Suburban Nation - Andres Duany [97]
• Growth cannot be stopped; it never has been. The only hope is to shape it into a more benevolent form, the neighborhood.
• The profit motive is not the problem with development. The best neighborhoods in America were built for profit.
• Most issues are interrelated. Traffic, housing, schools, crime, and the environment can be successfully addressed only if taken together, within the context of the neighborhood.
• Planners and other professionals are specialists who, when left to themselves, distort the issues. Only generalists can be trusted to offer reasonable advice.
• The role of the generalist must be played by citizens, but citizens can forfeit that role by becoming the specialists of their own backyard. A Nimby is nothing but a specialist who lacks formal training.
This book attempts to create expert generalists, and we hope that it will help its readers participate in a positive way. However, we admit that the issues at stake are quite complex, and that the path of reason may not always be clear. In such situations, it may be best to simply remember this refrain:
No more housing subdivisions!
No more shopping centers!
No more office parks!
No more highways!
Neighborhoods or nothing!
Of course, the ultimate goal must not be limited to the cessation of sprawl. For our country to prosper, Americans must also concern themselves with the building of community. The immediate challenge, however, is not to convince people to support community but to confirm what they already know in their hearts: community flourishes best in traditional neighborhoods. When this fact is widely acknowledged, government officials, designers, and citizens will begin to act with the confidence that what is good for neighborhoods is good for America. Then, the work of rebuilding can begin.
ANDRES DUANY
ELIZABETH PLATER-ZYBERK
JEFF SPECK
SUBURBAN NATION
ANDRES DUANY and ELIZABETH PLATER-ZYBERK lead a firm that has designed more than three hundred new neighborhood and community revitalization plans, most notably for Seaside, Florida, and Kentlands, Maryland. They are co-founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism and they lecture and teach widely, including at the University of Miami, where Plater-Zyberk is Dean of the School of Architecture. After leading projects at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. for a decade, JEFF SPECK spent four years as director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he founded the Governors’ Institute on Community Design. He is now a principal in Speck & Associates, a city-planning practice based in Washington, D.C.
Acclaim for SUBURBAN NATION
“A powerful manifesto … No one has yet produced a work as pithy or likely to win converts to the cause as this briskly written and persuasive brief.”
—Alexander von Hoffman, The Boston Sunday Globe
“I usually find missionaries and visionaries tiresome, or scary. But the authors of this book are different. Their diagnosis of late-twentieth-century American ugliness is full-bore, but their prescriptions are nuanced and sensible … Suburban Nation, as inspiring as it is useful, may be the best guide to reforming the free market ever published. It made me feel like a citizen again.”
—Kurt Andersen, author of Turn of the Century
“With more than half of Americans now living in the suburbs, sprawl affects nearly everyone. Suburban Nation, with its clear discussion of the issues and workable solutions, should be required reading for local officials, developers, and concerned citizens.”
—David Rocks, Business Week
“One does not have to agree with all the arguments in this impassioned critique of suburbia to admire—and learn from—the authors’ proven commitment to improving our