Shared landscapes : building connections in the suburbs

Abstract

American suburbs are repeatedly assailed for being placeless, with restrictive zoning that isolates the public realm from the private. Critics accuse the suburbs of over-emphasizing castle-like detached single family homes at the expense of civic or community spaces. Recent interest in mixed-use residential communities indicates a desire for a greater reintegration of the individual household with the collective life of a larger community. A crucial place to investigate this urbanistic transformation of suburban development is at the basic 'building block' of community: the micro-neighborhood of dwellings within close proximity. The thesis attempts to answer these questions: at this finer scale, how can one develop a community-oriented civic presence that fosters neighborly interactions in a residential setting? How can this presence connect micro-neighborhoods to the surrounding community? And how does the looser density of the suburbs affect a transplanted, urban-derived sense of shared space?