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A wall of houses welcomes you into suburbia, communities James Howard Kunstler considered to be “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” Photo: ©iStockphoto.com/Michelle Junior

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Back-to-the-future urbanism
Is new urbanism the answer to suburbia’s dying communities?
By Kathryn Carlson

As baby-boomers become empty-nesters and their children enter the housing market themselves, both generations are increasingly heading back to the cities and leaving suburbia behind.

So, is there a future for the communities that author James Howard Kunstler deems to be "the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world?" It’s people like Lopez Forte and communities like Cornell that are keeping the country’s suburbs and smaller cities on life support — proving there are ways to retrofit suburbia to become more sustainable and more attractive to people of all ages and economic situations.

Granted, not all communities afford the same redevelopment opportunities as others, but new urban-design principles may soon be coming to a town near you. New urbanism is an increasingly trendy planning concept that seeks to recreate the pedestrian-friendly and high-density cities of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

One might even call it a 'back-to-the-future’ approach to urban design.

"If you think of an urban city as a salad, all the ingredients are present and mixed up in one bowl," he explains. "A typical suburb, on the other hand, has all the ingredients of a salad, but everything is in separate bowls at each corner of the table. What we have tried to do is toss it all back together."

And a new ingredient will soon be added to the mix — Markham Centre, an area planned to be Markham’s new downtown core. It represents yet another dose of new urbanism in the area.

David Clark, an architect for the Town of Markham and part of the senior management team responsible for the Markham Centre project, hopes this development will illustrate the possibility of growing outward in a sensible way by intensifying within an urban boundary. "By intensifying inside the urban envelope, it puts less pressure on the need for outward expansion and the growth of the community can be better managed," says Clark. The downtown core is being planned to house over 35,000 people, one high school, four elementary schools, 20-25 hectares of park and open space, 30 hectares of protected open space in the Rouge Valley area and about 17,000 new jobs.

When all is said and done, it seems that Markham residents will be able to have their cake and eat it too, living in a town on the outskirts of a mega-metropolis, all-the-while swapping car keys for walking shoes when the milk-jug is empty or it’s time for school. But as more and more people opt for the city centre and new communities like Cornell or Markham Centre, what will happen to the suburbs that don’t easily lend themselves to urbanization?

Even with the issue of private property ownership aside, Clark agrees that it’s very difficult to urbanize already established suburbs and smaller cities simply because of the way the streets and lots were originally designed.

But John Norquist of the Congress for the New Urbanism, an urban planning organization based in Chicago, Illinois, holds out hope that there is a way to bring urbanism out to suburbs that don’t easily lend themselves to infill.

But other than rendering the community more walkable or developing it from the ground up on open land - as was the case in both Cornell and Markham Centre - urban planners like Dark say some of the best opportunities for infusing new urbanism into suburbs come in the form of greyfields. Greyfields are developed sites that are economically and physically ripe for major redevelopment.

For example, a failed shopping mall has the potential to be transformed into multi-family dwellings with retail and employment opportunities located on the ground level. But Jill Grant, a professor in the School of Planning at Dalhousie University, says it’s important to remember that suburban life is still desirable for a lot of people.

"People will likely want to live in suburbs well into the future, even in the midst of what’s happening within the oil industry," she explains. "Prices of oil may well go up and while a lot of literature seems to assume that people will move to the city for work, maybe industry will move out to the people."

In the meantime, new urbanism will continue to be infused into smaller cities as well as new and existing suburbs such as McKenzie Towne in Calgary’s southeast corner, East Clayton in the eastern part of Surrey and Oak Park Community in Oakville.

But while professors, urban planners and governments are trying to determine the fate of many of the country’s suburbs and smaller cities, people like Gabriela Lopez Forte won’t be biting their nails in suspense. Instead, they’ll be enjoying daily strolls on the sidewalks of their new urban neighbourhoods.

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