Andrew Burleson

Whatever shall we do…

neoHOUSTON, urban designer and real estate consultant, Jan 13, 09.

Tagged with urban planning, neighborhoods

“How can we save the suburbs?” asks Allison Arieff.

In urban areas, there’s rich precedent for the transformation or reuse of abandoned lots or buildings. Vacant lots have been converted into pocket parks, community gardens and pop-up stores (or they remain vacant, anxiously awaiting recovery and subsequent conversion into high-end office space condos). Old homes get divided into apartments, old factories into lofts, old warehouses into retail.

Projects like Manhattan’s High Line show that even derelict train tracks can be turned into something as valuable to citizens as a vibrant public park. A brownfield site in San Francisco has been cleaned up and will house an eco-literacy center for the city’s youth. Hey, even a dump (Fresh Kills, on Staten Island) is undergoing a remarkable metamorphosis into a recreation area.

But similar transformation within the carefully delineated form of a subdivision is not so simple. These insta-neighborhoods were not designed or built for flexibility or change.

So what to do with the abandoned houses, the houses that were never completed or the land that was razed for building and now sits empty?

I couldn’t have phrased this better. This is the problem with suburban design, it’s a one-use and one-use only infrastructure design for all time.