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"Suburbanites drive 110 more hours each year than city-dwellers--the equivalent of nearly 3 weeks of work." Graphic, Architectural Review I

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Sub-urbanization, that is, the massive movement of people, industries, and businesses from urban cores to outlying fringes, was perhaps the most dramatic in North America immediately after the end of the Second World War. But sub-urbanization itself is not a new concept. Let me explain.

In 1666, London burned to the ground. That event, which has since been referred to as the “Great Fire,” forever changed the field of architecture. Not only did that event significantly influence, even to this day, the way in which buildings in London would be built by prohibiting the use of combustible materials in their construction, the ‘Great Fire’ also introduced to the world Sir Christopher Wren, who illustrated to all who wanted to hear his ambitious plan for rebuilding London. And while changes in the placement of roads and alignments were not executed, for property rights were maintained, other parts of his plan, including over fifty church buildings were built, which cost the city a significant amount of money.

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Financing the reconstruction was provided through increasing municipal property taxes. At the same time, Londoners were unable to move readily back into their old home sites because not only did stricter building regulations require longer construction times, it was also more costly. Increased taxes were a further burden on the citizens. As a result, many rebuilt their homes outside the city limits, where they were free from restrictions, time delays, and above all increased taxes. The Great Fire of 1666 was thus one of the first promoters of widespread sub-urbanization [2].

The next wave of sub-urbanization occurred after the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution coincided with the Agricultural Revolution, which, through consolidation (made possible in part by the Enclosure Acts, caused thousands of farmers to lose their jobs. Attracted by new jobs in industry, cities consequently became populated, experiencing unprecedented growth. And cities, experiencing massive immigration but not a significant increase in its housing stock, along with new problems associated with industrial pollution, became centres of disease, misery, and slums. The situation was so deplorable that people, like Ebenezer Howard, began promoting widespread abandonment of the city and relocation in ‘garden cities,’ such as those built at Welwyn and Letchworth.

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However, garden cities were not intended to be sprawling developments, nor could they be in the pre-automobile age. They were centred on a garden (hence the name ‘garden city’), which was in turn surrounded by a central park. Development occurred between the central park and the city’s outer greenbelt, which defined the outer limits of the city. The garden city was shielded from the central city through a significant buffer zone, which was made possible via a rapid transit connection.

In theory, the garden city was supposed to be a self-contained self-sufficient unit centred on a garden and a transit connection. And while Howard’s concept significantly influenced and promoted suburban expansion in the western world, very few garden cities were built to his specifications.

As the automobile was making its presence known and becoming more affordable, developments were becoming increasingly freed from the need to be centred on transit. The result was the emergence of sprawling suburbs. In 1929, as a way to combat sprawl, Clarence Perry began to promote the concept of the ‘neighbourhood unit.’ Consisting of a population no greater than that which could serve an elementary school, the neighbourhood unit was no greater than 64 hectares and centred on a community centre, consisting of a library, elementary school, and other community services. Thus, the community centre began to replace transit and garden space as the central focal point. Clarence Stein and Henry Wright used this concept when they developed the planned community of Radburn, New Jersey, except with a dendritic street system that attempted to separate automobile and pedestrian spaces.

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After its initial success, Gruen received several other commissions, including a commission by the Dayton Company to build a shopping mall outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The final wave of sub-urbanization, however, came with the end of the Second World War. Spurned by government programs aimed at enabling war veterans the ability to finance a home, growing racial tensions, the creation of the Eisenhower interstate system, a revived construction industry, advances in telecommunications (making key locations less important), and a reduction in automobile costs, the result created the conditions we know today, which are only magnifications of the sprawl immediately following the end of the Second World War.

And while everyone knows the effects of sprawl: homogenization and disintegration, pollution, traffic, immense parking lots and supporting road structures, etc., surprisingly very few groups of architects, until recently, have attempted to tackle such problems. Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and her partner Andres Duany are the founders of a growing movement called the ‘New Urbanism.’ The movement got its momentum by criticizing the principles of the Modern movement, which they contend led to deteriorating the quality of the urban environment by promoting internally-focused buildings that were more or less points in a park. To further advance their point, they created a “Congress for the New Urbanism” (CNU) to replace the “Congress for the International Architecture Moderne” (CIAM) and drew up a charter that refuted most of the points of the charter for the CIAM.

Basically, the Congress of the New Urbanism promotes a return to traditional urban planning. And if one compares the New Urbanist neighbourhood with Clarence Perry’s ‘neighbourhood unit,’ one finds strikingly many similarities.

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However, what is unfortunate about the New Urbanism is that its anti-CIAM stance has caused the movement to take a negative stance on contemporary design. This is terribly unfortunate as time after time, contemporary projects are inserted successfully into the existing urban fabric in European cities, adding interest and vitality. An example of such is the fire station at Place St. Fargeau in Paris, France.

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[1]

London Fire of 1666. http://www.ar.utexas.edu/courses/glossary/building/lfire.html

[2]

Lynch, Kevin. What Time is This Place?. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972.

[3]

Garden Cities of To-morrow. http://www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/howard.htm

[4]

Barnett, Jonathan. The Fractured Metropolis: Improving the New City, Restoring the Old City, Reshaping the Region. New York: Harper Collins Icon Editions, 1995. 77.

[5]

Barnett, Jonathan. 77.

[6]

Personal Photo.

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