The Reform of Suburban Nation
by Kim De Vries
In 1998, Sarah Susanka published her book Not So Big House, in which she argued that rather than "starter castles" what we really want in a home is shelter. Two years later, Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk & Jeff Speck published Suburban Nation, a book exploring the origin and state of our suburbs. Their main point was that the now commonplace pattern of developers building large tracts of residential-only neighborhoods, accessible only by one or two feeder streets and serviced mainly by shopping malls leads to burgeoning urban sprawl that is inefficient, environmentally damaging, and ugly. Since that time, housing trends have split, with some builders and developers pushing growth of the "McMansion" as far as it will go while others have tried to focus on quality and aesthetics over size. This latter group sometimes is labeled "new urbanist," or described as following the "not so big" design movement originated by Susanka.
I want mainly to talk about the principles behind these latter movements toward more careful planning and more restrained architecture; how they benefit us and what we can do to encourage them. I could go on at great length on the hateful effects of urban sprawl, but I doubt I need to convince most of you dear readers on that front.
The Not So Big concept argues that good design and a focus on details are what houses into sheltering homes in which we can really live. I love this idea. We are getting close to the point where we might finally be able to buy land/a house and after trawling the market within an hour of my school (CSU Stanislaus), it's clear that we will have to build our own because all the houses we've seen are either mobile homes or McMansions, in either case on tiny little plots. A smaller but lovely house offers the following advantages:
1. Easier to clean. This is very important to us since we both work and have toddlers. I don't want to spend more time then I need on cleaning rooms that are little used. I want all the rooms in my house to earn their keep. And big houses use more cleaning supplies.
2. Easier on the environment and the wallet. Smaller houses are generally cheaper to heat and require less fuel. They have fewer rooms to light and use far fewer construction materials.
3. Less isolating. Giant houses isolate residents from each other. That's not to say we don't all need some time alone and some private territory, but we don't need that much and I really don't think most activities really need their own room. Things that are central to our daily life should be in the main rooms, and for us this means food, books, and (though not as much) TV. Do we really need a separate media room? And if the "great room" is not a family room, then who is it for?
4. Less isolating. Yes, a repeat, because giant houses on tiny lots with imposing entries isolate you from neighbors as well. They usually have little space outdoors either on a porch or in the yard to sit and interact with the street side. Since the house/lot proportions are so skewed, these houses often have tall fences around them to insure some privacy. So you may never see your neighbors at all.
5. They fit like a glove. If you devote money to quality details instead of space, you have a lot more choices about materials. You'd be surprised how much difference it makes; choosing a particular kind of light for the bathroom or adding custom shelves in the kitchen, or a windowseat in a bedroom transforms a generic plan to your unique design.
There are other reasons, but these are enough to start, and I think of them, issue of isolation may be paramount. As our houses get bigger, most of our families are getting smaller; I think recently read that we've gone from the oft-cited 2.4 kids to 1. something or other. How much space do three people need? And do the dogs really need their own room? Do games? Aren't games for playing togther? Don't most dogs want to be with their people all the time?
I used to live in a house with a large back yard that was divided from other yards only by some flower beds here, some hedges there. The openess made all the yards seem larger, like we were sharing a meadow. It was easy to start chatting when we were all out gardening, or to ask someone if they'd care to join in when we were firing up the grill. I could walk 10 minutes in two different directions and find a small store among other attractions, and people were out walking all of the time. So we often struck up conversations. There were bus stops in each direction too, so we could go days without driving, if we wanted to. And, since the lots were bigger but had (usually) more people living in each structure, traffic was rarely a problem.
Now I'm renting a place in a different town across the country, as we try to save up to finally get our own place. There are high fences around every yard on the block because the houses are so close together. Our house is not giant, nor are those right around us, but most in the surrounding blocks are very large. They have imposing entries, but not porches. Because almost nothing is within walking distance, people are rarely out walking around here. And, there is very little mass transportation, so we are forced to drive much more than we'd like. Because the neighborhoods have followed typical dvelopment patterns, each neighborhood has only one or two "access roads" while most streets have no direct outlet. We live in an odd collection of cul-de-sacs and circles. I'm sure this seemed like a good idea at first; a good way to keep people from racing across on through streets. But as the population has grown, the access roads are getting very congested.
My town is growing into an example of poor community design. After seeing this I've come to realize how important home and neighborhood design can be. So what can we do about it?
Of course we can all try, within the limits of our finances and local housing markets, to follow the Not So Big principles. Doing this can actually be a challenge if your town or community has minimum square footage requirements for new houses. These requirements strike me as nefarious because they really seem to be a thinly veiled attempt at keeping out people below a certain income level. Some towns also have rules that keep residential and commercial zones separate. These rules are probably well-intentioned to keep neighborhoods quieter, but they force us to be a car culture. I'm not suggesting that we dump zoning rules, but we need to think much more carefully about them and consult some of the research that's been conducted in the last 10 years or so.
If we are to reform our suburban nation, we need to make efforts at the community level to enact sane zoning laws about housing, about environmentally friendly construction, about greenspace, about commercial development. This can be tough because developers and national chain stores fight hard against any kind of zoning restriction or regulation of construction. But if we band together, we can improve our communities and our futures.