Changing Work Patterns Will Make Suburbs Obsolete

Economist Jack Lesinger explains, “changing work patterns will make suburbs obsolete and trigger a boom in the rural areas where people now vacation or retire.” The dispersion of people to rural areas can be attributed to unfulfilled urban planning needs that modern life brings about. The New Urbanism movement can however, prevent this rural exodus and route it to a positive direction. The Urbanists foment traditional city planning concepts advocating for diversity, pedestrian scale, establishment of public spaces and structured bounded neighbors in the entire metropolitan region.

Amongst the two philosophical divisions of Urbanists, figures the development of the city area before building the suburban region. Whereas the other favors the development of the suburban first, for it will not impact the growth of neighboring metropolitan centers. Nonetheless, these two principles can apply to both new development and infills in any scale or population of a region: architecture and public spaces can coexist regardless of building height or mass; the pedestrian circulation can exist in single-family neighborhoods; preservation of open space-networks; defined edges (structured bounded regions); related private and civic centers and the creation of affordable housing.