Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream

Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck

Macmillan, 2000 - Architecture - 289 pages

A manifesto by America's most controversial and celebrated town planners, proposing an alternative model for community design.

There is a growing movement in North America to put an end to suburban sprawl and to replace the automobile-based settlement patterns of the past fifty years with a return to more traditional planning principles. This movement stems not only from the realization that sprawl is ecologically and economically unsustainable but also from a growing awareness of sprawl's many victims: children, utterly dependent on parental transportation if they wish to escape the cul-de-sac; the elderly, warehoused in institutions once they lose their driver's licenses; the middle class, stuck in traffic for two or more hours each day.

Founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are at the forefront of this movement, and in Suburban Nation they assess sprawl's costs to society, be they ecological, economic, aesthetic, or social. It is a lively, thorough, critical lament, and an entertaining lesson on the distinctions between postwar suburbia-characterized by housing clusters, strip shopping centers, office parks, and parking lots-and the traditional neighborhoods that were built as a matter of course until mid-century. It is an indictment of the entire development community, including governments, for the fact that America no longer builds towns. Most important, though, it is that rare book that also offers solutions.

Contents

• What Is Sprawl and Why?: 3
• The Devil Is in the Details: 21
• 3: 34
• 4: 48
• The Physical Creation of Society: 59
• The American Transportation Mess: 85
• Sprawl and the Developer: 99
• The Victims of Sprawl: 115
• The City and the Region: 135
• The Inner City: 153
• II: 215
• Development Checklist: 245
• The Congress for the New Urbanism: 257
• Acknowledgments: 267
• Bibliography: 273
• Sources of Illustrations: 281

Bibliographic information

• Title: Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
• Authors: Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Macmillan, 2000
• ISBN: 0865476063, 9780865476066
• Length: 289 pages
• Subjects: Architecture / Urban & Land Use Planning; Political Science / Public Policy / City Planning & Urban Development; Social Science / Sociology / General; Social Science / Sociology / Urban