Case studies in retrofitting suburbia

Cathedral City, California's rehabbed Palm Desert Drive. Photo: Freedman Tung + Sasaki Urban Design

“Retrofitting suburbia” has been a buzz-phrase for some time among sustainable building types. The idea is that we can’t build a post-carbon world solely through spiffy new planned cities like Masdar or New Songdo; we’ve got to rehab the places we’ve already built – namely the paved, sprawly, auto-dependent landscapes that comprise much of the developed world.

It’s all a bit abstract until you start looking at some specific places, which is the point of Adapting Suburbs in the Twenty First Century, a traveling exhibit on display the Seattle chapter of the American Institute of Architects through April 29.

The show presents six case studies – some theoretical, some actually built – for turning streetscapes designed for cars into place that also work for walkers, cyclists and transit riders. Cathedral City, Calif., turned its very (very) wide Palm Canyon Drive corridor into a more inviting boulevard with walkways, buffers of palm trees and other traffic-calming elements. Englewood, Colo., turned a shuttered shopping mall into a mixed-use “downtown” with a public library, a light rail station, housing, shops and office space.

A theoretical plan for “Anytown, USA” shows how a gas station might fill in unused space with a streetfront office; how a fast-food restaurant could wrap retail/office buildings around its extra-large setbacks; and how a ranch house could use its front yard space for a home office, an extra bedroom or a rental unit.

One theme that emerges is shifting from single-use zoning to spaces that incorporate a mix of uses. Another is lots and lots of infill – fitting new buildings in street setbacks and parking lots to create the level of density that supports mass transit.

“Adaptations is key to the survival of any species, and this is the future challenge for suburban areas throughout the United States, particularly those characterized by single-use zoning, low-density development and extreme auto-dependency,” reads an introductory note.

Many of the examples come from Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson's book Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, which argues that there’s still hope for suburbs in a low-carbon world.

The exhibit doesn’t wade into how to pay for these projects, even though architects are plenty aware that not much of any sort of development is getting built these days. Instead, it suggests that, once we muster the will for de-carbonizing our neighborhoods, we’ve got templates for making it happen.

Can’t make it to Seattle? Dunham-Jones explains how to retrofit suburbia in a TED talk last year: