Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, Little boxes, little boxes, Little boxes, all the same. There’s a Chinese one and a Indian one And a Turkish one and a Koreon one And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same — an adaptation of Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds Suburbia, the American innovation/scourge, like many other parts of American culture appears to appeal to the rest of the citizens of Planet Earth as much as it does to us. According to an article by the nation’s coloring book USA Today world leaders are looking to the American suburb to learn how to better manager their own growth and development. At first glance this seems to be a cause for concern. American suburbs are not perfect, far from it, they contribute to petroleum consumption, energy waste, land waste, and material waste. But they also allow better air quality, education, an escape from noise and light pollution, and an overall appearance of an better quality of life. And luckily, this dichotomy is why other countries are studying the American model. They are not copying us wholesale, instead they are editing and adjusting our [...]
The other day I was discussing the mortgage crisis and mentioned that I believe that we should be moving towards a more dense mass transit rich residential development model. Treehugger recently posted about a possible reinvetion of the the Cul-de-sac. This interesting article revisions suburbia as a series of duplexes, triplexes, quadruplexes, and sextuplexes which could be tessellated to efficiently fill space and allow for a maximum of residents on their own quiet cul-de-sacs.