2008 SOM Prize for Architecture, Design, and Urban Design
Ghost Town: The Next Slum—The Rise and Fall of Suburbia

Contrary to what was once believed to be the perfect image of the American Dream in the post-WWII era, the recent images of suburbia have been taunted by its automated junkyard landscape. In more recent years, the deterioration of suburban landscapes has been accelerated with foreclosure and mortgage crisis that forced residents to be homeless and created an eerie shade of a ghost town in its decaying processes. "Ghost Town: The Next Slum" documents suburbia in its various forms and in various places. The project is situated at the very center of extreme conditions of shrinking and expanding cities. It includes both newly built developments and decaying communities and explores various images of suburbia and their projected meaning that range from picturesque, manicured lawns to anger-filled slums.

The postwar development of suburbs, such as Levittown, was successful in providing housing stock at an affordable price to middle-class families. It was also the feat of industrial standardization that allowed construction of homes in a rapid production time. The sheer scale of such development with its parallel streets filled with houses and cul-de-sacs soon became a postcard image of suburbia. If Levittown was about the scale of the overall development, in recent years the scale has shifted to the house itself, as seen in the ubiquitous so-called McMansions. The suburban house became the epitome of excess, growing even larger with intensified sprawl while filling the space in between with box shopping centers, asphalt parking lots, and roadways filled with cars. Such excess of space and resources is no longer acceptable or sustainable. And as these sprawled houses and town centers become vacant, the suburb slowly deteriorates into a ghost town. The suburbs are becoming the next slums, becoming the very reason of escape from the city in the first place.

The image of Seaside, as one of the first New Urbanism suburbs, promised a return to happy, safe, and picturesque images of the suburb. Unfortunately, the legacy of Seaside has fueled a subsequent boom of gated communities. As each gated community becomes a pseudocity with its own center and “public” spaces, the gap between affluent communities and working-class communities grows even larger and creates the new classicist society that leaves many disgruntled and helpless. With foreclosure crisis, the affluent communities are likely to remain while the troubled communities disintegrate, which results in intensification of the new sociospatial segregation. As witnessed in the 2005 civil unrest in Clichy-sous-Bois, France, the fate of such sociospatial segregation is a complex problem accumulated over the years through failed city planning, immigration policies, construction methods, and portrayal of stereotypical images.

As the western model of the suburb is crumbling down, these models are being copied in developing countries in other parts of the world. The stark image of Orange County, China is the anywhere USA suburbia. Will these copied versions of the American suburb survive the threat that the originators are facing? Through documentation of suburbs in various forms and contexts, this project hopes to address the need for the new direction and dialogue in understanding suburbia as a part of a bigger current of urbanism and globalization that could prevent the same mistakes and failures of the past.

Epilogue

1. Suburbia, as we know it, does not exist.

I hoped to find a simple, one-phrase answer to suburbia once I had completed my travel. And in retrospect, I realize that it is a rather impossible expectation. It is an expectation that is reflective of the general attitude toward the observation of suburbia where it is preferable to simplify it into a banal sprawl of junkyard and bedroom communities. After three months of documentation and compilation in the months that followed, I have been overwhelmed by the complicated intricacies that create and sustain suburbia, often even more so than any hyperdense and diverse urban centers. In the end, if I could sum up the observations into one sensible phrase, it is that suburbia, as we know it, does not exist. It is a reaction to the changes in the bigger realm of urbanism, a symptomatic reaction to the expansion and shrinkage of cities.

The fact is less apparent in developed countries where the fluctuation of the city boundary has reached its finite line. But in Chinese suburbia, the boundaries among urban/suburban/rural fluctuate on a daily basis; turnover from rural to suburban to urban happens so rapidly. What was considered a suburb could be integrated into the city proper the next day. Perhaps it is more accurate to identify these areas as “periurban” as many scholars of Chinese urbanism refer to such phenomenon.

2. Infrastructural networks determines the shape and the future of suburbia.

Infrastructure is limited to roadways in typical American suburbs where many still solely rely on personal vehicles. It is probably impossible not to rely on cars due to the sheer size of this country. But even at the regional level, American suburbs lack public transportation infrastructure.

Most suburbs in Sweden and France have well connected public transportation networks, and one can get to most places solely relying on the public transportation system. In Sweden, where the suburbs are an extension of the city, buses and metro lines radiate from the city center. In French suburbs, each commune acts as an autonomous machine. In addition to the central transportation network that connects to and from the city center, each commune has its own network of buses and trams.

Even in Tokyo suburbia, the main metro lines within the city continue and connect to the outskirts. And with additional bus and rail connections between each outer community that intricately weaves through the centers and the periphery, cars are often not a requirement, but a luxury. And this level of connected intricacy in infrastructural network shapes the suburbs into a more intimate scale. One rarely finds a typical image of endless highway with box stores with huge parking lots in these small-scale Tokyo suburbs.

In China, where rails and roadways are in the process of being designed and constructed at the moment, there is a potential danger of sparse infrastructural network that may encourage sprawl without sustainable means. Coupled with newly found purchasing power and fetish for car ownership, cars are taking over the roadways as mass bicycling becomes a faded image of the past. As with other developing landscapes, less developed Chinese suburbs with empty roadways without cars are stuck somewhere between the past and the future. But at the present moment, they exist as ghost towns.

3. Suburbia is a byproduct of power; but it often creates a powerless community.

In this artificial boundary making, suburbs are byproducts of power of socioeconomic politics played in the city planning process. From laying out infrastructure to distributing parcels of land to developers, decisions of creating suburbs and the resulting image are the direct result of exercise of power. Even from consumers’ point of view, purchasing a home—sometimes just for the pure real estate venture purposes—is an exercise of their buying power. Architects and city planners also participate through using the suburbs as a testing ground for their visionary ideas.

But once all games have played out, suburbs become a powerless community. There are some communities with concentration of power, such as Le Vesinet in France, Lidingo in Sweden, and Shunyi Villa District in China, that thrive in its walled-in exclusivity. But most suburbs are trapped in their environment with lack of power to contribute in reshaping their own community, and they decay into slums in some cases. Especially when the suburbs become their own enclave of immigrants and of certain race and ethnicity, it becomes a powerless island separated from the rest.

Race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic levels are not a direct correlation to the creation of slums or ghettos. In many cases of these less-than-desirable suburbs of Sweden and France, it is not necessarily the residents’ innate quality that makes these places fail. Instead, it is the residents’ frustration to the world that grants them no power and has disadvantaged them over the years. The terms “slums” and “ghettos” are only applicable when looking from outside into their habitats. In reality—the reality of residents—these slums and ghettos work like any other communities, just frustrated and powerless.

4. Empowered suburbia leads to a true community.

Power can be restored. Often in grassroots organization form, some residents actively participate in improving their hopeless environment. In Tensta, Sweden, art is the source of the breath of fresh air that started to turn things around. Through education and participation, Tensta Kunstall is not only providing an outlet for residents but is also putting the community on the art scene and bringing people from outside. In community gardens in various other suburbs of Sweden, residents activate “pseudo” public green spaces that are often left empty into a useful arena of production and participation by taking ownership in their own communities.

“Community” is an over-used term, yet a very hard to find phenomenon in reality. Just because of physical adjacencies of cul-de-sacs and artificial boundaries of gated communities, the place does not automatically turn into a community. It requires an active participation and ownership that takes the power back to residents’ hands. And when the power is back to the people and a true community begins to form, a glimmer of hope can be seen even in decaying suburbs.

5. Unregulated market-led economy is the source of ghost-town suburbia.

Economic factors play a major role in new construction and renewal of suburban developments. The very cause of foreclosure crisis in the US are the deregulated market and greed of people that led to reckless developments and irresponsible lending and purchasing. And in the expanding economy of China, the bubble is getting even bigger.

In Shunyi Villa District outside of Beijing, the endless construction of gated communities is in progress when even most of the built ones are currently unoccupied yet sold-out. The situation is even worse in Shanghai, the capital of China’s real-estate bubble, where most properties are unoccupied after buyers purchase multiple properties solely for real estate investment. It does not stop at empty properties; it also leads to a bigger scale problem of vacant, undeveloped lots that affect city planning strategies. The land becomes grounds for gambling as developers buy the lots only to hold off their developments—and often for even almost completed developments—by waiting for the price hike.

The problem of an unregulated market-led economy does not mean that the government regulated housing market is successful. In many Swedish suburbs, the frivolity of choices does not exist for most residents who live in the Million Program developments. Residents complain of slow maintenance, but at the same time are comfortable from not having the responsibility of owning a property. (They technically do, but it is closer to the mix of co-op and government subsidy system.) Although the government-controlled market does provide a decent home for all, the solutions to updating older housing stock and creating new ones are often unimaginative.

6. Even suburbia has a lifespan of its own. And it deserves a second chance.

There is a common story that runs in the making of suburbs. They often start as the flight from the dense city at the height of its expansion. And wealthier ones are the first to relocate to suburbs, and the suburbia starts as the enclave of high society escaping from the decaying cities. The sprawl is often encouraged and fetishized as these new suburbs become a dream to be achieved by many.

But just like everything else in life, even suburbs have their own shelf life. As older suburbs begin to deteriorate while newer and shinier suburbs pop up elsewhere and the gritty cities get revitalized, they often turn into slums and ghettoes and are cut off from the rest of the network. Suburbs can no longer afford to be an immediate response. They need to be planned for flexibility for many sustainable future years. Decaying cities have had second and third chances for life. Why not give the same hope, attention, and benefit of doubt in resuscitating the suburbs as well?

7. Diversity in suburbia should be encouraged and even be required.

In Tokyo suburbia, the concrete block of danchi are physically monolithic but even more overwhelmed by its demographic monolith. The short-sighted planning of suburbs at the height of economic boom led to reactive environment that lacks sustainability for the future. When a family of four grows up and grows old, what is left in these suburbs are thick demographic band of those over 50 with no economic production and ability living in oversized apartments designed for four people of a typical family. Even infrastructure and public spaces designed for a young family—such as playgrounds and schools—have emptied out while the programs most needed for the aging population are nonexistent.

In many of today’s developments, the idea of mixed-use and mixed-income are overused and misinterpreted. The solution to such monolithic landscape cannot be as simple as putting a residential block next to a commercial center or mixing low-income housing with market-rate housing. A true understanding of diversity should also include the demographic diversity that includes various age groups and racial ethnic backgrounds, just to name a few. Once a clear parameter of the constituents is established, suburbs can formulate mixed-use and mixed-income programs that could be inserted to the benefit of residents.

8. Architectural interventions alone cannot solve the social problems of suburbia. Suburbia, just as everything else, was, is, and will always be imperfect.

Architecture should not be the only source of blame for the decay of suburbia. Massive concrete blocks have always been the target of the media as they are portrayed as the source of crime and racial segregation. Consumers tend to gravitate toward the shapes of the nostalgic past of gabled roofs, pseudo-Doric columns, and fake surfaces of stucco, brick, and stone. Whether it is the wealthier suburbs in Sweden, France, Japan, or China, this nostalgia does not vary. In Shanghai suburbs during months before the opening of the Shanghai Expo, the city led a beautification plan of swapping flat concrete roofs with gabled roofs.

Do these postmodern architectural manifestation help make the suburbs better places? The answer is no. If anything, it discourages the formation of communities as residents of wealthier suburbs hide behind their walls of cottages and mansions. Ironically, some of the decaying concrete creations show more concern for the shared public space and infrastructural network. In the stacked concrete suburbs of Evry and Ivry-sur-Seine, the suburbs were the testing grounds for a modern understanding of community that applied diversity in program, demography, infrastructure, and space. These projects understood themselves as a self-sustaining machine and are often strangely urban and fair. Sure, the concrete does not age gracefully and often looks oppressive to some. But these so-called atrocious failures of the 60s and 70s were the true utopian exercises attempting to address these problems. In comparison, prettifying facades of modern suburbia is only covering up actual problems while hoping for the portrayal of a picture-perfect image. It is time to be daring, to take the chances, and to see what architecture—beyond facade—can do.