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

TO OUR PARENTS

Table of Contents

Title Page

PREFACE TO THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

INTRODUCTION

1 - WHAT IS SPRAWL, AND WHY?

TWO WAYS TO GROW

THE FIVE COMPONENTS OF SPRAWL

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SPRAWL

WHY VIRGINIA BEACH IS NOT ALEXANDRIA

NEIGHBORHOOD PLANS VERSUS SPRAWL PLANS

2 - THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS

WHY TRAFFIC IS CONGESTED

WHEN NEARBY IS STILL FAR AWAY

THE CONVENIENCE STORE VERSUS THE CORNER STORE

THE SHOPPING CENTER VERSUS MAIN STREET

THE OFFICE PARK VERSUS MAIN STREET

USELESS AND USEFUL OPEN SPACE

WHY CURVING ROADS AND CUL-DE-SACS DO NOT MAKE MEMORABLE PLACES

3 - THE HOUSE THAT SPRAWL BUILT

THE ODDITY OF AMERICAN HOUSING

PRIVATE REALM VERSUS PUBLIC REALM

THE SEGREGATION OF SOCIETY BY INCOME

TWO ILLEGAL TYPES OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING

TWO FORGOTTEN RULES OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING

THE MIDDLE-CLASS HOUSING CRISIS

4 - THE PHYSICAL CREATION OF SOCIETY

ENVIRONMENTAL CAUSES OF A SOCIAL DECLINE

DRIVERS VERSUS PEDESTRIANS

PREREQUISITES FOR STREET LIFE

5 - THE AMERICAN TRANSPORTATION MESS

THE HIGHWAYLESS TOWN AND THE TOWNLESS HIGHWAY

WHY ADDING LANES MAKES TRAFFIC WORSE

THE AUTOMOBILE SUBSIDY

6 - SPRAWL AND THE DEVELOPER

THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN DEVELOPER

THE INSIDIOUS INFLUENCE OF THE MARKET EXPERTS

QUESTIONABLE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

STRUGGLES WITH THE HOMEBUILDERS

A VISIT TO THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HOME BUILDERS’ ANNUAL CONVENTION

7 - THE VICTIMS OF SPRAWL

CUL-DE-SAC KIDS

SOCCER MOMS

BORED TEENAGERS

STRANDED ELDERLY

WEARY COMMUTERS

BANKRUPT MUNICIPALITIES

THE IMMOBILE POOR

8 - THE CITY AND THE REGION

THE POSSIBILITY OF GOOD SUBURBS

SUBURBS THAT HELP THE CITY

THE EIGHT STEPS OF REGIONAL PLANNING

THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT AS A MODEL

9 - THE INNER CITY

THINKING OF THE CITY IN TERMS OF ITS SUBURBAN COMPETITION

THE AMENITY PACKAGE

CIVIC DECORUM

PHYSICAL HEALTH

RETAIL MANAGEMENT

MARKETING

INVESTMENT SECURITY

THE PERMITTING PROCESS

10 - HOW TO MAKE A TOWN

REASONS NOT TO, AND REASONS TO DO SO ANYWAY

REGIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT

CONNECTIVITY

MAKING THE MOST OF A SITE

THE DISCIPLINE OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD

MAKING TRANSIT WORK

THE STREETS

THE BUILDINGS

PARKING

THE INEVITABLE QUESTION OF STYLE

A NOTE FOR ARCHITECTS

11 - WHAT IS TO BE DONE

THE VICTORY MYTH

THE ROLE OF POLICY

MUNICIPAL AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT

REGIONAL GOVERNMENT

STATE GOVERNMENT

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

ARCHITECTS

CITIZENS

SUBURBAN NATION

Acclaim for SUBURBAN NATION

APPENDIX A - THE TRADITIONAL NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT CHECKLIST

APPENDIX B - THE CONGRESS FOR THE NEW URBANISM

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INDEX

Notes

Copyright Page

PREFACE TO THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

THE STORY OF SUBURBAN NATION

Now that Suburban Nation has managed to stay in print for a decade and sell close to 100,000 copies, it seems excusable to tell the story of how it came to be.

I had been eagerly following the work of Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk since their Neo-Constructivist Arquitectonica days, and had been intrigued and excited by their new town of Seaside as a design exercise, without considering its larger social implications. There is a note to be found in one of my pre-architecture school sketchbooks: If you are interested in urban design, find these guys. Then, in 1988, I heard Andres speak at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It was what was to become his famous Town versus Sprawl lecture, and I immediately knew two things: first, that this was the best story I had ever heard; and second, that it had to be a book.

It was the best story I had ever heard because even though I had understood it in my heart for years, I had never understood it in my head. I knew that I loved older places like Georgetown and hated newer places like Tyson’s Corner, but I had never really asked myself why. Andres explained why, and he also explained how these beloved and unlovable places had come to be. He identified the villains and the historical processes that had half destroyed the American landscape; and, remarkably, he showed us how we could fight those villains, reform those processes, and literally win back ground.

Around that time, I had recently published my first book and was considering moving to Rotterdam to work with Rem Koolhaas on what was to become S,M,L,XL. That offer never materialized and I started architecture school at Harvard, where my professors’ attitudes toward Duany Plater-Zyberk ranged from amused to hostile. Unswayed, I wrote a letter to Andres and Lizz, offering to ghostwrite a book that would bring their message to a larger audience. They never wrote back.

Four years of continued pestering led to no progress on that topic, but it did get me hired by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company after graduation. Once firmly ensconced in Miami, I kept asking about the book, but there were always too many other things to get done. My challenge was to convince Andres and Lizz that a book, far from being a distraction, could make our jobs easier.

I had always been amazed by Andres’s and Lizz’s patience with the Sisyphean task of convincing American communities to make traditional town planning legal again. It seemed that we repeated the same experience every month: we would show up in a city or town; meet with every willing citizen and public official; explain over and over, often encountering great resistance, why streets were too wide, trees were too scarce, and diverse land uses were kept too far apart. More often than not, we would get somewhere—never as far as we wanted, but after weeks of meetings and months of drawing, we would reach a compromise that led to skinnier streets, more trees, and a healthier mix of uses. Then, the next month, we would arrive in another community, begin the process again, and be met by the same resistance, as if we had never accomplished anything. Weren’t you people listening? I would silently curse. Then I would remember that we were no longer in Madison; this time we were in Santa Fe and no, the conversation was just starting. All over again.

The desire to short-circuit this Groundhog Day situation finally drove Andres and Lizz, in 1998, to let me write a first draft. Andres’s Town versus Sprawl lecture became the heart of the book, supplemented by another lecture he had developed in 1992, The Story of City Planning, a fast, loose, and mostly true yarn about the glorious past and ignominious present of the planning profession. A final chapter, What Is to Be Done, grew out of a characteristically insightful paper by Lizz. These three sources were augmented by roughly five years spent reading the publications now listed in the bibliography, most of which could be found in the formidable DPZ office library.

The greatest struggle, from a literary perspective, was translating Andres’s distinctive voice into print. Direct transcriptions of his lectures, which seemed so clear and compelling in person, produced something other than English. I consider this voice to be an essential aspect of the book’s popularity, just as the New Urbanism movement can credit much of its ascendancy to Andres’s charisma and sense of humor. Most of the jokes in the book are his, not mine—at least the good ones.

I think it is safe to say that Andres and Lizz, who are not known for lacking confidence, were nonetheless surprised by the early and continued success of the book. It is often difficult to fathom the merit of one’s own ideas. Furthermore, my coauthors had grown accustomed to the cynical gaze of the design world, until recently one of the most out-of-touch and disoriented intellectual communities in existence. Andres and Lizz had seen their efforts and their projects attacked for, among other things, their very populism and accessibility. No wonder, then, that what academia found to be too real-world, the real world was ready to hear and embrace.

As the following two essays relate, much has changed in the decade since Suburban Nation was published. In professional and policy circles, its arguments have mostly won the day. Even the most intellectually isolationist design schools are beginning to embrace the book’s activist message, as today’s students are demanding a return to socially relevant work. Our most recent book, The Smart Growth Manual, puts meat on the bones of many of the issues raised here, for those who want to take theory into practice.

But many people still need convincing, especially on the (suburban) fringes. Let’s face it: most Americans, who don’t think very often about city planning and who haven’t been offered the alternatives, are still settling for sprawl. Turning that ship around is a project for the next decade.

—JEFF SPECK, WASHINGTON, D.C.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

The ten years since Suburban Nation was published have seen a great change in American attitudes toward the built environment. Suburban Nation has not been the sole agent of this change, of course, but clearly we got something right—right enough for the book to have a shelf life and a future.

A predicated future suggests that the problems described herein remain. Still, one can be encouraged by visible progress. The alternatives to sprawl are clear, and examples abound. In once-decanted downtowns, empty parking lots are being replaced by streets and blocks of high-density housing, offices, and retail development. Mixed-use, transit, and walking are words that no longer elicit smirks. Indeed, in cities where public transportation was shunned, the lack of it is now a public complaint. The relationship between public health and the design of the built environment has been firmly established, with scientific data supporting the benefits of urban walking as part of a daily routine.

Many organizations have sprung up to promote this change. Among them, the Congress for the New Urbanism, by setting out principles for regional, neighborhood, street, and block design, has influenced many town plans, as well as national standards for traffic engineering. The U.S. Green Building Council has moved beyond rating individual buildings to include entire communities in its new LEED for Neighborhood Development program. Smart Growth America has consolidated environmental and urban agendas to promote compact development. Its arguments for the appropriate detailing of streets and buildings to make dense environments walkable have led to the Form-Based Codes Institute’s influential advocacy. The Council for European Urbanism, the Institute for Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism, and other sister organizations in Australia, Israel, the Philippines, and India are globalizing shared principles and experiences.

The Lexicon of the New Urbanism—a continuously updated collaborative work—has advanced theory and technique, introducing the rural-to-urban transect as an organizing structure for conservation and development and resulting in the creation of the SmartCode, a model zoning ordinance now being used in many states to shape regional plans and local codes. A growing catalogue of tested techniques and an explosion of scientific studies are extending public awareness and engagement and changing policies around the world.

In the past decade, New Urban News has reported on more than six hundred plans for new and renewed walkable communities in the United States and abroad. Each of these projects represents a victory over entrenched regulatory or market hurdles. The appeal of these places—their functionality and the pleasure they give—have swelled the movement. Some merit greater acknowledgment than they have received. Poundbury, in Dorset, England, is probably the best example of an urban extension. It holistically integrates a full range of components missing from many other ambitious developments, including significant amounts of workplace and affordable housing. Like some of its better-known American counterparts, Poundbury stands irrefutable, promising the ultimate sustainability: the permanence that accrues only to places that are loved.

Given the advances of the past decade, perhaps it is not hubristic to declare that we can see a future of wiser, healthier, more efficient and more beautiful place-making.

Social scientists identify three phases in cultural change: first, social marketing; then the removal of existing barriers to change; and finally the enactment of new regulations. Suburban Nation has helped to socially market a change in the way we build. Americans are now well into the subsequent phases of removing barriers and regulating … and not a moment too soon. Growing awareness of the need to adapt to climate change, energy limits, and economic volatility has created an environment of ferment and opportunity. Development patterns that reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are no longer merely a matter of choice.

History has shown that lost momentum can result in lost knowledge. Unless put to use, hard-won skills atrophy. The first decades of the twentieth century, which saw the creation of Mariemont, Forest Hills, Coral Gables, and other exemplars of town planning, were followed by a period of inactivity long and distracted enough so that when construction resumed after World War II, Americans had utterly lost the capacity for that model of community-building. As we reluctantly settle into another period of great economic uncertainty, we must take pains to avoid another decline into professional dementia. Toward this end, I hope that Suburban Nation will serve as a lasting battery of knowledge, a record of what needed to be overcome in our time, and an admonition, lest hard times lead to lowered ambitions.

—ELIZABETH PLATER-ZYBERK, MIAMI, FLORIDA

AVOIDING OBSOLESCENCE

When Suburban Nation was being written a dozen years ago, each of the authors fell into a role. Jeff was the purveyor of the light touch. His easygoing tone has contributed as much as anything to the book’s appeal. It is probably responsible for the number of people who have told me that, to their own surprise, they read it to the end. Lizz, for her part, was the guardian of clarity. She has no patience for obscurantism in language or message. Suburban Nation’s simple and straightforward writing is an extension of the educational philosophy she promotes at the University of Miami, where students learn plain old good architecture. Her success is evidenced by the book’s unexpected popularity as required reading—even in high schools.

My own contribution to the editing process was a result of simple time management. With new towns to design that could outlast centuries, why spend an inordinate number of hours on a text that might have a shelf life of only a few years? I was aware of the tension between a book focused on a present problem and one of lasting relevance, and I argued strongly that our book should be the latter. In this regard, Jane Jacobs’s half-century-old The Death and Life of Great American Cities was my model—a difficult one to live up to, granted, but the pursuit of unattainable ideals is stimulating. And so I undertook the editing with an eye to issues that were of the more transcendental sort. To this end, the grand subject of urbanism certainly provided a good foundation. The fashionable was eradicated under my pen—and so I bear any blame for the book’s being not nearly as hip as the younger Jeff would have had it.

Then, shortly after it was published, I realized that while I had checked the book for technical obsolescence, I had not done so for political survivability. More out of curiosity than anything else, I asked for assessments from two friends, one attuned to right-wing and the other to left-wing bias. Both marked-up copies were returned with a similar number of disputed statements, and I remember being surprised at how unnecessary these passages were. Although we could have smoothed the feathers for this second edition, the original text remains intact, as it has done no great harm. It seems that, for different reasons, Suburban Nation is read by radical protectors of the environment no less than by conservatives concerned with the restoration of the traditional human community. Perhaps this is because it avoids ideology altogether and puts theory last—simply proposing an alternative habitat for the American middle class, which deserves much better than it is getting. Most Americans are self-interested and pragmatic enough to realize that New Urbanist communities make more sense than the sprawl model, and that they suffer very few downsides. Only extreme libertarians, who so relentlessly espouse choice, fail to understand that such communities are not allowed under the current planning regime, and that the book is actually proposing that they should be included among the available options.

But politics delivers only temporary buffetings, while obsolescence is terminal. There are important questions that should be asked now about the book, such as What has proven to be wrong? and What was left out? Although I am fairly certain that I will not be able to repeat this claim in a twentieth-anniversary edition, so far nothing much has been contradicted or become irrelevant. In fact, the book seems less urgent today only because its message has permeated public discourse. It has been absorbed in initiatives of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the U.S. Green Building Council, and others, as Lizz relates. In fact, many of the book’s prescriptions have by now been institutionalized as regulations. I confess that for me this is not always gratifying, as I find revolution more interesting than administration.

Regarding what was left out of the book ten years ago, several issues that were then on the sidelines have grown dramatically in importance. Chief among them is local food production, now evolving into Agricultural Urbanism (Ag is the new golf!). Then there are the awful health implications of the suburban lifestyle, which would warrant an entire chapter now that the research is available. And insufficient emphasis was placed on the problem of water quality, although dedicating too many pages to any challenge not experienced universally would not have been in the spirit of the book.

Perhaps what most dates Suburban Nation is its discussion of the problem we marginally addressed as air pollution, now recognized as the catastrophe of climate change. A better understanding of this issue would have imparted a greater urgency to our call for the reform of suburban sprawl, and positioned the book closer to the center of the current debate. We can now state in no uncertain terms that blame for the planet’s environmental problems lies with the lifestyle of the American middle class: the way we live large and occupy too much land; the way we must drive to accomplish so many perfectly ordinary tasks; the way we grow our food; and the way our dependence on cars leads us to compensate for social isolation with an astonishing level of unnecessary consumption. In other words, the root cause of the fearsome crises we are facing is this pleasant suburban life of ours, and we have to do something about it right now.

And today, as clueless design consultants foist sprawl on Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia, this book becomes even more essential. There is apparently a Chinese edition of Suburban Nation. We wish it many printings.

—ANDRES DUANY, MIAMI, FLORIDA

INTRODUCTION

You’re stuck in traffic again.

As you creep along a highway that was widened just three years ago, you pass that awful new billboard: COMING SOON: NEW HOMES! Already the bulldozers are plowing down pine trees, and a thin layer of mud is oozing onto the roadway. How could this be happening? Over the years, you’ve seen a lot of forest and farmland replaced by rooftops, but these one hundred acres had been left unscathed, at the whim of a wealthy owner. Now, it is said, the owner has passed on, the children have cashed out, and the property has fallen victim to the incessant pressures of growth.

These one hundred acres, where you hiked and sledded as a child, are now zoned for single-family housing. They have been bought and sold on that premise, and there is a strong demand for new houses. The developer is not about to go away. The anticipated buyers of these new homes, your future neighbors, are respectable professionals, families much like yours, people who could easily be your friends, relatives, or colleagues. These people are welcome to settle this land, to share your suburban dream—over your dead body.

Why, in this country in which growth is considered tantamount to well-being, in which economic health is measured in housing starts, is the prospect of these particular houses starting near yours so threatening? What has happened to our manner of growth, such that the thought of new growth makes your stomach turn?

It is not just sentimental attachment to an old sledding hill that has you upset. It is the expectation, based upon decades of experience, that what will be built here you will detest. It will be sprawl: cookie-cutter houses, wide, treeless, sidewalk-free roadways, mindlessly curving cul-de-sacs, a streetscape of garage doors—a beige vinyl parody of Leave It to Beaver. Or, worse yet, a pretentious slew of McMansions, complete with the obligatory gatehouse. You will not be welcome there, not that you would ever have reason to visit its monotonous moonscape. Meanwhile, more cars will worsen your congested commute. The future residents will come in search of their American Dream, and in so doing will compromise yours.

You are against growth, because you believe that it will make your life worse. And you are correct in that belief, because, for the past fifty years, we Americans have been building a national landscape that is largely devoid of places worth caring about. Soulless subdivisions, residential communities utterly lacking in communal life; strip shopping centers, big box chain stores, and artificially festive malls set within barren seas of parking; antiseptic office parks, ghost towns after 6 p.m.; and mile upon mile of clogged collector roads, the only fabric tying our disassociated lives back together—this is growth, and you can find little reason to support it. In fact, so far as your hectic daily schedule allows, you fight it. Once a citizen, you have now become a Nimby (Not In My BackYard), or what professional planners dismissively term a Banana (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). As such, you are hardly expected to be reasonable, or even polite. Still, it would be nice if there were a more constructive role to play—if only there were some third choice available other than bad growth and no growth, the former being difficult to stomach and the latter being difficult to sustain for more than a few years at a time.

Obviously, that third choice is good growth, but is there really such a thing? Do there exist man-made places that are as valuable as the nature they displaced? How about your hometown Main Street? Or Charleston? San Francisco? Few would dispute that man has proved himself capable of producing wonderful places, environments that people cherish no less than the untouched wilderness. They, too, are examples of growth, but they grew in a different way than the sprawl that threatens you now.

The problem is that one cannot easily build Charleston anymore, because it is against the law. Similarly, Boston’s Beacon Hill, Nantucket, Santa Fe, Carmel—all of these well-known places, many of which have become tourist destinations, exist in direct violation of current zoning ordinances. Even the classic American main street, with its mixed-use buildings right up against the sidewalk, is now illegal in most municipalities. Somewhere along the way, through a series of small and well-intentioned steps, traditional towns became a crime in America. At the same time, one of the largest segments of our economy, the homebuilding industry, developed a comprehensive system of land development practices based upon sprawl, practices that have become so ingrained as to be second nature. It is these practices, and the laws that encourage them, which must be overcome if good growth is to become a viable alternative.

As daunting as such a task may seem, it is not impossible. Slowly but surely, often led by reformed Nimbys, cities and towns throughout North America are rewriting their zoning laws and demanding a higher standard of performance from their developers. Encouraged by the success of a few pioneering projects, homebuilders have begun to experiment with a form of development that grows its cities and towns in the traditional manner of the country’s most successful older neighborhoods. The question is not whether or not such growth is possible but whether it will come in time to spare our countryside, small towns, and older cities from the march of suburbia.

Whether America grows into a placeless collection of subdivisions, strip centers, and office parks, or real towns with real neighborhoods, will depend on whether its citizens understand the difference between those two alternatives, and whether they can argue effectively for healthy growth. Toward that end, we offer this book. It is a summing up of our experiences, as designers and citizens, over the past two decades all across our land.

Since 1979, when we were first asked by Robert Davis to design Seaside, Florida, we have been intimately involved in the creation and revitalization of villages, towns, and cities from Cape Cod to Los Angeles. Everywhere we’ve visited, we have observed and studied urban and suburban life: walked the downtowns, cruised the suburbs, enjoyed meals in homes, given lectures in university theaters, corporate boardrooms, and high school cafeterias. Most of all, we have talked to the residents of these places, and we have listened intently. Almost without exception, the message we have heard, a message of deep concern, has been the same: the American Dream just doesn’t seem to be coming true anymore. Life at the dawn of the millennium isn’t what it should be. It seems that our economic and technological progress has not succeeded in bringing about the good society. A higher standard of living has somehow failed to result in a better quality of life.

And from mayors to average citizens, we have heard expressed a shared belief in a direct causal relationship between the character of the physical environment and the social health of families and the community at