Saving the Suburbs?

With the mortgage crisis ongoing, NYT blogger Allison Arieff says the question now "isn't really how to better design homes and communities, but rather what are we going to do with all the homes and communities we're left with."

"In urban areas, there’s rich precedent for the transformation or reuse of abandoned lots or buildings. Vacant lots have been converted into pocket parks, community gardens and pop-up stores (or they remain vacant, anxiously awaiting recovery and subsequent conversion into high-end office space condos). Old homes get divided into apartments, old factories into lofts, old warehouses into retail."

But what to do with the disposable houses in the suburbs? Those neighborhoods that were never finished or the houses that have been abandoned?

Arieff mentions swimming pool skate parks, de-construction for material reuse, and subdivided McMansions, among others:

"I did visit a housing development last year that offered 'quartets,' McMansions subdivided into four units with four separate entrances. These promised potential buyers the status of a McMansion with the convenience of a condominium, but the concept felt like it was created more to preserve the property values of larger neighboring homes than to serve the needs of the community’s residents."

(Actually, Arieff's blog post touches on a lot of subjects near and dear to my heart: Dogtown and Z-Boys, Van Jones, Julia Christensen's book, 'Big Box Reuse.'")

It's an interesting post, but just as interesting are the ideas from her commenters: retrofit homes for senior housing, used abandoned neighborhoods for fire department training, or deconstruct the communities and let nature take its course.