To regain its appeal and improve its future, suburbia can’t just look to the past.
“Paradise Planned” appears at a time when suburbia is rapidly losing its appeal. As The Times reported Thursday, suburbs are experiencing a major exodus as young people move to cities — and stay there. They’re increasingly delaying, or avoiding altogether, the “inevitable” move to suburbia. Young people want what cities have to offer. Can suburbia shift its own paradigm to give them something similar? Stern would say yes — that the garden suburb can do just that.
“It is an encounter in the most literal sense,” writes the futurist Geoff Manaugh in Gielen’s jarring yet utterly mesmerizing new book, “Ciphers.” “A forensic confrontation with something all but impossible to comprehend.”
We may be starting to comprehend the mess a little better. Smart Growth America’s just-released report, “Measuring Sprawl 2014,” is illuminating. In it, researchers determine that several quality-of-life factors improve as sprawl decreases. Individuals living in compact, connected metro areas (akin to the garden suburb) were found to have greater economic mobility. These folks spend less on both housing and transportation, and have greater transit options. They tend to live longer, safer, healthier lives than their peers in metro areas with sprawl. The report cites evidence that people who live in areas with sprawl suffer from more obesity, high blood pressure and fatal car crashes.