The retrofit of suburbia: The residential pod
New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell
Of all the ways of developing land that prevail today in America, the housing pod is probably the most pervasive. The unintended consequence of a post-World War II policy of mass housing production on “efficient” cleared sites is this: the American Dream of owning a single-family detached house has become enveloped by a system that produces technically, financially, socially, and physically isolating monocultures.
The traditional American Dream regarded the individual house as the necessary home base of participatory democracy. In contrast, houses are now delivered in market-segmented, wholly residential pods whose basic conception, configuration, and operation discourage awareness and engagement outside precise, narrow limits.
