The New Suburbanism

Image via University of Arkansas
Community Design Center

What is the “New Suburbanism?” According to The Planning Center's 2005 publication "The New Suburbanism: A Realist's Guide To The American Future" it is...

...a practical and beneficial way to address fundamental issues facing suburbia and support the nurturing and development of semiautonomous villages throughout the expanding periphery. In promoting the village concept, we share some common objectives with the new urbanists, notably the importance of public and open spaces as well as cultivating community. Yet at the same time we adopt what we see as a more flexible and practical design and policy agenda - one that we believe can be effectively implemented in suburban communities.

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In summary, The Planning Center built an alternative vision for the suburb and this is what they found to be true:

1. Suburbia represents America’s future growth. How America copes with this growth - and how the suburbs evolve - will determine the future quality of life for the majority of our population.


2. To develop better suburbs, planners, policy makers, and developers must understand why most people prefer to live there and must seek to preserve those key characteristics. Suburban development has to be sensitive to the specific traits of an area’s environment, topography, culture and sociology. There is no single model that fits all situations.


3. The future of suburbia appears to lie in focusing on the development of “villages” that provide cultural, economic, educational and religious sustenance. This will require the evolution of elements - social institutions, well-planned streets, open spaces, work spaces and housing - that function within the context of an existing or new community.


4. The suburbs can only be improved with the input and support of those who live there. Top-down solutions, no matter how enlightened, are frequently ineffective. Denser forms of village-like suburban areas must be cast as assets, not as threats to the surrounding communities of single-family homes.


5. Future suburbs will succeed by utilizing the land efficiently and by providing a complete range of alternatives to accommodate varying life stages. In this manner, individual suburbs can fill critical niches not only for individual cities, but entire regions.