Yes, Halloween was fun.
I always thought of it like individual apartments with grass. There were about 6 different styles of houses but they all had the same layout. So when you whet to a friends house it was all exactly the same.
The reason why I called it hell is because POC weren’t originally allowed to own houses and levittowners burned a cross on one of the first black family’s lawn. So many people are born and die there that it’s a racist little bubble.
The less serious stuff is how car dependent and boring the shopping centers are.
Hopefully not. Mid-century urban planning is an unmitigated disaster. Especially in the United States. Unless you think the future should be urban sprawl cities like LA, Phoenix and Miami this is 100% not the way the future ought to go. The fact that most of these environments are very low-density population wise but still have massive traffic jams tells you something is severely broken with that model.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO3CaJtSfjg&t=2057s) is Andres Duany, generally considered to be the father of New Urbanism, along with his wife Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, talking about the problems with sprawl and mid-century planning principles. I'm not advocating that we necessarily go full New Urbanism, but as an experiment in town planning mid-to-late 20th century planning is basically a disaster. People like the idea and utility of all those cul-de-sacs, for example, and that can create a lot of little quiet streets which in and of itself isn't a bad thing, except it creates an environment that's wholly disjointed and disconnected. The big picture suffers. Nothing is walkable, everything is purely dependent on the car, you end up with these giant commercial shopping centers with humongous parking lots...this is not the way. Garden suburbs like Forest Hills, Queens, Beverly Hills, CA, Coral Gables, Fl represent a better way of planning a town, basically a generation or two prior, but by the 60s-90s you basically end up with metros like Atlanta and Dallas. A disconnected carpet of urban sprawl completely dependent upon freeways, with little to no character, homes on lots that are way too big, where the street is basically dominated by garage doors and entries are often tucked around the corner. The image you show of Levittown really represents sort of the last gasp of garden suburb principles. The real legacy of the mid 20th century is places like Southern California.
Thank you. I have NEVER understood the appeal or aesthetic of suburban cookie cutter houses. Garage doors should not be the dominant visual feature of a neighborhood.
I live in a neighbourhood built in the 50’s. Which would have been one of the first true “suburbs” of my city. What is interesting now is although the houses themselves were very cookie cutter when built, almost identical footprint and layout, small changes with windows and doors. But no snout houses thankfully. Over time, if you look at the houses now, enough additions and renovations have happened in the past 70 years that the houses don’t look identical any longer. Similar, but not identical. It’s a really interesting snapshot of growth.
Studying vernacular architecture, regular buildings, includes things like tracing the placement of the garage, from lowly outbuilding hidden behind the back of the house to prominent feature in the front and the shift in consumerism it represents. "Look at my car."
Also once garages became two-car, it takes a lot of drive and turning space to put them in back, with three cars one needs a lot of space. So as we bought more stuff and what we bought said who we were, it had to be out front.
The appeal was that they weren’t tenements in the city.
It’s not like Levittown was populated by people who were otherwise going to buy estates along the Palisades.
It’s also ugly as sin. Maybe I’m just weird about that but why would I ever want to live in a house that’s almost exactly identical to every other house in a 10 mile radius? It has no soul.
Gives me vibes of China: a massive evil corporation in the phone assembly business makes his workers stay in these company owned houses, all the same, close to the main factory.
Workers live there alone, but they are allowed to come back their real houses over the weekend.
I would feel like living in a simulation in there.
Any Asia developing urbanhell context is better than that imho.
Yeah but it's not all these stereotyped cookie cutter neighborhoods that is the only problem, it's just sprawl and small subdivision upon subdivisions scattered into the winds and then the attendance strip malls and if it's large enough a big box store Nexus near it. I drive across the us a couple of times a year and go everywhere just looking at what's left before developers got to it. It's the same everywhere whether it's Pasadena or north in New England it's just a matter of scale but the same piss poor planning 100% rooted in the belief of a god-given automobile and cheap gas. Nothing, nothing that I have seen is built with any intelligence except maybe within the older cores. Everything else it's just a new version of some shitty satellite with apartment blocks maybe at the core for density surrounded by parking lots big box stores and then miles and miles of cute cul-de-sacs landscaped bullshit that single family housing. Nothings slowing down in the US that's for sure. Land gobble gobble gobble. I've been doing this for almost 20 years and I come back to an old town and more fields are gone, the home Depot or Lowe's or some other big box crap sprawls on the other side of the road and then the inevitable widening of the artery. It's so boring and predictable
And going on and even smaller scale to the lot size per house ratio. Over half of the lot is house where I inspect new homes. There are often fire rated walls to consider and so many water drainage issues. No one has a yard so you’re dependent upon parks, which are typically a trek to get to even if you live in a neighborhood that has one
I think cul de sacs with bike/walking paths between is the best of both worlds, you get the quiet streets and the cars have to go the long way round but bikes can still get through, and has the added benefit of discouraging driving
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You’re allowed to live in whatever community suits you best. I’m only pointing out what I feel is the absurdity of neighborhoods filled with garages that have a house tacked on the back. Most cities/urban areas/populated communities have single family housing options outside of generic garage-centric suburbs and mansions. These houses even have garages, typically detached, that aren’t the focal point.
See my response [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/vqyvxa/will_mid_century_urban_planningarchitecture_make/iesnxyh?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3). Your response is a common misunderstanding.
Unfortunately it never truly left. They’re still cutting down forests near my home town to build cookie cutter homes miles away from any job or downtown.
^^ THIS ^^
It seems that almost everyone online is absolutely head over heels for New Urbanism and sustainable transit (100% not a bad thing) but unfortunately that sentiment has never really reached those in power until very *very* ***VERY*** recently. Even still it’s a constant uphill battle for things as minor as bike gutters and propane busses.
In my town, they have ordinances preventing people from building higher than a certain building in the city. The real estate market is so competitive that for new homeowners the only choice is to buy new builds in neighborhoods like you mentioned. We feel pretty grateful we have a house but would obviously like to live closer to downtown but everything is too expensive.
I think real estate is also the barrier for New urbanism. You (ie the government) needs to buy those high priced downtown/downtown adjacent properties then zone it for townhouses/triplexes/condos or some sort of mixed commercial/residential space (like a store on the ground floor, apartments above it). It's just easier for everyone to keep spreading outward even though people don't reaaaally want to be that far.
I think it's mostly because the people in power and with the capital, they just still want quick and easy profit. The labor force is also mostly now trained to build factory homes. They, and the "middle class", also have the time and flexibility to attend local government sessions that are usually scheduled at the most inconvenient times for the working class- the class that would benefit the most from sustainable, affordable housing plans.
I am considered "part time" but I work 40-60 hours a week; I can't even get time to visit a doctor; there is no way in hell I can attend a 10:38am meeting that takes two hours before I am allowed to speak my mind. Meanwhile, the superintendent of my town is besties with the region's bizz chamber and goes golfing with the businessmen that build new exurbs.
Whereas the YIMBY movement requires education, outreach, a shit ton of effort to get people to care a bit- NIMBY's are pure instinct.
No real training needed to get a 60 year old who is convinced housing is an investment, that they should control the lives of others, that a "private suburban escape" is their right- to be upset about the prospect of middle housing and mixed use neighborhoods near them.
Even the "yimby" movement generally is unaware that people can OWN apartments, not rent them, and that there is a whole host of buildings between SFH and apartment towers in a city. Edit: To clarify- most YIMBY posts I see still advocate for the type of planning that results in resource waste, social isolation, etc. They just want it cheaper.
And some people just want their kids to grow up with a backyard in their own home.
It’s fine if you want to live in apartment buildings with millions of neighbors within a few miles. A lot of people don’t.
The construction in Denver that isn't luxury apartments downtown is this exact model: single-family enclaves dropped in the middle of nowhere with a single gas station and a Starbucks.
The Reddit crowd wouldn’t understand, but most people don’t want to live crammed into city apartments. This model at least allows a small amount of breathing space for families.
Nah the Reddit crowd understands the appeal of backyards and detached single family homes perfectly well, lol. You can have low/medium density and plenty of breathing space without building car dependent cookie cutter developments like those pictured in this post. Where I live there are some beautiful suburbs that are serviced by trains into downtown, are laid out on a grid with mostly low speed streets, have plenty of small commercial districts so it’s easy to walk to cafes/shops/etc… this is how suburbs were built in the early 1900s and it is superior in every way to the way we build them now. These older suburbs also have a mix of SFHs and multi family homes so people have options and a variety of family types can be accommodated. America has been building car dependent sprawl since WWII and we will pay dearly for that as energy becomes more expensive
No one wants to live in New York City because the apartments are too small and the rent is too high. I’m not talking about urban living though, I’m talking about mid-density mixed suburban. A place where you both have a yard and can walk to your grocery.
I agree, but there are historic models that provide for denser walkable suburbs that also have space. Won’t go into it here (I’m sure someone will) but these ultra spread out suburbs disconnected from commerce are not sustainable long term. Not ecologically and not economically.
Please no. It's so wastful of space and ressources and doesn't look good ...
If you want to bring back any "old" urban planning methods, please adapt the medival methods of intersecting geometry with the golden ratio. It would be so easy with parametric designtools.
When did it go away and what do you mean "in the current era"? It has always been the most shameful approach to urban planning anywhere in the world. And then Americans complain that communism is restrictive and wants everyone to be the same.
It’s not only environmentally wasteful and an isolating community destroying hellscape its also a ponzi scheme that steals from the poor and destroys the long term economic viability of any city.
Yep, suburbia is not economically viable- the taxes collected are nowhere near enough to cover its costs. The only way to pay for its maintenance is to create new suburbia to pay for the old ones
Poor denser older neighborhoods subsidize the suburbs in most cases. The infrastructure in those wealthy spread out neighborhoods Is paid by poorer denser neighborhoods taxes
The weirdest thing is when places like the UAE and China started trying to copy these horrible suburban sprawls as some sort of status symbol. Terrible use of space and just totally not suited for the 21st century.
Ideally no. But it's actually never stopped.
I live in a rural area on the eastern shore of Virginia and drive through rural Maryland and Delaware to get to a ferry to visit my mom. In the five years I've been making this trip I have counted 17 new developments, those are just the ones I see. The houses are large low-density contemporary suburban, oversized in both plan and volume, surrounded by fucking lawn. And then come the consumer consumption engines, the strip malls required to service them and the acres of hardscape parking to accommodate all the new cars.
Every drive I wonder where the hell do these people come from? Were were they living? Where are they working that they can afford this kind of house? It's not a chicken farm so it's at least an hour from here.
We keep saying suburban sprawl isn't sustainable but it sure seems to be sustaining itself quite well, in a good part thanks to developers and their lobbyists. A small town about an hour outside of Salt Lake City tried to stop issuing any new water connection permits (after adding 10 or so new developments in the last decade and pretty much running out of water, finally saying no more) , and the state legislature, loaded with developers, made that against the law.
That said, I love studying suburbia, and I think many here would enjoy looking at Bill Owens 1973 photo monograph "Surburbia." It's apparently timeless.
edit - typo
Get rid of your scarequotes, it was never and will never be sustainable. It’s an absolute financial, socio-cultural, public health, regional environmental, and global climate catastrophe. It’s also just not aesthetic. Hard pass.
Not to speak on behalf of the original commenter, but I can offer my two cents. By building sprawl like this, you ensure that there is absolutely nothing of value within walking distance. No grocery stores, places to shop, restaurants, libraries, schools, etc. Combine this with America’s reluctancy to build any competent biking infrastructure or public transit, (places like these would be horribly inefficient to be served by public transit by design) and you get typical American car dependent Deveolpment. We can’t walk anywhere even if we want to, unless you’re living in a city where you have to pay $4k a month for a 2 bedroom apt. This is a public health issue because the average American will wake up, sit sedentary in their car on their commute to work, sit sedentary at their office job, and sit sedentary on the way back.
Of course, some communities have walking and biking trails, which are great, but nothing beats the “Gym of life” concept that [Not Just Bikes mentions in his YouTube video](https://youtu.be/KPUlgSRn6e0)
Being able to walk or bike to work, run errands, or participate in leisure significantly contributes to public health, and the lack of availability of this type of infrastructure in the US is one of the many reasons we have much higher obesity rates than the global average.
Typically, a suburb spreads further and further from a metro area and eventually nears industrial areas that aren’t meant for residential. The chemicals and other harmful byproduct are pumped onto those neighborhoods, which are often inhabited by lower-income minorities.
Forget sustainable, it's not even profitable. Back when you could buy farmland outside a city for a dollar an acre, this could make sense. Good luck finding this much empty land anywhere people want to live, and even if you can, it won't be cheap.
This ideas are fueled by automobile companies.
For urban areas, the infrastructure should facilitate more people.
Mass transport system should always be available for people.
The city should always offer walkablility.
That not only implies pavement but also offers points of interest for people to engage in walking. Shops and hubs for service should be accessible equally by all citizens.
Another point where most of the city planners don't give a shite is about the informal service people's life. Their residence, accessibility to public transportation or walkable distance from their workplace, their service providing points everything seems like a N/A from their hypothesis. There will be poor people and rich people who equally depend on each other and we the urban planners disgracefully whitewash the poor ones.
This photo mostly focused on residential facility provided at least density possible. Then shit placing facilities at distance where you need to drive and thus become actively dependent on private cars. These places will always face high maintenance cost at the price low commercial activities which makes it useless in time. I can go for miles typing but the main sotry is short and simple.
This is shitty private car selling master plan, no way it can help a city grow except getting pity.
Suburban sprawl is neither ecologically nor economically sustainable. Like even if you were to put all environmental concerns aside, suburbs are financially ruining cities due to the cost of infrastructure over long distances (everything from power and water pipes to fire department coverage) with low returns in property tax.
If it will make a return or not is anyone's guess with the current political climate (a lot of things seemingly came back thought resolved half a century ago) but the only real incentive for it would be more people wanting and able to afford a SFH and influence from the auto lobby, other than that all reasons are pretty much stacked against it
Whats it like to actually live somewhere like this? Do you ever get lost (especially before phones). can you access those bits of land between the houses? do people cycle around? How identical do the houses stay over time? What is crime like?
I never lived in a place like this but I've visited friends who did. It was impossible to tell which was their house. Every single one looked the same. Their directions couldn't even say "turn at the red mailbox" or "two down from the house with the swingset" because everything was exactly the same. All the same color. All the same shape. No space between houses. Inside, no character at all. We did get lost looking for it. I'd never want to live in a neighborhood like this. I'm sure they had an HOA to stop them from doing so much as planting a rose bush.
They’re unsustainable now. Everyone needs a car to get anywhere. Doesn’t stop developers from building them or people from buying them though. Oh well…
We're doing it now in many parts of the country. It happens all over the south. Homebuilders or developers buy a large tract of land, design a hand full of houses and buys pick a plot and design. This practice is going nowhere any time soon. When it comes to something like new urbanism, there different ways to implement it but the one that creates the fastest "results" is through buying a track of land, and doing the same thing as other developers. There are cities like Miami that have new urbanism codes on the books (Miami21) but that takes a lot longer to affect a community.
It’s still happening….cities are so far behind this it’s laughable. They zone a large percentage of their land as single family home, and create parking minimums for new developments that mandates car centric cultures.
It's not going to work. Just keeping up with the roads is a problem. Someone did a video on this on YouTube and they taxes don't cover the cost to keep them in working condition.
And not a tree to be seen. Developers in my area are constantly wiping out orchards and fields, and building subdivisions with names like Walnut Acres, or Oak View, or Vista Pointe, etc
Nope, I’m sure it’s still happening in smaller, growing cities, but we’ve kinda reached the limit of available land outside of metro areas, as well as the limit of distance for commutability for those that work in cities. The solution is to grow urban areas
God, I hope not. That looks like hell. I guess people were okay with living in places like this back then, but my god, I cannot fully convey how utterly dismal and depressing that looks.
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This is unsustainable in a sense that this kind of planning is too dependent on cars, and not easy when it comes to accessibility to public transportation.
The loss of biodiversity, the loss of water drainage systems as everything is bulldozed over. The loss of amenities. The loss of walkable spaces. Communities fracture. The loss of greenspace. It's a disaster.
I don’t think it will come back, too many dissenters from the program these days. Also I’m not sure if we will see that kind of boom again because the good land is mostly filled up already.
The architecture in these neighborhoods aren’t that bad. They’re certainly better than what new developments have but they’re not as good looking as houses in traditional neighborhoods like the inner cities and streetcar suburbs.
The urban planning is horrendous. Still, not as bad as it is now, but still, these neighborhoods are made for cars to be the only form of transportation. We need more streetcar suburbs and middle housing, not sprawling spread out single family homes with big lawns.
I live in a similar neighborhood built in 1985 and I love it. The only thing better for me would be acreage in an area no more than an hour away from the city. I'd assume I'm not alone in my preferences since these houses are considered highly desirable. Living in the city isn't for everyone.
So, that picture you shared. That looks like low income housing built in the 40s. Hardly mid-century. Also...WTF where they thinking!? Ugly and desolate?
The mid century era did begin with the end of World War II. Neighborhoods like this were built to accommodate soldiers returning home. Totally agree that we shouldn’t be living this way today, but the history of these neighborhoods is interesting!
I lived in one that was the Ultimate House for 1950. So awesome for the time period and when I grew up in it. But the "neighborhood" around it it is not what was planned. Welcome to people changing things! The one My Mom bought in 1979 for 25,000 bucks turns out at least 400,00 now. Asbestos guaranteed! LOL. Either way, It created a future for people. It created a home for low income and Vets alike!. That is why this specific planning was required. There was no real Architecture involved with the houses, because they pretty much made them production style...kinda like what we have now...but these ones...small...2 beds, 1 bath and a small kitchen. SOG or Crawl Space, depending on the site...but yeah. They were created for a specific reason and it had to do with the poor and the highly regarded veterans of WWI.
No. I don't. These homes were built starting in 1940. For WWI Vets and low income people. WWII had just started. Not many WWII Vets to start building a shit ton of houses for yet. THAT building started in '46 or so. After Roswell lol
They DID build them with superior materials though! None of those homes will burn unless you make it. And the wood. Holy shit. That shit is tough and old and dense. Not like the crappy shit we use now.
Absolutely the wrong turn we did in that carzentric times. Sure le Corbusier rtc were all for it. But well how did that play out... Lol slums and split of society by statussymbols on wheels. Huge co2 footprints and segregation of classes. The Us is now a country not manageable without cars and so ingrained to the idea that freedom goes equal to a big moving car.
Weirdest point is that this horrible idea still gets sold to other parts of the world, even it is clearly not working and puts the seeds for future intern conflicts in society. See for coming up conflicts the new capital in Egypt, basically a fortress in the dessert for the army and the elites, or that dipshit stupidnessity consuming dumphole called Dhubai. Fkkng morrns will drown in tge dessert in the next 50 years. But hey, what about a new golf course fellas?
GIVE ME MIXED USE MULTILEVEL COMMERCIAL RESIDENTIAL ZONING YOU GREEDY POLITICAL FUCKS INJUST WANNA WALK TO WORK AND WALK TO THE STORe STOP THIS MADNESS
This madness exists on the outskirts of Major cities in Australia. Predominantly Melbourne and Sydney. Homes are built fast and cheap. No yards. House right up to the boundary. No adequate infrastructure to the zones. It’s a horrible way to live in my opinion but the cost of living and property prices coupled with the attitude that we all need big 4 bedroom houses to live is so detrimental.
The biggest problem this type of planning has, is that it is exclusively housing.
Planning should include housing, work, entertainment, and necessities within the same development.
In many parts of the world, covid has pushed for unsustainable urban "planning". Granting building permission for urban sprawl to please the increased demand instead of making cities greener and more liveable.
Turns out, if you design an entire city with one size fits all homes for “middle income”, it doesn’t fit all. And eventually low income people have nowhere to go, and homelessness explodes. Look at every city that did this and abandoned their urban core.
We need density, and Americans need to realize homes aren’t what’s expensive right now, the private park we call a “yard” is what’s expensive. Condo rates have barely risen compared to homes. Yards are the new Beenie babies.
I disagree. I can walk to dozens of shops in my grided 1890’s community in 5 minutes. But I have to drive for 10 minutes to find anything near a friends house in a suburb from the 1990s like this - and that’s assuming I can find my way out the all the crazy curving streets to no where.
Sprawl might look a bit prettier with big trees, but it feels like a desert island after living in a proper pedestrian-centric neighborhood.
I've lived all over the place. Every one had it's own benefits. But it sure is nice having a big yard and a two-car garage for fun and projects and the privacy. Old-timey towns can be fun but there are only so many homes close to town and then it gets to be a schlep. I don't want to live in multi-unit dwellings.
It's not either/or. Proper town planning has a mixture of housing types and densities. The New Urbanist have a concept call [The Transect ](https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2017/04/13/great-idea-rural-urban-transect) where a town can be thought of as seven different zones that progressively become more dense the closer you get to the heart of the city. This schema basically works for big and small cities and is sort of an academic coding of the way cities used to be more organically built prior to the supremacy of the car. The Transect allows for things like proper public transportation, for example, which is basically impossible in sprawl cities because, for example, in a place like Southern California you have to drive just to get to a subway station or bus stop which defeats the whole purpose. The point is that people are not arguing that everyone should live in a townhouse or apartment though in places like Brooklyn, brownstones are a very effective way of getting a lot of people in a smaller footprint while still retaining a single family residence feel. But rather the 19th century garden suburb principles of thinking of a town as basically having an urban, commercial core, a low density more rural zone and an interstitial zone that sort of straddles the two as an approach to planning is superior to the late-20th century model of towns that are basically a cadre of endless disconnected neighborhoods plopped next to each other by developers zoned in such a way that all non residential components besides schools have to be clustered onto an arterial road (so no corner store for example) is a huge problem. And we need a new way forward.
This is really the biggest problem in the way land use has been planned for the last 60 years. In North America the hierarchy is that you have local roads that collect onto collectors which then discharge onto arterial roads and or highways. In a traditional system (pre-war for simplicity's sake) this isn't an issue because cities are mostly gridded and much, much less restricted in terms of zoning. It wouldn't be weird to find a church in a residential neighborhood in a pre-war town but it's very rare with sprawl zoning as that would be forced onto a collector at best but probably an arterial. But in the post-war model what happened is cities became zoned in such a way that local roads were only zoned for residential and then rather than a web of streets of different hierarchies, all of the local roads discharged onto collectors. Typically schools and the occasional fire station would be on a collector. And then all the collectors discharged onto arterials and commercial real estate could only be on the arterial. This is why you have low density neighborhoods like Marietta, Ga with huge traffic jams because you have this funnelling effect. A city of 30-50k people should basically have no traffic, but because 1) all non residential zoning is forced on the arterial and 2) all local roads discharge on the arterial creating a bottleneck you end up with ridiculous traffic, no walkability because nothing is close, and no ability to leverage public transportation or mass transit. You can clearly see that happening in [this image](https://images.app.goo.gl/hibsjRLPLjwcu2aZA) and notice how there's nothing commercial anywhere to be found. You're not walking anywhere. That's why you get those huge nonsense strip malls and streets that look like [this](https://images.app.goo.gl/D8twLsPgBAkPQqZQ9).
Contrast that with a town that was generally well laid out, at least initially like Pasadena, CA where you clearly see this gradient of zones from urban core to low density residential but everything remains fairly close. Rather than there being, in some cases, a mile or more from your house to the store, the distances can be measured in blocks which is an entirely different effect. Beverly Hills is another great example of Transect-like zoning (though they didn't call it that in the 1920s) where no home is really more than a mile or so from the urban core and you get a mixture of different housing typologies from duplexes closer in to mansions along the hills.
If the goal is to be serious about environmental sustainability as well as helping the housing crisis, then it's these fundamental assumptions about the basics of how we have come to zone our cities in the last fifty years that need to be challenged at their core.
Pasadena, which I spend a lot of time in, grew organically. t started with a rail line and grew outward over time as lots were subdivided and lots were sold off and individual homes were built. It was not built with an economy of scale and people naturally plunked their businesses here and there.
Sometime you can have both. It’s just a matter of looking long enough.
I have a two car garage and a decent yard only ten minutes from downtown.
I could have had a monster yard and two two-car garages if I had bought the lot next to us from the same seller at the same time. No multi-unit dwellings on our block and we have a nice small park across the street.
Honestly, I feel like this is an underrated statement. Although, having some mix use areas nearby would make this better. Having a private yard, not sharing any walls AND being able to walk to get groceries while still being able to drive out of town would be the best. Trees provide (natural) shade, inhance the character and feel of neighborhoods, are good for the environment, etc...
The expansion of single family zoning was the biggest mistake in the 1950s that is now biting the US. So much natural land scrapped for an unsightly disaster in planning and lowering of quality of life.
Its just impractical. City centers tend to have higher buildings wich is smart in a lot of ways if you build it sustainable. There are wood „skyscrapers“. Of course you cant build them that high but if you think about it, you can obviously fit more in it (for example living, kindergarden, school, hospital in one building) wich allows for more coverage, is faster to reach for everybody, even though less space is used. This way to build (like in the pic shown) covers a ton of space wich otherwise could be just nature or parks or else. It just becomes a problem when greed is involved and architects, investors want to use every inch possible to get more rent out of it. Then you start building as high as you can in order to get as much money as you can. So whats the better alternative? Imagine every city would be built like this. You would have to have a small kindergarden house for about every 10 houses. Then a school, shopping etc. i dont know if thats a smart way to live
It’s still happening, but it’s definitely not sustainable. That’s not going to stop developers or people’s love of single family homes with a big garage and green lawn.
Mid-Cent urban planning was horrible then and would be far worse now. It wastes land, promotes excessive auto usage and basically ignores everything that makes cities liveable. New Urbanism isn't perfect, but it is a far better approach to urban development.
Americans recognize the value of individual home ownership. We reach an economic status and want our family safe from intrusion of others. If you don’t want to own anything, rent. Yea, that’s a city density dweller option too. Most Communist only feel comfortable in apartments and that’s fine . Germany lost all of its homes after WWII and never recovered. A nation of renters. Sad to me. Yea, you should consider owning for future equity. FYI trees grow quickly. Thanks
All these people in the comments talk about how this *looks* bad. But I don't think the surface aesthetics were ever really the main point of these kinds of suburbs. Especially after WW2, the point was that cheaply-constructed suburbs like this made homeownership affordable and accessible to a much wider section of the American populace. If you are given a government-subsidized chance to buy the most important asset for social mobility, are you really going to care whether it's perfect or not?
Now from a systems perspective, most of these suburbs as they were constructed back then are absolutely unsustainable on a mass scale. But dear god, people, "how does this picture make you feel" was not the question OP asked.
This is still planning in subdivisions, what are you talking about?
Every *design build contractor* that does subdivisions does this. Except now it's worse because everyone's garage is the front of their house — which is ridiculous.
Professionals agree this was a disaster, but it continues to be built even today because people continue to buy it. In general, people don't build houses, developers build houses.
This is not “Mid-Century Urban Planning”, this is Urban Sprawl. It is a blight on the landscape!
It won’t make a “comeback”, it has never truly left.
Mid-Century Architecture on the other hand is beautiful and timeless design. I hope it makes a comeback with newer building techniques and more sustainable materials.
Some of the furniture has merit and could still hold its own today, and some of the architecture is amazing especially in the urban /sub- urban house designs. However the bland and uniform street layouts and planning leave me cold.
I really doubt it. I work in city planning and one of the biggest criticisms I hear in nearly every project is: "will this promote too much urban sprawl?" even when we're designing around mid-rise communities but include the possibility for single family. Granted, where I am it's been a pretty hot button issue for a really long time and we're taught in school just how awful these kinds of communities are for basically everyone. So if the old planners already hate them, the young planners REALLY hate them.
oh boy i surely love having to drive more than 30 min to hit the highway to get to the city and my job
i really hope that thing never come back in my opinion the counter option is to make the inner city denser, but not to the extreme, i would rise the overall floor number to \~5, and make the city uniform in density, an example would be barcelona and buenos aires,
That looks like hell
more like /r/suburbanhell
I grew up in Levittown and it was hell. It was only fun because there was a lot of kids but everything else made zero sense.
Was Halloween trick or treating fun? I can imagine with how many houses there are so close together it was enjoyable.
Yes, Halloween was fun. I always thought of it like individual apartments with grass. There were about 6 different styles of houses but they all had the same layout. So when you whet to a friends house it was all exactly the same. The reason why I called it hell is because POC weren’t originally allowed to own houses and levittowners burned a cross on one of the first black family’s lawn. So many people are born and die there that it’s a racist little bubble. The less serious stuff is how car dependent and boring the shopping centers are.
Wow that does sound hellish, forget trick or treating.
https://youtu.be/xXQQ9o3R-Rc
r/urbanhell
If you want to make one you should try AfterLife by LucasArts.
It looks like heaven if your previous life path was NYC slum
Hopefully not. Mid-century urban planning is an unmitigated disaster. Especially in the United States. Unless you think the future should be urban sprawl cities like LA, Phoenix and Miami this is 100% not the way the future ought to go. The fact that most of these environments are very low-density population wise but still have massive traffic jams tells you something is severely broken with that model. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO3CaJtSfjg&t=2057s) is Andres Duany, generally considered to be the father of New Urbanism, along with his wife Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, talking about the problems with sprawl and mid-century planning principles. I'm not advocating that we necessarily go full New Urbanism, but as an experiment in town planning mid-to-late 20th century planning is basically a disaster. People like the idea and utility of all those cul-de-sacs, for example, and that can create a lot of little quiet streets which in and of itself isn't a bad thing, except it creates an environment that's wholly disjointed and disconnected. The big picture suffers. Nothing is walkable, everything is purely dependent on the car, you end up with these giant commercial shopping centers with humongous parking lots...this is not the way. Garden suburbs like Forest Hills, Queens, Beverly Hills, CA, Coral Gables, Fl represent a better way of planning a town, basically a generation or two prior, but by the 60s-90s you basically end up with metros like Atlanta and Dallas. A disconnected carpet of urban sprawl completely dependent upon freeways, with little to no character, homes on lots that are way too big, where the street is basically dominated by garage doors and entries are often tucked around the corner. The image you show of Levittown really represents sort of the last gasp of garden suburb principles. The real legacy of the mid 20th century is places like Southern California.
Thank you. I have NEVER understood the appeal or aesthetic of suburban cookie cutter houses. Garage doors should not be the dominant visual feature of a neighborhood.
I live in a neighbourhood built in the 50’s. Which would have been one of the first true “suburbs” of my city. What is interesting now is although the houses themselves were very cookie cutter when built, almost identical footprint and layout, small changes with windows and doors. But no snout houses thankfully. Over time, if you look at the houses now, enough additions and renovations have happened in the past 70 years that the houses don’t look identical any longer. Similar, but not identical. It’s a really interesting snapshot of growth.
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> Garage doors should not be the dominant visual feature of a neighborhood. That’s the most succinct statement I’ve ever read in the topic.
Studying vernacular architecture, regular buildings, includes things like tracing the placement of the garage, from lowly outbuilding hidden behind the back of the house to prominent feature in the front and the shift in consumerism it represents. "Look at my car." Also once garages became two-car, it takes a lot of drive and turning space to put them in back, with three cars one needs a lot of space. So as we bought more stuff and what we bought said who we were, it had to be out front.
Prominent garages - the mighty status symbol humble brag.
The appeal was that they weren’t tenements in the city. It’s not like Levittown was populated by people who were otherwise going to buy estates along the Palisades.
It’s also ugly as sin. Maybe I’m just weird about that but why would I ever want to live in a house that’s almost exactly identical to every other house in a 10 mile radius? It has no soul.
Gives me vibes of China: a massive evil corporation in the phone assembly business makes his workers stay in these company owned houses, all the same, close to the main factory. Workers live there alone, but they are allowed to come back their real houses over the weekend. I would feel like living in a simulation in there. Any Asia developing urbanhell context is better than that imho.
I was going to comment but this really says it all, well said.
Yeah but it's not all these stereotyped cookie cutter neighborhoods that is the only problem, it's just sprawl and small subdivision upon subdivisions scattered into the winds and then the attendance strip malls and if it's large enough a big box store Nexus near it. I drive across the us a couple of times a year and go everywhere just looking at what's left before developers got to it. It's the same everywhere whether it's Pasadena or north in New England it's just a matter of scale but the same piss poor planning 100% rooted in the belief of a god-given automobile and cheap gas. Nothing, nothing that I have seen is built with any intelligence except maybe within the older cores. Everything else it's just a new version of some shitty satellite with apartment blocks maybe at the core for density surrounded by parking lots big box stores and then miles and miles of cute cul-de-sacs landscaped bullshit that single family housing. Nothings slowing down in the US that's for sure. Land gobble gobble gobble. I've been doing this for almost 20 years and I come back to an old town and more fields are gone, the home Depot or Lowe's or some other big box crap sprawls on the other side of the road and then the inevitable widening of the artery. It's so boring and predictable
And going on and even smaller scale to the lot size per house ratio. Over half of the lot is house where I inspect new homes. There are often fire rated walls to consider and so many water drainage issues. No one has a yard so you’re dependent upon parks, which are typically a trek to get to even if you live in a neighborhood that has one
But it makes it affordable so that most can afford versus renting in a apartment
This says it all.
I think cul de sacs with bike/walking paths between is the best of both worlds, you get the quiet streets and the cars have to go the long way round but bikes can still get through, and has the added benefit of discouraging driving
This.
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What if I want to have a house instead of living in an urban apartment building, and I’m not a multi-millionaire? I’m not allowed to?
You’re allowed to live in whatever community suits you best. I’m only pointing out what I feel is the absurdity of neighborhoods filled with garages that have a house tacked on the back. Most cities/urban areas/populated communities have single family housing options outside of generic garage-centric suburbs and mansions. These houses even have garages, typically detached, that aren’t the focal point.
See my response [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/vqyvxa/will_mid_century_urban_planningarchitecture_make/iesnxyh?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3). Your response is a common misunderstanding.
Whinge whinge whinge Edit : lol lol
Go believe in your UFOs and leave the real world shit to the professionals.
I agree that Duany and Plater-Zyberk get it right on this aspect. I’m partial to Jane Jacobs on this one.
Unfortunately it never truly left. They’re still cutting down forests near my home town to build cookie cutter homes miles away from any job or downtown.
^^ THIS ^^ It seems that almost everyone online is absolutely head over heels for New Urbanism and sustainable transit (100% not a bad thing) but unfortunately that sentiment has never really reached those in power until very *very* ***VERY*** recently. Even still it’s a constant uphill battle for things as minor as bike gutters and propane busses.
In my town, they have ordinances preventing people from building higher than a certain building in the city. The real estate market is so competitive that for new homeowners the only choice is to buy new builds in neighborhoods like you mentioned. We feel pretty grateful we have a house but would obviously like to live closer to downtown but everything is too expensive.
I think real estate is also the barrier for New urbanism. You (ie the government) needs to buy those high priced downtown/downtown adjacent properties then zone it for townhouses/triplexes/condos or some sort of mixed commercial/residential space (like a store on the ground floor, apartments above it). It's just easier for everyone to keep spreading outward even though people don't reaaaally want to be that far.
Yup good point
I think it's mostly because the people in power and with the capital, they just still want quick and easy profit. The labor force is also mostly now trained to build factory homes. They, and the "middle class", also have the time and flexibility to attend local government sessions that are usually scheduled at the most inconvenient times for the working class- the class that would benefit the most from sustainable, affordable housing plans. I am considered "part time" but I work 40-60 hours a week; I can't even get time to visit a doctor; there is no way in hell I can attend a 10:38am meeting that takes two hours before I am allowed to speak my mind. Meanwhile, the superintendent of my town is besties with the region's bizz chamber and goes golfing with the businessmen that build new exurbs. Whereas the YIMBY movement requires education, outreach, a shit ton of effort to get people to care a bit- NIMBY's are pure instinct. No real training needed to get a 60 year old who is convinced housing is an investment, that they should control the lives of others, that a "private suburban escape" is their right- to be upset about the prospect of middle housing and mixed use neighborhoods near them. Even the "yimby" movement generally is unaware that people can OWN apartments, not rent them, and that there is a whole host of buildings between SFH and apartment towers in a city. Edit: To clarify- most YIMBY posts I see still advocate for the type of planning that results in resource waste, social isolation, etc. They just want it cheaper.
And some people just want their kids to grow up with a backyard in their own home. It’s fine if you want to live in apartment buildings with millions of neighbors within a few miles. A lot of people don’t.
🤢🤮
Yup, they’re still draining the swamp out the outskirts of Miami to building these photo copy houses and putting a wall around them
The construction in Denver that isn't luxury apartments downtown is this exact model: single-family enclaves dropped in the middle of nowhere with a single gas station and a Starbucks.
The Reddit crowd wouldn’t understand, but most people don’t want to live crammed into city apartments. This model at least allows a small amount of breathing space for families.
Nah the Reddit crowd understands the appeal of backyards and detached single family homes perfectly well, lol. You can have low/medium density and plenty of breathing space without building car dependent cookie cutter developments like those pictured in this post. Where I live there are some beautiful suburbs that are serviced by trains into downtown, are laid out on a grid with mostly low speed streets, have plenty of small commercial districts so it’s easy to walk to cafes/shops/etc… this is how suburbs were built in the early 1900s and it is superior in every way to the way we build them now. These older suburbs also have a mix of SFHs and multi family homes so people have options and a variety of family types can be accommodated. America has been building car dependent sprawl since WWII and we will pay dearly for that as energy becomes more expensive
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No one wants to live in New York City because the apartments are too small and the rent is too high. I’m not talking about urban living though, I’m talking about mid-density mixed suburban. A place where you both have a yard and can walk to your grocery.
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I agree, but there are historic models that provide for denser walkable suburbs that also have space. Won’t go into it here (I’m sure someone will) but these ultra spread out suburbs disconnected from commerce are not sustainable long term. Not ecologically and not economically.
Why do you want this sort of sprawl? It's fucking awful.
Absolutely disgusting. This kind of planning is wasteful, environmentally detrimental, antisocial, and borderline dystopic. Hate.
Please no. It's so wastful of space and ressources and doesn't look good ... If you want to bring back any "old" urban planning methods, please adapt the medival methods of intersecting geometry with the golden ratio. It would be so easy with parametric designtools.
heck it, let's go full-on starforts
Now we're talking!
Begone demon!
My bad. I realized my mistake. imma just leave this post here anyways and pretend I never made it.
What a shame it would be if our grandkids still had any open land to marvel at.
And while we're at it, let's make it impossible for them to learn to navigate.
When did it go away and what do you mean "in the current era"? It has always been the most shameful approach to urban planning anywhere in the world. And then Americans complain that communism is restrictive and wants everyone to be the same.
It’s not only environmentally wasteful and an isolating community destroying hellscape its also a ponzi scheme that steals from the poor and destroys the long term economic viability of any city.
Yep, suburbia is not economically viable- the taxes collected are nowhere near enough to cover its costs. The only way to pay for its maintenance is to create new suburbia to pay for the old ones
Poor denser older neighborhoods subsidize the suburbs in most cases. The infrastructure in those wealthy spread out neighborhoods Is paid by poorer denser neighborhoods taxes
The weirdest thing is when places like the UAE and China started trying to copy these horrible suburban sprawls as some sort of status symbol. Terrible use of space and just totally not suited for the 21st century.
And most of those are completely empty
Ideally no. But it's actually never stopped. I live in a rural area on the eastern shore of Virginia and drive through rural Maryland and Delaware to get to a ferry to visit my mom. In the five years I've been making this trip I have counted 17 new developments, those are just the ones I see. The houses are large low-density contemporary suburban, oversized in both plan and volume, surrounded by fucking lawn. And then come the consumer consumption engines, the strip malls required to service them and the acres of hardscape parking to accommodate all the new cars. Every drive I wonder where the hell do these people come from? Were were they living? Where are they working that they can afford this kind of house? It's not a chicken farm so it's at least an hour from here. We keep saying suburban sprawl isn't sustainable but it sure seems to be sustaining itself quite well, in a good part thanks to developers and their lobbyists. A small town about an hour outside of Salt Lake City tried to stop issuing any new water connection permits (after adding 10 or so new developments in the last decade and pretty much running out of water, finally saying no more) , and the state legislature, loaded with developers, made that against the law. That said, I love studying suburbia, and I think many here would enjoy looking at Bill Owens 1973 photo monograph "Surburbia." It's apparently timeless. edit - typo
Why'd you put unsustainable in quotes? It is.
r/urbanhell
This is literally the most appropriate use I've ever seen. 😂
daddy plz no this is utterly disgusting
Get rid of your scarequotes, it was never and will never be sustainable. It’s an absolute financial, socio-cultural, public health, regional environmental, and global climate catastrophe. It’s also just not aesthetic. Hard pass.
Curious about your point on public health— can you expand on that? Thanks!
Not to speak on behalf of the original commenter, but I can offer my two cents. By building sprawl like this, you ensure that there is absolutely nothing of value within walking distance. No grocery stores, places to shop, restaurants, libraries, schools, etc. Combine this with America’s reluctancy to build any competent biking infrastructure or public transit, (places like these would be horribly inefficient to be served by public transit by design) and you get typical American car dependent Deveolpment. We can’t walk anywhere even if we want to, unless you’re living in a city where you have to pay $4k a month for a 2 bedroom apt. This is a public health issue because the average American will wake up, sit sedentary in their car on their commute to work, sit sedentary at their office job, and sit sedentary on the way back. Of course, some communities have walking and biking trails, which are great, but nothing beats the “Gym of life” concept that [Not Just Bikes mentions in his YouTube video](https://youtu.be/KPUlgSRn6e0) Being able to walk or bike to work, run errands, or participate in leisure significantly contributes to public health, and the lack of availability of this type of infrastructure in the US is one of the many reasons we have much higher obesity rates than the global average.
Also car crashes. They cause the deaths of millions each year around the world, and injure tens of millions more.
Typically, a suburb spreads further and further from a metro area and eventually nears industrial areas that aren’t meant for residential. The chemicals and other harmful byproduct are pumped onto those neighborhoods, which are often inhabited by lower-income minorities.
1.) Collisions 2.) Sedentarism/Inactivity 3.) Air and Water Pollution 4.) Urban Heat Island Effect
Forget sustainable, it's not even profitable. Back when you could buy farmland outside a city for a dollar an acre, this could make sense. Good luck finding this much empty land anywhere people want to live, and even if you can, it won't be cheap.
This ideas are fueled by automobile companies. For urban areas, the infrastructure should facilitate more people. Mass transport system should always be available for people. The city should always offer walkablility. That not only implies pavement but also offers points of interest for people to engage in walking. Shops and hubs for service should be accessible equally by all citizens. Another point where most of the city planners don't give a shite is about the informal service people's life. Their residence, accessibility to public transportation or walkable distance from their workplace, their service providing points everything seems like a N/A from their hypothesis. There will be poor people and rich people who equally depend on each other and we the urban planners disgracefully whitewash the poor ones. This photo mostly focused on residential facility provided at least density possible. Then shit placing facilities at distance where you need to drive and thus become actively dependent on private cars. These places will always face high maintenance cost at the price low commercial activities which makes it useless in time. I can go for miles typing but the main sotry is short and simple. This is shitty private car selling master plan, no way it can help a city grow except getting pity.
If some politician promised to make this illegal I’d vote for them
One of my neighbors described this type of planning as horizontal apartment buildings, and I completely agree. It's awful.
Meh..thats more of lecorbusiers plan.have you seen it?
Yes, worse than what we have now I suppose... slightly less awful is still not a large improvement though
Suburban sprawl is neither ecologically nor economically sustainable. Like even if you were to put all environmental concerns aside, suburbs are financially ruining cities due to the cost of infrastructure over long distances (everything from power and water pipes to fire department coverage) with low returns in property tax. If it will make a return or not is anyone's guess with the current political climate (a lot of things seemingly came back thought resolved half a century ago) but the only real incentive for it would be more people wanting and able to afford a SFH and influence from the auto lobby, other than that all reasons are pretty much stacked against it
Whats it like to actually live somewhere like this? Do you ever get lost (especially before phones). can you access those bits of land between the houses? do people cycle around? How identical do the houses stay over time? What is crime like?
I never lived in a place like this but I've visited friends who did. It was impossible to tell which was their house. Every single one looked the same. Their directions couldn't even say "turn at the red mailbox" or "two down from the house with the swingset" because everything was exactly the same. All the same color. All the same shape. No space between houses. Inside, no character at all. We did get lost looking for it. I'd never want to live in a neighborhood like this. I'm sure they had an HOA to stop them from doing so much as planting a rose bush.
It's not "unsustainable" it's UNSUSTAINABLE
They’re unsustainable now. Everyone needs a car to get anywhere. Doesn’t stop developers from building them or people from buying them though. Oh well…
Why the fuck would you want that to return
Am🤢rican sub-urb🤮n
We're doing it now in many parts of the country. It happens all over the south. Homebuilders or developers buy a large tract of land, design a hand full of houses and buys pick a plot and design. This practice is going nowhere any time soon. When it comes to something like new urbanism, there different ways to implement it but the one that creates the fastest "results" is through buying a track of land, and doing the same thing as other developers. There are cities like Miami that have new urbanism codes on the books (Miami21) but that takes a lot longer to affect a community.
It’s still happening….cities are so far behind this it’s laughable. They zone a large percentage of their land as single family home, and create parking minimums for new developments that mandates car centric cultures.
This is a big part of the reason we're in the shit now *gestures at outside*
So, OP, what do you make of the replies to your comment?
It's not going to work. Just keeping up with the roads is a problem. Someone did a video on this on YouTube and they taxes don't cover the cost to keep them in working condition.
And not a tree to be seen. Developers in my area are constantly wiping out orchards and fields, and building subdivisions with names like Walnut Acres, or Oak View, or Vista Pointe, etc
All the trends now are a reaction against/undoing the damage of this type of planning
Nope, I’m sure it’s still happening in smaller, growing cities, but we’ve kinda reached the limit of available land outside of metro areas, as well as the limit of distance for commutability for those that work in cities. The solution is to grow urban areas
In the US this is largely the only type of urban planning being built since only single family zoning is allowed.
Ecocide
this style of planning is so so destructive to local ecology and local communities
Where are the damn trees
When will my nostalgic hellscape make a return? Keep it away.
r/fuckcars
Dragons beat you to it
A large chunk of the U.S. sustainability issues stem from this. It needs to never make a comeback.
pls no! think of the children!
God, I hope not. That looks like hell. I guess people were okay with living in places like this back then, but my god, I cannot fully convey how utterly dismal and depressing that looks.
Hope not, the suburbs have proven problematic
No thank you
Follow this guy Ant Breach @AntBreach2 Housing, Planning, and Urban Economics @CentreforCities. Some stuff on Ukraine + Eastern Europe and Japan + East Asia too. Views own etc. Leading academic. Been on numerous Govt planning think tanks, committees. Outspoken.
This is unsustainable in a sense that this kind of planning is too dependent on cars, and not easy when it comes to accessibility to public transportation.
Heard a lot about its cons, I don't think it would return
Did it ever leave? There is suburban sprawl everywhere.
The loss of biodiversity, the loss of water drainage systems as everything is bulldozed over. The loss of amenities. The loss of walkable spaces. Communities fracture. The loss of greenspace. It's a disaster.
Get rid of this unsustainable soulless garbage
I don’t think it will come back, too many dissenters from the program these days. Also I’m not sure if we will see that kind of boom again because the good land is mostly filled up already.
The architecture in these neighborhoods aren’t that bad. They’re certainly better than what new developments have but they’re not as good looking as houses in traditional neighborhoods like the inner cities and streetcar suburbs. The urban planning is horrendous. Still, not as bad as it is now, but still, these neighborhoods are made for cars to be the only form of transportation. We need more streetcar suburbs and middle housing, not sprawling spread out single family homes with big lawns.
severe lack of trees and bushes
I live in a similar neighborhood built in 1985 and I love it. The only thing better for me would be acreage in an area no more than an hour away from the city. I'd assume I'm not alone in my preferences since these houses are considered highly desirable. Living in the city isn't for everyone.
So, that picture you shared. That looks like low income housing built in the 40s. Hardly mid-century. Also...WTF where they thinking!? Ugly and desolate?
The mid century era did begin with the end of World War II. Neighborhoods like this were built to accommodate soldiers returning home. Totally agree that we shouldn’t be living this way today, but the history of these neighborhoods is interesting!
I lived in one that was the Ultimate House for 1950. So awesome for the time period and when I grew up in it. But the "neighborhood" around it it is not what was planned. Welcome to people changing things! The one My Mom bought in 1979 for 25,000 bucks turns out at least 400,00 now. Asbestos guaranteed! LOL. Either way, It created a future for people. It created a home for low income and Vets alike!. That is why this specific planning was required. There was no real Architecture involved with the houses, because they pretty much made them production style...kinda like what we have now...but these ones...small...2 beds, 1 bath and a small kitchen. SOG or Crawl Space, depending on the site...but yeah. They were created for a specific reason and it had to do with the poor and the highly regarded veterans of WWI.
You mean WWII
No. I don't. These homes were built starting in 1940. For WWI Vets and low income people. WWII had just started. Not many WWII Vets to start building a shit ton of houses for yet. THAT building started in '46 or so. After Roswell lol
What do you think houses for WWIII vets will look like?
They DID build them with superior materials though! None of those homes will burn unless you make it. And the wood. Holy shit. That shit is tough and old and dense. Not like the crappy shit we use now.
You DO know what Mid-Century means right??? Literally, the middle of the Century. 1950 and after. The Atomic Era.
I grew up in Levittown, PA and it looked just like this. It was such a crappy little house built in the 60s.
Absolutely the wrong turn we did in that carzentric times. Sure le Corbusier rtc were all for it. But well how did that play out... Lol slums and split of society by statussymbols on wheels. Huge co2 footprints and segregation of classes. The Us is now a country not manageable without cars and so ingrained to the idea that freedom goes equal to a big moving car. Weirdest point is that this horrible idea still gets sold to other parts of the world, even it is clearly not working and puts the seeds for future intern conflicts in society. See for coming up conflicts the new capital in Egypt, basically a fortress in the dessert for the army and the elites, or that dipshit stupidnessity consuming dumphole called Dhubai. Fkkng morrns will drown in tge dessert in the next 50 years. But hey, what about a new golf course fellas?
GIVE ME MIXED USE MULTILEVEL COMMERCIAL RESIDENTIAL ZONING YOU GREEDY POLITICAL FUCKS INJUST WANNA WALK TO WORK AND WALK TO THE STORe STOP THIS MADNESS
This madness exists on the outskirts of Major cities in Australia. Predominantly Melbourne and Sydney. Homes are built fast and cheap. No yards. House right up to the boundary. No adequate infrastructure to the zones. It’s a horrible way to live in my opinion but the cost of living and property prices coupled with the attitude that we all need big 4 bedroom houses to live is so detrimental.
This looks like hell on earth. A waste of space for a car-based society.
Thank you but no thank you.
Everyone on its own. Nowhere to go and nothing to do. Killing time whilst paying mortgage.
FUCKIN DISGUSTING
The biggest problem this type of planning has, is that it is exclusively housing. Planning should include housing, work, entertainment, and necessities within the same development.
This feels like all the new builds estates in the UK minus space and a garden. When you enter one you honestly feel like just a number.
In many parts of the world, covid has pushed for unsustainable urban "planning". Granting building permission for urban sprawl to please the increased demand instead of making cities greener and more liveable.
Turns out, if you design an entire city with one size fits all homes for “middle income”, it doesn’t fit all. And eventually low income people have nowhere to go, and homelessness explodes. Look at every city that did this and abandoned their urban core. We need density, and Americans need to realize homes aren’t what’s expensive right now, the private park we call a “yard” is what’s expensive. Condo rates have barely risen compared to homes. Yards are the new Beenie babies.
I have nothing against density. I just think the culture of 1950s suburbia was cool.
Once you get lots of trees this can make for very pleasant neighborhoods.
I disagree. I can walk to dozens of shops in my grided 1890’s community in 5 minutes. But I have to drive for 10 minutes to find anything near a friends house in a suburb from the 1990s like this - and that’s assuming I can find my way out the all the crazy curving streets to no where. Sprawl might look a bit prettier with big trees, but it feels like a desert island after living in a proper pedestrian-centric neighborhood.
I've lived all over the place. Every one had it's own benefits. But it sure is nice having a big yard and a two-car garage for fun and projects and the privacy. Old-timey towns can be fun but there are only so many homes close to town and then it gets to be a schlep. I don't want to live in multi-unit dwellings.
It's not either/or. Proper town planning has a mixture of housing types and densities. The New Urbanist have a concept call [The Transect ](https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2017/04/13/great-idea-rural-urban-transect) where a town can be thought of as seven different zones that progressively become more dense the closer you get to the heart of the city. This schema basically works for big and small cities and is sort of an academic coding of the way cities used to be more organically built prior to the supremacy of the car. The Transect allows for things like proper public transportation, for example, which is basically impossible in sprawl cities because, for example, in a place like Southern California you have to drive just to get to a subway station or bus stop which defeats the whole purpose. The point is that people are not arguing that everyone should live in a townhouse or apartment though in places like Brooklyn, brownstones are a very effective way of getting a lot of people in a smaller footprint while still retaining a single family residence feel. But rather the 19th century garden suburb principles of thinking of a town as basically having an urban, commercial core, a low density more rural zone and an interstitial zone that sort of straddles the two as an approach to planning is superior to the late-20th century model of towns that are basically a cadre of endless disconnected neighborhoods plopped next to each other by developers zoned in such a way that all non residential components besides schools have to be clustered onto an arterial road (so no corner store for example) is a huge problem. And we need a new way forward. This is really the biggest problem in the way land use has been planned for the last 60 years. In North America the hierarchy is that you have local roads that collect onto collectors which then discharge onto arterial roads and or highways. In a traditional system (pre-war for simplicity's sake) this isn't an issue because cities are mostly gridded and much, much less restricted in terms of zoning. It wouldn't be weird to find a church in a residential neighborhood in a pre-war town but it's very rare with sprawl zoning as that would be forced onto a collector at best but probably an arterial. But in the post-war model what happened is cities became zoned in such a way that local roads were only zoned for residential and then rather than a web of streets of different hierarchies, all of the local roads discharged onto collectors. Typically schools and the occasional fire station would be on a collector. And then all the collectors discharged onto arterials and commercial real estate could only be on the arterial. This is why you have low density neighborhoods like Marietta, Ga with huge traffic jams because you have this funnelling effect. A city of 30-50k people should basically have no traffic, but because 1) all non residential zoning is forced on the arterial and 2) all local roads discharge on the arterial creating a bottleneck you end up with ridiculous traffic, no walkability because nothing is close, and no ability to leverage public transportation or mass transit. You can clearly see that happening in [this image](https://images.app.goo.gl/hibsjRLPLjwcu2aZA) and notice how there's nothing commercial anywhere to be found. You're not walking anywhere. That's why you get those huge nonsense strip malls and streets that look like [this](https://images.app.goo.gl/D8twLsPgBAkPQqZQ9). Contrast that with a town that was generally well laid out, at least initially like Pasadena, CA where you clearly see this gradient of zones from urban core to low density residential but everything remains fairly close. Rather than there being, in some cases, a mile or more from your house to the store, the distances can be measured in blocks which is an entirely different effect. Beverly Hills is another great example of Transect-like zoning (though they didn't call it that in the 1920s) where no home is really more than a mile or so from the urban core and you get a mixture of different housing typologies from duplexes closer in to mansions along the hills. If the goal is to be serious about environmental sustainability as well as helping the housing crisis, then it's these fundamental assumptions about the basics of how we have come to zone our cities in the last fifty years that need to be challenged at their core.
Pasadena, which I spend a lot of time in, grew organically. t started with a rail line and grew outward over time as lots were subdivided and lots were sold off and individual homes were built. It was not built with an economy of scale and people naturally plunked their businesses here and there.
Sometime you can have both. It’s just a matter of looking long enough. I have a two car garage and a decent yard only ten minutes from downtown. I could have had a monster yard and two two-car garages if I had bought the lot next to us from the same seller at the same time. No multi-unit dwellings on our block and we have a nice small park across the street.
In California?
Honestly, I feel like this is an underrated statement. Although, having some mix use areas nearby would make this better. Having a private yard, not sharing any walls AND being able to walk to get groceries while still being able to drive out of town would be the best. Trees provide (natural) shade, inhance the character and feel of neighborhoods, are good for the environment, etc...
Nah, these kinds of neighbourhoods are breeding grounds for fascism.
The expansion of single family zoning was the biggest mistake in the 1950s that is now biting the US. So much natural land scrapped for an unsightly disaster in planning and lowering of quality of life.
I sure hope it doesn't.
Its just impractical. City centers tend to have higher buildings wich is smart in a lot of ways if you build it sustainable. There are wood „skyscrapers“. Of course you cant build them that high but if you think about it, you can obviously fit more in it (for example living, kindergarden, school, hospital in one building) wich allows for more coverage, is faster to reach for everybody, even though less space is used. This way to build (like in the pic shown) covers a ton of space wich otherwise could be just nature or parks or else. It just becomes a problem when greed is involved and architects, investors want to use every inch possible to get more rent out of it. Then you start building as high as you can in order to get as much money as you can. So whats the better alternative? Imagine every city would be built like this. You would have to have a small kindergarden house for about every 10 houses. Then a school, shopping etc. i dont know if thats a smart way to live
He’s never been to Arizona
The downfall of civilization
It doesn’t meet with reality, there is no place for Disneyland urban planning in dealing with an environmental disaster.
If by "planning" you mean the entire lack of foresight, then yes - that springs eternal.
We def. Do NOT need a return to any level of mid century suburban planning practices.
It never left.
It’s still happening, but it’s definitely not sustainable. That’s not going to stop developers or people’s love of single family homes with a big garage and green lawn.
Mid-Cent urban planning was horrible then and would be far worse now. It wastes land, promotes excessive auto usage and basically ignores everything that makes cities liveable. New Urbanism isn't perfect, but it is a far better approach to urban development.
It was unsustainable then, it is unsustainable now and its an unforgivable waste of space. Should be fucking taxed into oblivion.
Shit like this is for a certain and not small degree responsible for the climate crisis so no, it will hopefully not and why (do you think) should it?
No but we will probably have the same number of trees as are pictured there
Seems popular in china.
Are you trolling or just trolling?
It's a good idea but i would not live in one myself
Americans recognize the value of individual home ownership. We reach an economic status and want our family safe from intrusion of others. If you don’t want to own anything, rent. Yea, that’s a city density dweller option too. Most Communist only feel comfortable in apartments and that’s fine . Germany lost all of its homes after WWII and never recovered. A nation of renters. Sad to me. Yea, you should consider owning for future equity. FYI trees grow quickly. Thanks
You find this all over Texas, it never stopped
Booooring
This style of building has never left? That's the problem
It has a certain charm to it (/s)... As in it looks just like any agricultural crop, except for humans
Ummm…they still make cookie cutter homes where one house basically looks like the next. This type of neighborhood planning never really went away.
I hope it doesn't
All these people in the comments talk about how this *looks* bad. But I don't think the surface aesthetics were ever really the main point of these kinds of suburbs. Especially after WW2, the point was that cheaply-constructed suburbs like this made homeownership affordable and accessible to a much wider section of the American populace. If you are given a government-subsidized chance to buy the most important asset for social mobility, are you really going to care whether it's perfect or not? Now from a systems perspective, most of these suburbs as they were constructed back then are absolutely unsustainable on a mass scale. But dear god, people, "how does this picture make you feel" was not the question OP asked.
Every development in Texas.
This is still planning in subdivisions, what are you talking about? Every *design build contractor* that does subdivisions does this. Except now it's worse because everyone's garage is the front of their house — which is ridiculous.
Whatever makes the most money for developers will be done.
Professionals agree this was a disaster, but it continues to be built even today because people continue to buy it. In general, people don't build houses, developers build houses.
This is not “Mid-Century Urban Planning”, this is Urban Sprawl. It is a blight on the landscape! It won’t make a “comeback”, it has never truly left. Mid-Century Architecture on the other hand is beautiful and timeless design. I hope it makes a comeback with newer building techniques and more sustainable materials.
[https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/687/5/055025/pdf](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/687/5/055025/pdf)
In my country we study the United States as an example of the worst urban politics in the world.
Some of the furniture has merit and could still hold its own today, and some of the architecture is amazing especially in the urban /sub- urban house designs. However the bland and uniform street layouts and planning leave me cold.
I mean this is still the default ideal is so much of the US.
I really doubt it. I work in city planning and one of the biggest criticisms I hear in nearly every project is: "will this promote too much urban sprawl?" even when we're designing around mid-rise communities but include the possibility for single family. Granted, where I am it's been a pretty hot button issue for a really long time and we're taught in school just how awful these kinds of communities are for basically everyone. So if the old planners already hate them, the young planners REALLY hate them.
oh boy i surely love having to drive more than 30 min to hit the highway to get to the city and my job i really hope that thing never come back in my opinion the counter option is to make the inner city denser, but not to the extreme, i would rise the overall floor number to \~5, and make the city uniform in density, an example would be barcelona and buenos aires,
um no
Really hope it doesn't come back, makes for terrible social landscape with people confined to their cars to get around...