Re-Burbia: A Suburban Design Competition

[kennedy]

What do you do with suburban sprawl? Here are some ideas.

Re-Burbia

I like this solution, it seems the most do-able, and has the most potential for improvement. It also works seamlessly with many of the other proposals.

Urban Sprawl Repair Kit: Repairing the Urban Fabric

I'd post the article and images here, but that would mean I have to deal with all the formatting and I'm simply too tired at the moment.

 

[Shepard]

I saw this a while ago and remember one proposal in particular that eases single use zoning in suburbs to recreate home-grown village centers and add more proximate centers of employment. I can't find the link again though; I remember the illustrations pictured swanky French restaurants in back yards. That aside, when I think about the form of sprawling suburbia overall this could be an interesting way to add diversity and increase quality of life.

Edit: the proposal actually received second place - follow Kennedy's link to see.

 

[Lurker]

4th Place really should have been 1st, although the 3rd one is the more practical of the top three. The conceptual render porn, photoshop montages, and trendy text of the first two finalists make not for practical projects in practice. This is the same problem I foresee with SHIFTBoston, too much focus and praise on petty pretty paper and less attention on the less visually and intellectual sexy projects which could actually be highly effective in implementation.

 

[Corey]

I agree, I really like that third one.

A new super Walmart just opened up in Scarborough, ME (right near the Maine Mall) and was built across the road from the smaller 'outdated' Walmart. It sat empty for a few months (I expected it to sit vacant for decades) and a local big-box type chain is moving into that old building. Anyhow, it would have been a good place to try out the concept submitted in the entry which won third prize.

 

[Patrick]

I agree, I really like that third one.

A new super Walmart just opened up in Scarborough, ME (right near the Maine Mall) and was built across the road from the smaller 'outdated' Walmart. It sat empty for a few months (I expected it to sit vacant for decades) and a local big-box type chain is moving into that old building. Anyhow, it would have been a good place to try out the concept submitted in the entry which won third prize.

Corey, I know this is slightly off topic, but that parcel is going to be developed when the economy gets good enough. The developer told me that he wanted to build a small mall on the site like the target plaza, with national retailers, including whole foods. JC Penny was also interested in moving to the site, but has since withdrawn plans. just fyi thought it might be interesting to you, but I agree that site would have been ideal for a suburban repair toolkit makeover. very interesting concept. Infill is key to changing suburbia

 

[czsz]

Second place was what I thought might be the best idea for western US suburbia: turn snout houses into live-work spaces, along streets with wide sidewalks, in the same way that Newbury Street rowhouses were refashioned into commercial spaces. Unfortunately, not every residential street in suburbia could be refashioned in this way. And that's effectively the problem with most of these solutions: they're piecemeal.

The first proposal is absurdly out there but I give it points for considering what to do with vast tracts of land populated by McMansions. That's the kind of sprawl most of the Boston area consists of, and none of the other solutions really tackle it. I guess their property could always be subdivided in the same way as 19th century farmsteads and estates were when streetcar suburbs were being laid out. I've even seen this happen to some 1950s suburban homes built on large lots in Brookline, although the result was merely closely-packed suburban homes, rather than a move toward urbanization.

 

[a630]

Exactly how much money do the authors of the 2nd and 3rd proposals imagine these future suburbanites (re-burbanites?) having?
The densification of suburban areas is often the product of other areas becoming preferable - and so growing density in suburban areas often features declining incomes and the things that come along with that: legal and illegal divisions of homes for rental units, the re-engineering of commercial spaces for local services like child care facilities, community centers, health services and places of worship. This is what half of Los Angeles looks like.
I'm not saying these ideas are silly - but it would be interesting to see greater diversity of users and facilities in these proposals. How could a fast food restaurant be creatively reused as a community center? How could safe, attractive transit facilities be retrofitted into car-dependent places?