Suburban Nation
The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
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4.2 • 11 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Welcome to the Suburban Nation
Plunge into the pivotal exploration of America's car-centric suburban phenomenon that has shaped the landscape of the North American continent over the last century. Suburban Nation stands as a prominent voice advocating change in suburban sprawl and the over-reliance on personal vehicles.
Suburban Nation is the brainchild of the founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, who are leading the charge towards traditional urban planning practices.
But this is no simple exposé of post-war planning failures. Instead, Suburban Nation presents a compelling rebuttal to the 'sprawl and crawl' of residential development and transportation design that has marked America's suburban spaces. This inspiring narrative delves into the multi-faceted aspects of urban design, public transit accessibility, traffic, and sprawl, invoking a collective rethink of how we live, commute, and interact with our spatial environment.
Suburban Nation galvanizes a growing movement, calling forth developers, urban planners, transit authorities, and suburban residents alike, to harmonize our living spaces with the demands of modern, sustainable society.
This tenth anniversary edition includes a new preface by the authors.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Like "an architectural version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, our main streets and neighborhoods have been replaced by alien substitutes, similar but not the same," state Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck in this bold and damning critique. The authors, who lead a firm that has designed more than 200 new neighborhoods and community revitalization plans, challenge nearly half a century of widely accepted planning and building practices that have produced sprawling subdivisions, shopping centers and office parks connected by new highways. These practices, they contend, have not only destroyed the traditional concept of the neighborhood, but eroded such vital social values as equality, citizenship and personal safety. Further, they charge that current suburban developments are not only economically and environmentally "unsustainable," but "not functional" because they isolate and place undue burdens on at-home mothers, children, teens and the elderly. Adapting the precepts that famed urbanologist Jane Jacobs used to critique unhealthy city planning, Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck call for a revolution in suburban design that emphasizes neighborhoods in which homes, schools, commercial and municipal buildings would be integrated in pedestrian-accessible, safe and friendly settings. While occasionally presenting unsupported claims--such as that gated communities (of which there are now more than 20,000 in the U.S.) deprive children of gaining "a sense of empathy" in a diverse society--their visionary book holds out hope that we can create "places that are as valuable as the nature they displaced."
