Urban Forms, Suburban Dreams

Urban Forms, Suburban Dreams
Author: Malcolm Quantrill
Publisher:
Total Pages: 192
Release: 1993
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

One of the primary tasks for architecture in today's world is to create a sense of place, for the contemporary community--meshing urban density with suburban growth and change--is "neither here nor there." Both urb (city) and suburb in our society challenge architects to conceive through social engineering and geometric design a sense of wonder in space. "Between urban forms and suburban dreams," the volume editors write, "lie many slippery paths, and we have trodden most of them in search of . . . lost utopias." Prominent scholars offer a variety of perspectives and insights that will be of value to architects, urban designers and planners, and others interested in the forms of life in our cities and suburbs. Peter Eisenman proposes that the media, tele-video especially, have dissolved all distinctions between the "here and there," one place and another. Colin Rowe, on the other hand, sees the city as a distinct "place," if different from the modernist formula vision; he believes it is a collage that can best be understood as a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Kaisa Broner-Bauer's account of the modernist city as a lost utopia poignantly traces the modern movement's idealism to its nineteenth-century precursors and raises the question of what happened to the planners' brave new world. Diane Ghirardo looks at the architectural effects of the brave new world in fascist Italy. The case of entrepreneur-developer Gustave Ring, who designed space during the New Deal, is explored by Dennis Domer. Ring's Arlington Village, near Washington, D.C., offers a thoughtfully landscaped semirural space that remains popular today. A contrasting scale and purpose is addressed in Marco Frascari's study of Coral Gables, Florida. In his quest for wonder in architecture, he clarifies the deep spiritual responsibility of architecture, which cannot be fulfilled by mere technical dexterity or conjuring with words and geometric puzzles. These and related issues are further addressed by Drexel Turner and by Stephen Holl, both of whom focus on the special needs at the edge of the city; and by Bruce Webb and Martin Price, who examine the relationship between highway and place; by William H. Whyte, who turns to face the city's center; and by Malcolm Quantrill, who explores the "landscape between innocence and experience."

Suburban Dreams

Suburban Dreams
Author: Greg Dickinson
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2015-06-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0817318631

Explores how the suburban imaginary, composed of the built environment and imaginative texts, functions as a resource for living out the "good life"

Suburban Remix

Suburban Remix
Author: Jason Beske
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2018-02
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1610918630

Investment has flooded back to cities because dense, walkable, mixed-use urban environments offer choices that support diverse dreams. Auto-oriented, single-use suburbs have a hard time competing. Suburban Remix brings together experts in planning, urban design, real estate development, and urban policy to demonstrate how suburbs can use growing demand for urban living to renew their appeal as places to live, work, play, and invest. The case studies and analysis show how compact new urban places are being created in suburbs to produce health, economic, and environmental benefits, and contribute to solving a growing equity crisis.

Suburban Alchemy

Suburban Alchemy
Author: Nicholas Dagen Bloom
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2001
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780814208748

In Suburban Alchemy: 1960s New Towns and the Transformation of the American Dream, Nicholas Dagen Bloom examines the "new town" movement of the 1960s, which sought to transform the physical and social environments of American suburbs by showing that idealism could be profitable. Bloom offers case studies of three of the movement's more famous examples -- Reston, Virginia; Columbia, Maryland; and Irvine, California -- to flesh out his historical account. In each case, innovative planners mixed land uses and housing types; refined architectural, graphic, and landscape design; offered well-defined village and town centers; and pioneered institutional planning. As Bloom demonstrates, these efforts did not uniformly succeed, and attempts to reshape community life through design notably faltered. However, despite frequent disappointments and compromises, the residents have kept the new town ideals alive for over four decades and produced a vital form of suburban community that is far more complicated and interesting than the early vision promoted by the town planners. Lively chapters illustrate efforts in local politics, civic spirit, social and racial integration, feminist innovations, and cultural sponsorship. Suburban Alchemy should be of interest to scholars of U.S. urban history, planning history, and community development, as well as the general reader interested in the development of alternative communities in the United States.

Suburban Remix

Suburban Remix
Author: Jason Beske
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-02-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781610918626

The suburban dream of a single-family house with a white picket fence no longer describes how most North Americans want to live. The dynamics that powered sprawl have all but disappeared. Instead, new forces are transforming real estate markets, reinforced by new ideas of what constitutes healthy and environmentally responsible living. Investment has flooded back to cities because dense, walkable, mixed-use urban environments offer choices that support diverse dreams. Auto-oriented, single-use suburbs have a hard time competing. Suburban Remix brings together experts in planning, urban design, real estate development, and urban policy to demonstrate how suburbs can use growing demand for urban living to renew their appeal as places to live, work, play, and invest. The case studies and analyses show how compact new urban places are already being created in suburbs to produce health, economic, and environmental benefits, and contribute to solving a growing equity crisis. Above all, Suburban Remix shows that suburbs can evolve and thrive by investing in the methods and approaches used successfully in cities. Whether next-generation suburbs grow from historic village centers (Dublin, Ohio) or emerge de novo in communities with no historic center (Tysons, Virginia), the stage is set for a new chapter of development—suburbs whose proudest feature is not a new mall but a more human-scale feel and form.

Suburban Nation

Suburban Nation
Author: Andres Duany
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2000
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780865476066

Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are at the forefront of the New Urbanism movement, and in "Suburban Nation" they assess sprawl's costs to society, be they ecological, economic, aesthetic, or social. 115 illustrations.

Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny
Author: Jason Griffiths
Publisher: AA Publications
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781907896057

On 18 October 2002 Jason Griffiths and Alex Gino set out to explore the American suburbs. Over 178 days they drove 22,383 miles, made 134 suburban house calls and took 2,593 photographs. In Manifest Destiny, Griffiths reveals the results of this exploration. Structured through 58 short chapters, the anthology offers an architectural pattern book of suburban conditions all focused not on the unique or specific but the placeless. These chapters are complemented by an introduction by Griffiths and an afterword by Swiss architectural historian Martino Stierli.

The Option of Urbanism

The Option of Urbanism
Author: Christopher B. Leinberger
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2010-03-18
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1597267767

Americans are voting with their feet to abandon strip malls and suburban sprawl, embracing instead a new type of community where they can live, work, shop, and play within easy walking distance. In The Option of Urbanism visionary developer and strategist Christopher B. Leinberger explains why government policies have tilted the playing field toward one form of development over the last sixty years: the drivable suburb. Rooted in the driving forces of the economy—car manufacturing and the oil industry—this type of growth has fostered the decline of community, contributed to urban decay, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and contributed to the rise in obesity and asthma. Highlighting both the challenges and the opportunities for this type of development, The Option of Urbanism shows how the American Dream is shifting to include cities as well as suburbs and how the financial and real estate communities need to respond to build communities that are more environmentally, socially, and financially sustainable.

Suburban Planet

Suburban Planet
Author: Roger Keil
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2017-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745683150

The urban century manifests itself at the peripheries. While the massive wave of present urbanization is often referred to as an 'urban revolution', most of this startling urban growth worldwide is happening at the margins of cities. This book is about the process that creates the global urban periphery – suburbanization – and the ways of life – suburbanisms – we encounter there. Richly detailed with examples from around the world, the book argues that suburbanization is a global process and part of the extended urbanization of the planet. This includes the gated communities of elites, the squatter settlements of the poor, and many built forms and ways of life in-between. The reality of life in the urban century is suburban: most of the earth's future 10 billion inhabitants will not live in conventional cities but in suburban constellations of one kind or another. Inspired by Henri Lefebvre's demand not to give up urban theory when the city in its classical form disappears, this book is a challenge to urban thought more generally as it invites the reader to reconsider the city from the outside in.

City Rules

City Rules
Author: Emily Talen
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2012-06-22
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1610911768

City Rules offers a challenge to students and professionals in urban planning, design, and policy to change the rules of city-building, using regulations to reinvigorate, rather than stifle, our communities. Emily Talen demonstrates that regulations are a primary detriment to the creation of a desirable urban form. While many contemporary codes encourage sprawl and even urban blight, that hasn't always been the case-and it shouldn't be in the future. Talen provides a visually rich history, showing how certain eras used rules to produce beautiful, walkable, and sustainable communities, while others created just the opposite. She makes complex regulations understandable, demystifying city rules like zoning and illustrating how written codes translate into real-world consequences. Most importantly, Talen proposes changes to these rules that will actually enhance communities' freedom to develop unique spaces.