Suburban Nation Summary

When many Americans picture their perfect dream homes, they are likely to imagine them in suburbia, far from all the noise and traffic of the busy cities. However, this perfect image is severely problematic for multiple reasons. In the book, Suburban Nation the authors explain how the increase in sprawl has led to several problems. These problems range from social, to economic, to environmental. This book starts by explaining what sprawl it to its readers and gives a brief history behind the rise of sprawl. The authors demonstrate the problems sprawl creates and how cars/roads play a role. They show us that the way the United States builds houses is odd and unsustainable. Unfortunately, another problem that comes from sprawl, is that it fails

to create a comfortable community. The authors explain who is involved in the development of sprawl as well as who become the victims of it. Then they tell us how to build successful, safe, and comfortable cities by giving us the key components of what makes cities great. They end their book by telling readers what they can do to make a difference and hopefully, stop sprawl from spreading.
Before the authors can explain why sprawl is bad and how to fix and avoid it, they give us some background on two types of growth for cities: suburban sprawl and traditional growth. There are five components to sprawl; housing subdivisions, shopping centers, office and business parks, civil institutions, and roadways. Of course all of these things are in traditional cities, but the big difference is that in suburban sprawl the first four components are all separate from one another and only connected by roadways. Whereas, in traditional cities the first four components are easy to get to and they often share spaces, with roadways playing a smaller role in how people get from one place to the other. Traffic is often congested because people always need to travel to places in suburban areas. These are places they are not able to walk to easily or feel comfortable walking to. Many times places may be close but they are difficult to reach directly, unless people use cars to get there.
One of the other parts of the book that really stuck out to me was the chapter that discussed why a “walkable” city makes for a good city.

It is difficult, if not impossible for communities to form if there are no communal spaces for people to engage with one another in. In suburban areas, there is a severe lack of communal spaces, since work, play, and home are all far from one another, leaving pedestrians without a way to walk or a reason to. The authors list a few ways planners must design their cities so they are walkable. The most important component is having meaningful places for people to go to. Even interesting and desirable places are easily accessible to get to on foot; people are more likely to walk there. Three other important things needed to create walkable cities are safe streets, which are also comfortable and interesting. People don’t want to walk in open, unsafe, spaces with wide streets and continuous lines of garage doors. The authors assure us that creating walkable cities with streets that incorporate the previously listed items will create healthy, flourishing

communities.
Another issue is that developers do not have as much respect now as they did before 1945. This problem leads to the market “experts” dictating how many communities are built. Since developers need funds in order to enact their plans they often times go along with what is being asked of them, even if they disagree with them. However, these “experts” pull from a limited amount of sources and go for quantity over quality. This ends up only perpetuating suburban sprawl and inhibits healthy growth.
About halfway through the book, readers are convinced that suburban sprawl is not as good as traditional growth. The readers start to wonder who exactly suffers from sprawl, and the authors give a whole chapter dedicated to showing who the victims of sprawl are. Children suffer from sprawl because they are unable to grow and learn how to be adults. They lose their autonomy as they have to depend on their parents to drive them where they want/need to go until they can drive themselves (further contributing to the traffic congestion). Parents also suffer as they have to worry and struggle to get their children from place to place. Teenagers get bored from the lack of places to go and do things. This seems like an oversimplification, especially with how many video games and other technologies teenagers use to entertain themselves and interact with digital communities. Another group of victims are the elderly, who lose their autonomy once they can no longer drive and cannot depend on the scarce to no public transportation in these communities. Commuters suffer from the high amounts of traffic caused by the need for everyone to use vehicles to travel from place to place. This leaves less time for leisure activities for the full-time workers. Municipalities also go bankrupt because of the cost of the services they must provide to distant houses. By far, the immobile poor suffer the most. They cannot live in these communities because they cannot afford the houses or the cost of having and maintaining a vehicle. This is why often times, inner cities have a concentration of poor people while jobs start disappearing.
It is not all bad however, the authors explain the developers can plan for regional growth and help shape it.

They list several steps to do so. It is important that developers admit that growth will occur and plan accordingly. They must set up and rural boundary to help persevere some of the surrounding environments. Then develop a buffer zone where future compact communities can be developed if it is necessary. After that, several corridors or pathways need to be designated to help connect the community from place to place. Also make sure that locally undesirable land uses are fairly distributed and not all pushed to one area. According to the authors, following these guidelines, along with a few others in the textbook will help build effective and healthy cities in the region.
The authors admit that in recent years there has been some push back against suburban sprawl, but ultimately not enough to stop it, or even slow it done significantly. They say by designing with the tools of traditional growth and instituting policies to help promote this kind of growth communities can be better planned in the future. This does not happen without a bottom up structure for policy making and an engaged community. Although it can be hard to listen to the community sometimes because NIMBYs are hard to work with, overall community feedback is productive and

important.
Before this class, I knew practically nothing about planning or why it was so important. I am from Wyoming, Michigan, which is a small city near Grand Rapids. I never really thought about what went in to planning and maintaining the city while growing up. My neighborhood is not wholly traditional or suburban as it has components of each. Since reading this textbook, I have been able to see some benefits and flaws in the planning on my community, which is really eye-opening. This book gives several good reasons for why suburban sprawl is not good for the environment, the community, or economy. It lays out who is effected by sprawl and what can be done is the future to try and save Americans cities. However, the arguments could have been more effective if the authors had given counterarguments to their points and then argued against those as well. There authors also do not talk about how big of a role technology plays in the lives of city and suburban dwellers. Both of these areas could be further improved upon and explored to strengthen the main arguments of the book. That being said, I would still use this textbook in an introductory because it gives a good starting point for those that no nothing about planning, like myself.