 7:48 am
How much heart disease is going to occur when everyone has to work long days growing plants? The drugs that kill the most people other than booze are either not produced locally in this country or require a lab and chemicals, both of which would mist likely become cost prohibitive.
As far as booze goes it reminds me of the grapes of wrath, booze will still be around but the grain and energy inputs will make it expensive and people will be forces to step down consumption.
Nuclear pollution scares me and we should be putting serious re backup at those sights to keep them cooling after grid instability
Practicalmaina on Wed, 9th Mar 2016 7:51 am
Other than that I hope coal and plastic ect. Ice engines are all killing us and I look forward to their demise. Coal is not extract able on scale without diesel as much as silicon for pv. I would rather be close to nature struggling than breathing the shit we breath.