Suburban Nation - Andres Duany [4]
But politics delivers only temporary buffetings, while obsolescence is terminal. There are important questions that should be asked now about the book, such as “What has proven to be wrong?” and “What was left out?” Although I am fairly certain that I will not be able to repeat this claim in a twentieth-anniversary edition, so far nothing much has been contradicted or become irrelevant. In fact, the book seems less urgent today only because its message has permeated public discourse. It has been absorbed in initiatives of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the U.S. Green Building Council, and others, as Lizz relates. In fact, many of the book’s prescriptions have by now been institutionalized as regulations. I confess that for me this is not always gratifying, as I find revolution more interesting than administration.
Regarding what was left out of the book ten years ago, several issues that were then on the sidelines have grown dramatically in importance. Chief among them is local food production, now evolving into Agricultural Urbanism (“Ag is the new golf!”). Then there are the awful health implications of the suburban lifestyle, which would warrant an entire chapter now that the research is available. And insufficient emphasis was placed on the problem of water quality, although dedicating too many pages to any challenge not experienced universally would not have been in the spirit of the book.
Perhaps what most dates Suburban Nation is its discussion of the problem we marginally addressed as “air pollution,” now recognized as the catastrophe of climate change. A better understanding of this issue would have imparted a greater urgency to our call for the reform of suburban sprawl, and positioned the book closer to the center of the current debate. We can now state in no uncertain terms that blame for the planet’s environmental problems lies with the lifestyle of the American middle class: the way we live large and occupy too much land; the way we must drive to accomplish so many perfectly ordinary tasks; the way we grow our food; and the way our dependence on cars leads us to compensate for social isolation with an astonishing level of unnecessary consumption. In other words, the root cause of the fearsome crises we are facing is this pleasant suburban life of ours, and we have to do something about it right now.
And today, as clueless design consultants foist sprawl on Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia, this book becomes even more essential. There is apparently a Chinese edition of Suburban Nation. We wish it many printings.
—ANDRES DUANY, MIAMI, FLORIDA
INTRODUCTION
You’re stuck in traffic again.
As you creep along a highway that was widened just three years ago, you pass that awful new billboard: COMING SOON: NEW HOMES! Already the bulldozers are plowing down pine trees, and a thin layer of mud is oozing onto the roadway. How could this be happening? Over the years, you’ve seen a lot of forest and farmland replaced by rooftops, but these one hundred acres had been left unscathed, at the whim of a wealthy owner. Now, it is said, the owner has passed on, the children have cashed out, and the property has fallen victim to the incessant pressures of growth.
These one hundred acres, where you hiked and sledded as a child, are now zoned for single-family housing. They have been bought and sold on that premise, and there is a strong demand for new houses. The developer is not about to go away. The anticipated buyers of these new homes, your future neighbors,