Abstract
Suburbanization is a truly global phenomenon, fueled over the past half-century by modernization, motorization, and growing affluence of cities and their inhabitants. Also at play are the location-liberating effects of information technologies, the desire to escape central-city crime and congestion, and a general preference for more spacious, large-lot living as household incomes rise. The first wave of suburbanization—residents moving to dormitory communities, triggered by streetcar investments in the late nineteenth century—was soon followed by a second phase: retailers migrating outward to be closer to consumers. Suburbanization’s third wave saw companies and businesses following suit, leaving downtowns and setting up shop in office parks and corporate centers to be closer to labor markets and to save on rents, that is, the suburbanization of employment. Robert Cervero, America’s Suburban Centers: The Transportation– Land Use Link (Boston: Unwin-Hyman, 1989). With regional activities, and thus trip origins and destinations, spread all over the map, to no surprise the private automobile steadily gained ascendancy over these three waves of suburbanization. Suburban gridlock and environmental problems associated with it soon followed. Robert Cervero, Suburban Gridlock (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Press, 1986); Suburban Gridlock II (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Press, 2013).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Notes
- 1.
Robert Cervero, America’s Suburban Centers: The Transportation–Land Use Link (Boston: Unwin-Hyman, 1989).
- 2.
Robert Cervero, Suburban Gridlock (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Press, 1986); Suburban Gridlock II (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Press, 2013).
- 3.
Cervero, America’s Suburban Centers.
- 4.
Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (New York: Anchor, 1992).
- 5.
Robert Lang, Edgeless Cities: Exploring the Elusive Metropolis (Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute, 2003).
- 6.
Cervero, America’s Suburban Centers.
- 7.
Elizabeth Kneebone, “Jobs Revisited: The Changing Geography of Metropolitan Employment” (Washington DC, Brookings Institution, Metropolitan Policy Program, 2009).
- 8.
Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2009).
- 9.
Urban Land Institute, “Housing in the Evolving American Suburb” (Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute, 2016).
- 10.
Joe Cortright, “Surging Center City Job Growth,” City Observatory (February 2015).
- 11.
Urban Land Institute, “Housing in the Evolving American Suburb.”
- 12.
Kneebone, “Jobs Revisited.”
- 13.
Brad Broberg, “The Walkable Demand,” On Common Ground (Winter 2017): 4–11.
- 14.
Chris Leinberger and Patrick Lynch, “Foot Traffic Ahead: Ranking Walkable Urbanism in America’s Largest Metros” (Washington, DC: Smart Growth America, 2016).
- 15.
Dong W. Sohn and Anne Vernez Moudon, “The Economic Value of Office Clusters: An Analysis of Assessed Property Values, Regional Form, and Land Use Mix in King County, Washington,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 28, no. 1 (2008): 86–99.
- 16.
Louis H. Masotti and Jeffrey K. Haden, The Urbanization of the Suburbs (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1973).
- 17.
Dunham-Jones and Williamson, Retrofitting Suburbia.
- 18.
Robert Burchell and Sahan Mukherji, “Conventional Development versus Managed Growth: the Cost of Sprawl,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 93, no. 9 (2003): 1534–40.
- 19.
Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson, Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2004).
- 20.
DPZ, “Retrofit-Infill: Suburban Retrofit Infill: A Lexicon of Advanced Techniques,” Miami, Florida, 2008, https://transect.org/docs/SuburbanRetrofitBoards.pdf, accessed February 12, 2016. In “Retrofit-Infill,” DPZ define the S7 “business park” as: homogeneous, auto-dependent, with limited connectivity, and lacking a relationship between buildings and street; a random, train-wreck pattern of building placement; front lawns; one-to-multistory buildings; and a civic space consisting largely of indoor lunch cafeterias. The urban center (T5), on the other hand, has a mix of houses, commercial activity, offices, workplaces, and civic buildings; predominantly attached buildings; buildings oriented to streets forming a street wall; 3- to 5-story buildings; and civic spaces made up of parks, plazas, and median landscaping.
- 21.
Galina Tachieva, Sprawl Repair Manual (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010).
- 22.
Paul Lukez, Suburban Transformations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007).
- 23.
Dunham-Jones and Williamson, Retrofitting Suburbia.
- 24.
James Braswell, “Reinventing the Office Park,” Planetizen July 29, 2014, http://www.planetizen.com/node/70529, accessed August 14, 2016.
- 25.
Jay Fitzgerald, “Developers Take Steps to Reinvest Suburban Office Parks,” Boston Globe, July 27, 2014, http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/07/26/suburban-office-parks-turning-live-work-play-development-compete-with-cities/kYJHwumXiLKU2bFvCvhBeM/story.html?hootPostID=cc6a261a6d1864b314b832e2aa1822bb.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Reid Ewing et al., “Traffic Generated by Mixed-Use Developments: Six-Region Study Using Consistent Built Environmental Measures,” Journal of Urban Planning and Development 137, no. 3 (2011): 248–61.
- 28.
Robert Cervero, “Land-Use Mixing and Suburban Mobility,” Transportation Quarterly 42, no. 3 (1988): 429–46.
- 29.
Ibid., 435–36.
- 30.
Robert Dunphy, “The Suburban Office Parking Conundrum,” Development Magazine, Fall 2016, http://www.naiop.org/en/Magazine/2016/Fall-2016/Development-Ownership/The-Suburban-Office-Parking-Conundrum.aspx.
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
Fee and Munson, Inc., Hacienda Business Park: Design Guidelines (San Francisco, CA: Fee and Munson, Inc., 1983).
- 33.
Robert Cervero and Bruce Griesenbeck, “Factors Influencing Commuting Choices in Suburban Labor Markets: A Case Analysis of Pleasanton, California,” Transportation Research A 22, no. 3 (1988): 151–61.
- 34.
Kathleen McCormick, “Cottle Transit Village: Dense Mixed Use in San Jose,” Urban Land 74, no. 9/10 (2015): 94–98.
- 35.
Ibid., 97.
- 36.
Cervero, Suburban Gridlock and America’s Suburban Centers; Garreau, Edge City.
- 37.
Luke Mullens, “The Audacious Plan to Turn a Sprawling DC Suburb into a Big City,” The Washingtonian, Open House Blog, Development, March 29, 2015, http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/openhouse/development/the-audacious-plan-to-turn-a-sprawling-dc-suburb-into-a-big-city.php.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Robert Cervero et al., Transit Oriented Development in America: Experiences, Challenges, and Prospects, Report 102 (Washington, DC: Transit Cooperative Research Program, 2004), 94–98.
- 40.
Mullens, “The Audacious Plan.”
- 41.
Lisa Rein and Kafia Hosh, “Transformed Tysons Corner Still Years Away in Fairfax,” Washington Post, June 23, 2010.
- 42.
Hiroaki Suzuki, Robert Cervero, and Kanako Iuchi, Transforming Cities with Transit (Washington, DC, The World Bank, 2013).
- 43.
Lisa Selin Davis, “Luxury Living on the Mall Parking Lot,” TheWall Street Journal, December 11, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/luxury-living-on-the-mall-parking-lot-1418313891.
- 44.
Ron Heckman, “Infill Retail Not without Its Challenges,” Urban Land, November 13, 2013, http://urbanland.uli.org/news/infill-retail-not-without-challenges/.
- 45.
See http://thorntonplaceliving.com/apartments/, accessed March 27, 2015.
- 46.
Urban Land Institute, Shifting Suburbs: Reinventing Infrastructure for Compact Development (Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute, 2012).
- 47.
Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, “Mass Transit Systems Are Expanding into the Suburbs,” in Urban Transportation Innovations Worldwide: A Handbook of Best Practices, ed. Roger Kemp and Carl J. Stephani (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015).
- 48.
G. M. Filisko, “The Suburbs Were Made for Walking,” On Common Ground (Winter 2017): 24–29.
- 49.
Urban Land Institute, Shifting Suburbs.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Robert Cervero, Erick Guerra, and Stefan Al
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cervero, R., Guerra, E., Al, S. (2017). Suburban Transformations. In: Beyond Mobility. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-835-0_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-835-0_6
Publisher Name: Island Press, Washington, DC
Print ISBN: 978-1-61091-928-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-61091-835-0
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)