The USA today has an article on something I've been saying for years: suburbs are bad for your health. It's quite obvious, really. The nature of suburbs is that they are spread out, therefore it's almost impossible to walk anywhere. Since no one can walk anywhere to accomplish a daily activity, walking gets relegated to something that people really should do, as opposed to an integral part of everyday life. Therefore, almost no one walks.
There are things suburbs can do to alleviate it, but probably the best you can do is to lessen it somewhat. I doubt the suburbs can ever be transformed into walkable areas. The blocks are too long, the roads are too wide, and the surroundings are dreadfully boring. And to increase the walkability is fundamentally at odds with what people want from the suburbs. As the article states:
Also, the main component of walkable neighborhoods is density, or the number of people per mile square but density is what many homebuyers are trying to get away from. "It's just our own definition of what the good life includes, which is a couple of cars and a house on the cul-de-sac," says Kraft of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "The good life means you can be a couch potato."I think this is starting to change. After all, most people don't think the good life includes an hour and a half commute each way, but that's what it takes in many places to get an affordable house in a typical quiet suburban neighborhood. Of course, many die hard suburbanites would still rather have the nice affordable suburban house even if it means wasting 3 hours a day in traffic. But other people are realizing that the urban experience can be very rewarding, and that a 5 bedroom 3000 square foot house is not truly necessary. It's not only more interesting, it's frequently more convenient, and it's more healthy. Posted by ahyatt at April 23, 2003 09:43 AM
Well, there is an architect, Paolo Soleri, who's been saying the same thing (with the same general critiques) for close to 40 years now (ever since he himself tried to design a suburb). He was an apprentice to Frank L. Wright in the late 40s, and back then everybody was enthralled with the Broadacre City project, and the Levittowns were just starting to be built. I really recommend The Urban Ideal, which is a book of interviews with him over the past 30 or so years, as an introduction to his motivations and work on urban planning.
Posted by: Vladimir S. on May 7, 2003 12:27 PM