That means that when we're looking at places, generally, that have been built out in the second half of the 20th century to be car dependent, not walkable, and have comparatively lower density.Įllen Dunham-Jones: Similarly, you can look at the street networks. June Williamson: We're architects and urban designers and so we are focused on the built environment. Motherboard: How do you define the suburbs-a slippery term with no concrete definition? You write in the book that you define something as suburban based on its “suburban form," not necessarily on location or city lines-what do you mean by that? The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Motherboard talked with Williamson and Dunham-Jones about why and how we should retrofit the suburbs, and whether or not the COVID-19 has made the suburbs appealing again, or instead accelerated the desire to retrofit the burbs. They have found that when the suburbs are retrofitted, they can take on an astonishing array of modern issues: car dependency, public health, supporting aging people, helping people compete for jobs, creating water and energy resilience, and helping with social equity and justice. But in this new book, the retrofitting projects have become more ambitious, as cities and towns turn old box stores, malls, motels, or office parks into places for people to live, work, eat, play, exercise, go to the doctor, or even watch Mexican wrestling. Many of the cases in Williamson and Dunham-Jones first book from 2011 on the same topic were focused on underused parking lots being transformed into mixed-use spaces. Their book describes 32 recent instances in which suburban structures have been transformed into something new. They have a new book out this week: Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges. This mismatch has led to a phenomenon called “suburban retrofitting,” as documented by June Williamson, an associate professor of architecture at the City College of New York, and Ellen Dunham-Jones, a professor of architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Previous mainstays of suburban life are now myths: that the majority of people own their homes that the suburbs are havens for the middle class or that the bulk of people are young families who value privacy over urban amenities like communal spaces, walkability, and mixed-use properties. "America’s suburbs are a shining example of the American Dream, where people can live in their own homes, in safe, pleasant neighborhoods," they wrote.īut the suburbs, in the sense of the idyllic American pastoral Trump and Carson referenced, have been changing for some time-not necessarily the physical homes, stores, roads, and offices that populate them, but the people who live there, along with their needs and desires.
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