index

Suggestions about planning for greater density

click on images for full-size:

Path behind houses in Seaside, Florida

Community planning exercise (Texas)

Non-conformist motel, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Possibilities for attachment and temporary places, Reston, Virginia

As with the other suggestions, these pertain mostly to already built suburbs. They are independent of the larger and more controversial policy changes that would have a greater impact on suburban places.

Are there tactics for spatial densification that can be applied in already built areas? Streets can be narrowed, corners changed, to slow down traffic. Bike paths and footpaths and small parks can be fitted in, to increase the sense of being in a connected neighborhood. Zoning could be changed to allow small local stores and live-work apartments. These have worked well in many communities; they can increase local feeling in existing suburbs. Are there other old-time spatial and legal tactics that could be used? (And, should some of the legal definitions be changed?)
Suburban communities could increase their own inner connectedness and complexity by finding occasions for staging intense planning events similar to the charrettes where many community members of different status and expertise groups participate. Such events make everyone involved more aware of the complexities of their places and its multiplicities of grammars and values. The occasions need not be proposed architectural or planning changes; they could be matters of school or recreation policy, or utility regulation, or disputes with neighboring areas, and so on. They would increase the complexity and self-awareness of the interactions in the community.
To combat the image of sprawl as the land of behavioral conformity, cookie-cutter houses and franchises, could we find and emphasize local items that do not fit the standard categories? "It is the residual, the irreducible -- whatever cannot be classified or codified according to categories devised subsequent to production -- which is, here as always, the most precious." (Lefebvre 1991, 220) There are more odd corners and eccentricities than are usually visible. Show off the local Watts Towers. Some of this may happen through competition for tourism, but there will be other odd items that might not attract the outsider but could increase the residents' sense of locality.
Are there ways to create more "possibilities for attachment" (Hertzberger 1991, 177) along the edges or borders of suburban open spaces by adding niches or low walls or other in-between features that would encourage sociality by the formation of temporary places?