Subverting Suburbia

Next Gen Nota­bles: Sub­vert­ing Suburbia

“We are keep­ing the baby and we are using the bath­wa­ter to water our garden.”

A pub­lished online arti­cle about me and some friends get­ting a notable fin­ish in the 2009 Next Gen­er­a­tion Metrop­o­lis Mag­a­zine Design Com­pe­ti­tion. Mark Tir­pak, who is not men­tioned in the arti­cle, also helped–he is an urban plan­ner.  Sam Schonzeit did most of the archi­tec­ture work that I helped do ren­der­ing, and John Hart Asher did the land­scape design.

July 17, 2009

Every Thurs­day for the next few months, we’re post­ing excerpts from notable 2009 Next Gen­er­a­tion pro­pos­als that didn’t quite make the final selec­tion fea­tured in the May Issue of the mag­a­zine. This week: Sub­vert­ing Sub­ur­bia, by Sam Schonzeit, John Hart Asher, and J. Parker Williams

Schonzeit, Asher, [Tir­pak] and Williams envi­sion a holis­tic approach to decreas­ing Amer­i­cans’ resource con­sump­tion through smarter, community-oriented sub­di­vi­sions. Here are some key excerpts from their proposal:

What is the title of your pro­posal?
Sub­vert­ing Sub­ur­bia: A holis­tic approach to decreas­ing our con­sump­tion of gaso­line, water, and elec­tric­ity while fos­ter­ing com­mu­nity, health, beauty, and a bur­geon­ing economy

How would you describe it?
We are reha­bil­i­tat­ing sub­di­vi­sions where infra­struc­ture, land­scape, build­ings, and peo­ple already exist in a form that makes energy addic­tion inevitable. Through rezon­ing, re-envisioning the planted land­scape, and min­i­mal archi­tec­tural inter­ven­tions we are func­tion­al­iz­ing the sub­di­vi­sion to respond to global envi­ron­men­tal, health, and eco­nomic crises and the human desire for community.

How does it per­tain to energy?
Rezon­ing to pro­vide ser­vices within the sub­di­vi­sion decreases the need for gaso­line. Archi­tec­tural inter­ven­tions make homes more effi­cient, decreas­ing the need for elec­tric­ity which is being cre­ated locally. The need for irri­ga­tion, a sig­nif­i­cant drain on power and a dimin­ish­ing water sup­ply, is reduced through an alter­na­tive approach to landscaping.

What makes it impor­tant?
We are look­ing at some­thing that is rarely looked at with any seri­ous­ness because it is so ugly and it is so rife. It is a totally unglam­orous project and it is noth­ing new in sev­eral ways. The first is that we are not propos­ing a new prod­uct. We are not propos­ing a new mold to be made or a new type of devel­op­ment to be built. We are look­ing at the prob­lem of energy con­sump­tion, people’s iso­la­tion within their com­mu­nity, depen­dence on for­eign oil and see­ing that we can make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion with min­i­mal inter­ven­tions. We are look­ing at a solu­tion that does not require the raz­ing of an exist­ing par­a­digm and its phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion; rather, we are propos­ing a gen­tle and holis­tic cure. We are keep­ing the baby and we are using the bath­wa­ter to water our garden.

Our pro­posal is also noth­ing new in the sense that we are propos­ing a return to a model of liv­ing that existed in this coun­try until WWII. We are propos­ing that peo­ple use the land to grow food that will feed their com­mu­nity, reduce the need for fuel to bring pro­duce to mar­ket, cre­ate a health­ier diet, and pro­vide exer­cise. We are propos­ing that the dec­o­ra­tive plants in the com­mu­nity should not impinge on the already stressed water sup­ply and will not require the addi­tional energy needed to pump water. Our ideas are not new. They are typ­i­cal of New Urban­ism and our inter­ven­tions should appear famil­iar. It is where and when we are propos­ing these ideas and the scalar ram­i­fi­ca­tions that are orig­i­nal. And it is impor­tant now because these houses were built with an old econ­omy in mind, one in which peo­ple had money to heat and cool them buy gas to get to and from them. Now those houses and the land they are on or were sup­posed to be on need to be repurposed.

What is your busi­ness plan for real­iz­ing your pro­posal?
Politi­cians have lately bandied about fig­ures approach­ing a tril­l­lion dol­lars in aid pack­ages. Obama has spo­ken of a green econ­omy and cre­at­ing 4 mil­lion jobs. This era has lately been com­pared to the Great Depres­sion and the cre­ation of jobs may be sim­i­lar to the WPA. We con­ceive of our project on a sim­i­lar scale. We think it is sim­i­larly impor­tant but sig­nif­i­cantly cheaper. It can be done incre­men­tally, shut­ter by shut­ter, house by house, sub­di­vi­sion by sub­di­vi­sion. We are cre­at­ing a mon­u­men­tal fix and not a mon­u­ment. The mon­u­ments have been built. We are mend­ing the cracks.

This is a project funded by the gov­ern­ment and given the recent rhetoric we don’t think that that is an out­landish assump­tion. Despite this assump­tion, real­ize we still need to gar­ner the atten­tion of a larger pub­lic. Our first step would be to choose a sub­di­vi­sion and get a com­mu­nity inter­ested. We would throw a party to sell the con­cept and to demon­strate what it could be like, how much money would be saved, the pos­i­tive lifestyle changes a pro­gram like ours would fos­ter. There would be tem­po­rary dis­plays and experts, food, and a band. We would invite peo­ple to the party through tra­di­tional means and also by set­ting up inten­tional com­mu­ni­ties on the Inter­net. We would con­tinue to host events peri­od­i­cally in which rel­e­vant par­ties would demon­strate dif­fer­ent ways to real­ize a more func­tion­al­ized sub­di­vi­sion. These events would be video­taped and posted online. We would set up part­ner­ships with vol­un­teer orga­ni­za­tions that might be will­ing to help low-income clients install inter­ven­tions that would lower their util­ity bills. We could pos­si­bly estab­lish a tool lend­ing library that peo­ple could use to gar­den or install some of the inter­ven­tions themselves.

If we were able to gen­er­ate enough inter­est and fund­ing with these activ­i­ties we would cre­ate a need-based (or need-blind?) con­test or raf­fle where the winner’s home would become a demon­stra­tion home for the com­mu­nity. Our zon­ing goals would pig­gy­back on the inter­ven­tions of the smaller scale. By show­ing that our archi­tec­tural reha­bil­i­ta­tions can decrease energy use on a small scale, we believe we would be in a bet­ter posi­tion to lobby for zon­ing changes that would act merely as an exten­sion of an already proven approach.

2 Responses to “Subverting Suburbia”

1. Kevin Says:
   January 22nd, 2010 at 11:03 am

   Detroit hous­ing is extremely cheap, there are many first time home buy­ers here. I think that Detroit is a per­fect can­di­date for a Sub­vert­ing Sub­ur­bia project. The sub­ur­ban area of Detroit is vast, and in need of rehab. His­toric neigh­bor­hoods are full of enor­mous homes sell­ing for less than $100k. Many of the homes in these neigh­bor­hoods have more than 4 bed­rooms which would be per­fect for multi-family hous­ing along­side oth­ers which can be con­verted to retail/commercial. If you are inter­ested in test­ing your ideas, Detroit is the place to do it. Just wanted to let you know, con­grats on get­ting into Metropolis.

2. pooja Says:
   April 8th, 2010 at 10:43 pm

   hey der!!!
   i m a stu­dent nd doin dis­ser­ta­tion on bio cli­matic archi­tec­ture..
   ur arti­cle really helped..
   

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