Taking the ‘sub’ out of suburb

New Urban News Article with images, 1/1/09

A new book finds the pace of suburban retrofits accelerating, leading to polycentric metro areas.

The time for taking modest steps to alter little pieces of the suburbs is over, say Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson. The rate of redevelopment has sped up in the past several years, but if the promise of suburban transformation is to be realized, we’re going to need larger-scale projects — preferably increments of 40 acres or more, according to Dunham-Jones, of Georgia Tech’s architecture program, and Williamson, an architect and urban designer who teaches at City College of New York.

In their thoroughly researched new book, Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs (Wiley, 272 pp., $75 hardcover), the two assess new urbanist progress outside of America’s central cities. They report the beginning of “a wave of suburban retrofits,” which they attribute to factors such as these:

• “Aging, out-of-date properties, often in first-ring suburbs.” In Denver alone, the authors note, “seven of the region’s thirteen malls have closed to be retrofitted.” Researcher Arthur C. Nelson estimates that nationally, “2.8 million acres of greyfields will become available in the next fifteen years.”