Kotkin’s ‘New Suburbanism’

Joel Kotkin, the highly readable and reasonable futurist, strikes again in this month’s 25th anniversary edition of the architecture and design magazine Metropolis. In an article titled “Toward a New Suburbanism,’ Kotkin suggests that urbanists stop trying to impose urban, particularly New Urbanist, fixes on suburbia and instead look at the solutions being developed in suburbia itself, which, in any case, may not be as broke as some think.

After rolling out data on the shift in population, in density (suburbs are growing denser faster than cities) and in diversity (including, he points out, more and better ethnic restaurants), Kotkin points out that these factors are giving suburbs a more urban texture without the help of planners, thanks much. (Social texture too: suburbanites are also more involved in their communities than city dwellers.) Even the bane of suburban life, traffic, is providing its own solution: “suburbanites increasingly prefer to locate their businesses, and find their essential amenities, close to home.”

He then identifies three “New Suburban” models that are occurring naturally: the revived Main Streets of older, first-ring burbs; the manufactured town centers springing up in former industrial sites and other wastelands to tie centerless Levittowns together; and most encouraging, planned nature parks, arts centers and shopping districts in spanking new exburbs where bucolic forest and field can be preserved as a community feature.

Kotkin has faith, in sum, that if civilization moves to the suburbs, so, logically, will its creative energy. After reminding readers that the suburban experiment is only now being refined, Kotkin writes, “we might view the current builders of suburban villages as modern equivalents of those who in previous eras created our great cities.”

Metropolis hides Kotkin’s article behind a fence passable only by subscribers—call it “Old Mediaism”—but Kotkin graciously posts the piece on his site here.