QuoteAs the Manhattanization of America rolls on — the urbanization of not just our cities but our suburbs — many of these efforts are taking place in the depths of car-dependent suburbia. So while developers tout walkability, sense of community, and access to an "exciting Main Street environment," a car may still be necessary to commute to work, or for any kind of substantial errand. The historian Kenneth T. Jackson, author of the masterful Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, once pointed out to me that in many of these new developments, you can buy milk, an ice cream cone, and a great cup of coffee, but you can't buy a mattress. The point is, most households in these communities will still need a car, sometimes two.
This enrages some transit purists. No matter how vibrant a newly developed downtown, if you're not removing the need for a car, you're not really urbanizing the suburbs and making them more livable. Right?
full article: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2014/06/what-transit-will-actually-look-like-in-new-suburbia/372580/
Interesting. Of course, not all of suburbia will be reached by mass transit in any reasonable period of time, so some of these alternatives could prove effective in the shorter term. These are the kind of things a super-non-dense city like ours can take a serious look at.
I look around Jax and I see mostly-empty buses dutifully going here and there. Just some aggressive and widespread advertising would be a small but decent step in the right direction. "Hey people we have a bus that goes to your business park every day. Safely and on time". People here are awfully shy about bus travel for some reason.
Thanks for the post.
Leigh Gallagher is bringing it lately!
I think it's hard to make suburbs transit friendly. DC does it well (in the "nodes"), yet still much of suburban DC is very similar to suburban Atlanta, with winding cul de sacs and horrible planning. CA and NY suburbs are far denser than most core cities, so it's a little bit different for them.
The more we move forward with this idea of "retrofitting" suburbia, the less optimistic I am about it. I just don't see it happening to the point where suburbs will resemble anything urban whatsoever, at least in most of America.
Outside of central cities and pre-WWII suburbs, you'll most likely see nodes of urban development at arterial intersections and around transit lines. In Jax, that means a small urban center and linear nodal development along future high frequency transit corridors (assuming we actually make the investment). People will have to choose the type of environment/area of town that best caters to their lifestyle.