Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Suburban Nation : The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck ISBN: 0-86547-606-3 Publisher: North Point Press Pub. Date: 16 April, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.35 (63 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Did you realize how suburban sprawl affects the USA?
Comment: This book allowed me to understand why the US cities look so different from the European ones. Over the years the cult of car and the construction of vast network of highways contributed to SPRAWL:
- cookie cutter houses
- wide, treeless and sidewalk-free roads
- mindlessly curving cul-de-sacs
- streetscape of garage doors
After the war Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration offered loans to finance new suburban homes, thus discouraging renovation of existing housing. Simultaneously a 41000 mile interstate highway construction program, couples with regional road expansion projects, and the neglect of mass transit, helped make automotive commuting affordable and convenient for average citizen.
People no longer walk, they get into their cars (most often too big, btw) to drive to the nearest strip malls. Walking is either not possible (no sidewalks, no lights to cross the road) or not pleasant because of architecture of buildings, noise protecting walls etc. Crosswalks are sometimes erased on the grounds of pedestrian safety. Indeed in some areas drivers are not used to see walking people and do not stop at their red-light-turns. Shops followed customers to the suburbs. I was really shocked by the deserted after 5 pm capital city of Jackson, Ms. The same happened in Detroit, Hartford, Des moines, Syracuse, Tampa and on many more places.
Old-time walkable cities (or their parts) like Boston's Beacon Hill, Santa Fe, Nantucket, Annapolis, Nantucket - are fun for tourists and residents but are also violating zoning regulations.
Contemporary housing subdivisions (clusters or pods) consist only of residences, even if are called neighbourhoods. You will not find a convenience shop, or a library, or a school on site. Also, they are carefully separated from the neighbouring clusters. Subdivisions have wide internal roads, which are very wide unlike old-type yield roads with one traffic lanes to accomodate both directions. Such roads/streets are good for drivers but not for pedestrians. These roads are then connected at only one point to the main collector road. Here another truth needs emphasizing - adding lanes to highways only makes traffic worse, does not solve the jams. Los Angeles, NYC or or Atlanta provide good example. Highways only mitigate people against leaving closer to work. Increased traffic capacity causes people to drive more - after discovering this truth Britain cut their road building budgets, but not Americans.
Mass transit is the only solution, and it has to start with pedestrians. Park and ride solutions are not very helpful
No more housing subdivisions!
No more shopping centers!
No more office parks!
No more highways!
Neighbourhoods or nothing!
Rating: 4
Summary: Good book with minor flaws
Comment: My comments regarding this book differ little from the other positive reviews it has been receiving by other readers. It is important that Americans understand the social ramifications of how they develop. The architecture of our homes and communities reflects the our values and how we view ourselves relative to our community. Recent trends in home and neighborhood development reveal a highly individualistic value system that excludes it participation in the larger community and neighborhood. As mentioned in the book, Americans do a great job in making the inside of homes extremely livable, but do a poor job in integrating that home, and the family living in that home, with the neighborhood. Homes are built as insulators from other people. A community of insulated homes and isolated people is best described in the terms the authors use for modern suburban development.
My only complaint with this book is that it carries an underlying hint of elitism and makes the fatal mistake of assuming poorly planned development can be blamed for all nagging social ills. True, our social values determine how we build and develop, and isolated designs can induce negative social outcomes, but these experts focus too closely on their own field of expertise and lose sight of the larger picture. For example, perhaps TV watching has a large part in explaining Americas decline in it sense of community.
This book will be a source of information on how prudent and farsighted development can be acheived, but readers should be aware of the attitude these writors bring with this important work.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the ten best books on American life
Comment: I found this book intriguing, because the authors understand why I like my neighborhood. Even better, they understand why I hate so many new housing projects. This is an important book, as vital as Jane Jacobs' work, and it has some uncomfortable truths to share. The US has become a Suburban Nation; a nation of badly-designed suburbs. The newest, more expensive ones are some of the worst.
My neighborhood has houses that are smallish, but sidewalks are everywhere. There are stores within reasonable walking distance, and not too many cul-de-sacs. Three parks are less than a mile away. That means I can walk more than one route to get places. More importantly, others walk the neighborhood too, so I actually meet my neighbors. A neighborhood built almost 50 years ago, the trees are mature (a rarity in Silicon Valley burbs) and provide shade, coolness, and beauty. 8000 square foot lots are neither so small that the houses are crushed together nor so large that walking seems to get you nowhere because it takes too long to pass each property.
Contrast this with the new developments going in: miniscule yards (and therefore little greenery), matchstick trees that don't receive any sun, overly wide arterials that offer only one way into or out of the development. Walls around the complex not only keep outsiders out, they prevent insiders from going out, too, unless they get in the car and crowd onto the only access road. Once in one's car, there is no opportunity to talk with neighbors on the inside, either.
Before reading Suburban Nation, I still had the same sense of what made a neighborhood compelling and we bought our home accordingly, preferring the old small house over the big new ones despite my need for closet space. Authors Duany, Plater-Zybeck, and Speck articulate these principals clearly and enjoyably. With many photographs illustrating both good and bad examples of city planning, Suburban Nation shows the consequences of bad assumptions as well as bad results. The authors like Winter Park, FL, because its downtown is walkable and residents, most of them retired and many who have given up driving, can easily participate in community life. They hate most of the new burbs being built because there is no there there, there's just a road from here to somewhere else with no central gathering point.
Most of the failure of the modern suburb is due to the automobile. Wider roads make a community less cohesive, because a wide road encourages speeding, while a narrow one encourages drivers to slow down, regardless of the posted speed limit. New communities have ridiculously wide roads, which not only lead to unsafe traffic but also discourages pedestrians. Cul-de-sacs, corners, and curves are overly wide as well, to accomodate uneeded 40 foot fire trucks; completely unneeded in a suburb where no building is over two stories but purchased by town councils wanting their fire chiefs to be happy. The net result is a 120 foot walk to cross a street instead of 40 feet because the corners are shaved to allow the stupid fire truck access, the fire truck the suburb DOES NOT NEED because a smaller truck would do just as good a job.
People claim to want to live in the suburbs for a smaller community, but the way they are built frustrates any chance of finding it. Planners consider schools to be traffic nuisances and build them away from central locations, yet larger schools are what leads to disconnection. Putting them on the boundaries instead of the center of town destroys a chance of meeting other children from the neighborhood, and further increases car usage. The authors ask why a school is considered a traffic nuisance rather than making them smaller to be community assets?
Duany and Plater-Zybeck have designed some marvelous new communities, and hope this well-written and ground-breaking book will publicize why they succeed. The first step is repealing the planning rules that prevent all these elements of vital community. Read Suburban Nation and find out how community building begins with good design.
 |
Title: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs ISBN: 067974195X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 December, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
 |
Title: The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community by Peter Katz ISBN: 0070338892 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional Pub. Date: 01 October, 1993 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
 |
Title: Geography Of Nowhere: The Rise And Declineof America'S Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler ISBN: 0671888250 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 26 July, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: How Cities Work : Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken by Alex Marshall ISBN: 0292752407 Publisher: Univ of Texas Press Pub. Date: January, 2001 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
 |
Title: Edge City : Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau ISBN: 0385424345 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 September, 1992 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
