The Overlooked Architectural Opportunities of Suburbia

The Overlooked
Architectural Opportunities
of Suburbia
Amanda Kolson Hurley
AIA DC
Sarah Booth Conroy Lecture
April 4, 2017

SUBURBA
N(Image: Library of Congress/Historic American Building Survey)

SUBURBA
(Image: Lexington Historical Society)

Suburbia as conformist wasteland
“ … [A] treeless communal waste, inhabited by people of the same class, the same income,
the same age group, witnessing the same television performances, eating the same
tasteless pre-fabricated foods, from the same freezers … a low-grade uniform environment
from which escape is impossible.”
—Lewis Mumford, The City in History, 1961
“Our suburbs are interminable wastelands dotted with millions of monotonous little houses
on monotonous little lots and crisscrossed by highways lined with billboards, jazzed-up
diners, used-car lots, drive-in movies, beflagged gas stations, and garish motels.”
—Peter Blake, God’s Own Junkyard, 1964

“Little
boxes
made
of ticky
tacky”
(Images: State Museum of
Pennsylvania, below; Wikimedia
Commons, right)

Looking past the suburb/city binary
Urbanism is incremental and increasingly polycentric.
“The [peripheries] of the cities are not beautiful, of course; they are not well treated. But they
are the future of the city; or they are the city of the future, if you prefer.”
—Renzo Piano, 2015 interview

The secret history of suburbia
19th-century communes and phalansteries
African-American suburbs
Garden Cities and New Towns
(Images: Wikimedia Commons, below left; Andrew Wiese, below center; Amanda Kolson Hurley, below right)

SUBURBAN
(Image: Philip Turner/Historic American Building Survey)

SUBURBA
N
(Image: Jay Reed/Flickr)

SUBURBA
(Image: Carol Highsmith/Library of Congress)

American suburbia
today Just over half of Americans live in
suburbs (Frey 2010).
 In the 50 largest metro areas, 44 percent
of people live in racially diverse
suburbs (with a nonwhite population of
between 20 and 60 percent). Another 17
percent of Americans live in suburbs that
are predominantly nonwhite (Orfield and
Luce 2013).
 In the largest metro areas, 52 percent of
African Americans live in suburbs
(Kneebone 2016).
 Across America, the share of the
population that is families with young
children has declined since the 1950s,
and suburban poverty is rising.
(Map: Michael Bader, Metropolitan Policy Center,
American University)

New modes of suburban living
 Multigenerational and shared homes
 Home as a source of income and/or site of production: accessory
apartments, small-scale farming, in-home businesses
(Images: Toll Brothers, below left; Associated Press, below right)

Choy House
(Images: Michael Moran/OTTO, below left; O’Neill Rose Architects, below right)
Flushing, Queens, New York City
O’Neill Rose Architects

Blackbirds
(Images: Iwan Baan)
Echo Park, Los Angeles
Bestor Architects

Missing Middle housing and neighborhood
design
(Diagram: Opticos Design)
Opticos Design

Missing Middle housing and neighborhood
design
(Rendering and plan: Opticos Design)
Prairie Queen, Papillion, Nebraska
Opticos Design

Daybreak, South Jordan, Utah
(Images: Urban Design Associates)
Urban Design Associates with various homebuilders

Agriburbs 1
(Images: Tom Fox, SWA)
The Cannery, Davis, California
SWA for the New Home Company

Agriburbs 2
(Images: DSGN AGNC)
Spaces of Opportunity, South Phoenix, Arizona
DSGN AGNC

Whole-suburb retrofit
Tysons Corner, Virginia
(Images: Virginia Department of Transportation/Flickr, below left; Fairfax County, below right)

New model malls 1
La Gran Plaza, Forth Worth, Texas
Pacific Mall, Markham, Ontario
(Images: Mariachi Mexicanisimoshow/Youtube, below left; Pacific Mall, below right)

New model malls 2
City Center Bishop Ranch, San Ramon, California
Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Eastland Town Square & Library, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
ACME
(Images: Bishop Ranch, below left; ACME, below right)

Remix the strip
Montessori Primary School, Fayetteville, Arkansas
Marlon Blackwell Architects
The Block, Annandale, Virginia
(Images: Marlon Blackwell Architects, top right and below right;
Northern Virginia Magazine, below)

Speculate wildly
Logistical Ecologies
Hinterlands Urbanism and Landscape
”Freedomland,” in Atlas of Another America: An Architectural Fiction
Keith Krumwiede
(Images: Hinterlands Urbanism and Landscape with MODUS Collective, below left;
Keith Krumwiede, Atlas of Another America: An Architectural Fiction/Park Books, 2016, below right)

“Return to the city” or continuing
suburbanization?
 The high cost of housing in many urban centers will keep pushing people
to the suburbs.
 Some metropolitan areas may show a stark reversal of the late 20th-
century pattern, with diverse suburbs surrounding majority-white centers.
However, some “vanilla suburbs” will likely persist due to resegregation.
 The redevelopment of some suburban hubs into satellite cities (e.g.
Tysons Corner and White Flint) could bring higher-skilled jobs and real
street life to the urban outskirts.

Where we go from here
 Fix zoning to allow for accessory dwellings, Missing Middle housing, corner
stores, and home businesses
 Build bus rapid transit and light rail, especially suburb-to-suburb, but with
measures to prevent displacement
 Prevent resegregation through mixed housing and proactive school
integration
 Support cohousing and new forms of live/work space
 Get architects enthused about the suburbs and encourage officials and
developers to raise the bar for design

Raise the bar
Shaker Design Competition
City of Shaker Heights, Ohio
Symphony Woods/Merriweather Park
Inner Arbor Trust
Columbia, Maryland
(Images: Donnelly Eber Architects, below
left; Amanda Kolson Hurley, below middle
and right)

Amanda Kolson Hurley
amandakhurley.com
hurleyak@gmail.com

The Overlooked Architectural Opportunities of Suburbia

More Related Content

Similar to The Overlooked Architectural Opportunities of Suburbia

Recently uploaded

The Overlooked Architectural Opportunities of Suburbia