Housing In The Evolving American Suburb

Shifting Suburbs: Reinventing Infrastructure for Compact Development- Suburban housing markets across the United States are evolving rapidly and overall remain well-positioned to maintain their relevance for the foreseeable future as preferred places to live and work, even as many urban cores and downtown neighborhoods continue to attract new residents and businesses. Suburban housing dynamics increasingly reflect some of the most profound issues shaping our society, including aging, immigration, economic mobility, and evolving consumer preferences. As a result, suburbs will generate substantial residential development and redevelopment opportunities and challenges in the years ahead. -Housing in the Evolving American Suburb- This title describes different kinds of suburbs based on the key factors that define and determine their housing markets. The report classifies and compares suburbs in the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S. and assesses the key issues that will shape suburban residential demand and development in the future. Suburban housing markets across the United States are evolving rapidly and overall remain well-positioned to maintain their relevance for the foreseeable future as preferred places to live and work, even as many urban cores and downtown neighborhoods continue to attract new residents and businesses. Suburban housing dynamics increasingly reflect some of the most profound issues shaping our society, including aging, immigration, economic mobility, and evolving consumer preferences. As a result, suburbs will generate substantial residential development and redevelopment opportunities and challenges in the years ahead. Housing in the Evolving American Suburb, describes different kinds of suburbs based on the key factors that define and determine their housing markets. The report classifies and compares suburbs in the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S. and assesses the key issues that will shape suburban residential demand and development in the future."

America’s suburbs are not the homogenous places we sometimes take them for. Today’s suburbs are racially, ethnically, and economically diverse, with as many Democratic as Republican voters, a growing population of renters, and rising poverty. The cliche of white picket fences is well past its expiration date. The history of suburbia is equally surprising: American suburbs were once fertile ground for utopian planning, communal living, socially-conscious design, and integrated housing. We have forgotten that we built suburbs like these, such as the co-housing commune of Old Economy, Pennsylvania; a tiny-house anarchist community in Piscataway, New Jersey; a government-planned garden city in Greenbelt, Maryland; a racially integrated subdivision (before the Fair Housing Act) in Trevose, Pennsylvania; experimental Modernist enclaves in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the mixed-use, architecturally daring Reston, Virginia. Inside Radical Suburbs you will find blueprints for affordable, walkable, and integrated communities, filled with a range of environmentally sound residential options. Radical Suburbs is a history that will help us remake the future and rethink our assumptions of suburbia.

"Beyond Mobility" also seeks to rethink how projects are planned and designed in cities and suburbs at multiple geographic scales, from micro-designs such as parklets to corridors and city-regions. The book closes with a reflection on the opportunities and challenges in moving beyond mobility, with attention to emerging technologies such as self-driving cars and ride-hailing services and social equity topics such as accessibility, livability, and affordability.

“The government in the past created one American Dream at the expense of almost all others: the dream of a house, a lawn, a picket fence, two children, and a car. But there is no single American Dream anymore.” For nearly 70 years, the suburbs were as American as apple pie. As the middle class ballooned and single-family homes and cars became more affordable, we flocked to pre-fabricated communities in the suburbs, a place where open air and solitude offered a retreat from our dense, polluted cities. Before long, success became synonymous with a private home in a bedroom community complete with a yard, a two-car garage and a commute to the office, and subdivisions quickly blanketed our landscape. But in recent years things have started to change. An epic housing crisis revealed existing problems with this unique pattern of development, while the steady pull of long-simmering economic, societal and demographic forces has culminated in a Perfect Storm that has led to a profound shift in the way we desire to live. In The End of the Suburbs journalist Leigh Gallagher traces the rise and fall of American suburbia from the stately railroad suburbs that sprung up outside American cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries to current-day sprawling exurbs where residents spend as much as four hours each day commuting. Along the way she shows why suburbia was unsustainable from the start and explores the hundreds of new, alternative communities that are springing up around the country and promise to reshape our way of life for the better. Not all suburbs are going to vanish, of course, but Gallagher’s research and reporting show the trends are undeniable. Consider some of the forces at work: The nuclear family is no more: Our marriage and birth rates are steadily declining, while the single-person households are on the rise. Thus, the good schools and family-friendly lifestyle the suburbs promised are increasingly unnecessary. We want out of our cars: As the price of oil continues to rise, the hours long commutes forced on us by sprawl have become unaffordable for many. Meanwhile, today’s younger generation has expressed a perplexing indifference toward cars and driving. Both shifts have fueled demand for denser, pedestrian-friendly communities. Cities are booming. Once abandoned by the wealthy, cities are experiencing a renaissance, especially among younger generations and families with young children. At the same time, suburbs across the country have had to confront never-before-seen rates of poverty and crime. Blending powerful data with vivid on the ground reporting, Gallagher introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters, including the charismatic leader of the anti-sprawl movement; a mild-mannered Minnesotan who quit his job to convince the world that the suburbs are a financial Ponzi scheme; and the disaffected residents of suburbia, like the teacher whose punishing commute entailed leaving home at 4 a.m. and sleeping under her desk in her classroom. Along the way, she explains why understanding the shifts taking place is imperative to any discussion about the future of our housing landscape and of our society itself—and why that future will bring us stronger, healthier, happier and more diverse communities for everyone.

The Routledge Companion to Modernity, Space and Gender reframes the discussion of modernity, space and gender by examining how "modernity" has been defined in various cultural contexts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, how this definition has been expressed spatially and architecturally, and what effect this has had on women in their everyday lives. In doing so, this volume presents theories and methods for understanding space and gender as they relate to the development of cities, urban space and individual building types (such as housing, work spaces or commercial spaces) in both the creation of and resistance to social transformations and modern global capitalism. The book contains a diverse range of case studies from the US, Europe, the UK, and Asian countries such as China and India, which bring together a multiplicity of approaches to a continuing and common issue and reinforces the need for alternatives to the existing theoretical canon.

This is the first comprehensive look at the role of North American suburbs in the last half century, departing from traditional and outdated notions of American suburbia.

are often lined with garages in front of houses that are clearly more internalized in design, some even taking on a fortress-like appearance. Today's new homes are technically superior in construction; i.e., they are more energy efficient, weather resistant and maintenance free. However, they also seem to lack the warmth and charm of prewar homes, for which more construction dollars were spent on quality veneers, buUt-in features and other human-scale details. The postwar need for massive amounts of "affordable" housing for returning GIs helped to encourage buUding practices that could reduce on-site labor and material costs in houses. The accommodation of the automobile, cost-cutting movements and a variety of other trends caused a gradual decline in the human, social and emotional qualities of postwar residential architecture. This book will attempt to look at the issues and choices facing today's residential designers and home buUders and ask: How can we make our new houses and neighborhoods more responsive to humanistic needs, partlcularly in light of constant pressures to keep housing costs down? This question will generally be addressed by comparing historical designs to those of today, to see if we might be able to reconsider some "old-fashioned" ideas in new housing designs.