And then, lots of “green space” and zoning to try to put all the automobile crap as far away as possible from people’s houses.
The main difference is bigger roads and parking lots - concessions to the automobile. So we see that Suburban Hell doesn’t really differ from Small Town America by very much. The changes that turned the 19th Century Hypertrophism of Small Town America into Suburban Hell are:ġ) Even wider streets to accomodate more automobile traffic.Ģ) The addition of parking lots in commercial areas, and a general trend toward further hypertrophism in commercial areas.ģ) The addition of enormous amounts of useless “green space” to provide a buffer between people and the huge automobile-filled roadways/parking lots.Ĥ) Zoning, which was in some ways an attempt to separate the residential areas (still largely identical to the 19th century format) from the stinking horror that the commercial areas/huge roadways/giant parking lots had become. This is identical to today’s suburbs, and in fact is less dense than most suburbs today.ģ) Commercial buildings (stores/offices/industrial) which follow a Traditional City format, multistory and side-by-side, but which are combined with the excessively wide streets.Ĥ) The overall effect is an environment that is unfriendly to pedestrians and favorable to automobiles, although the pattern dates from a century before automobiles. They are:ġ) Rather excessively wide streets, contrary to the format of the Traditional City of the previous 4000 years, even though this was a century before automobiles and there was no utilitarian need for oversized roadways.Ģ) Residential buildings which follow a rural format, of a freestanding farmhouse surrounded by a lawn, rather than an urban format of a townhouse or apartment. So far, we’ve defined some of the attributes of 19th Century Hypertrophism as expressed in a small town dating from 1800. March 3, 2009: Let’s Visit Some More Villagesįebruary 15, 2009: Let’s Take a Trip to the French Villageįebruary 1, 2009: Let’s Take a Trip to the English Village July 19, 2009: Let’s Take a Trip to an American Village 2: Downtown
July 12, 2009: Let’s Take a Trip to an American Village We’re not done with our American Village yet.
Let’s Visit an American Village 3: How the Suburbs Came to Be
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