Confronting suburban decline : strategic planning for metropolitan renewal /

This broad-ranging study identifies the emergence since 1980 of a "postsuburban era," and it offers strategic planning initiatives to confront the problems resulting from uneven development. US metropolitan regions suffer from new suburban and exurban sprawl onto outlying areas; this sprawl results from a "tyranny of easy development decisions" by lenders, developers, and builders and from limited metropolitan governmental control over development, reinvestment, and annexation. Many older suburbs, especially those constructed from 1945 to the 1960s, have experienced significant decline. Because of modest standards, small houses (1950 average of 1,100 square feet compared to 1,900 in 1995), and large scale, homogeneous developments with few institutions, these aging communities need reinvestment. The authors provide compelling evidence of growing disparities within suburban regions as older suburbs face "urban" problems. They review programs, including those in Maryland, Tennessee, Virginia, and Portland, OR; New York's Third Regional Plan; and programs of the "New Urbanism." They confront postsuburban era conditions and propose regional decision-making, reinvestment, and sustainable regional incentive funds to strengthen these efforts. This is an important study for planners and urbanists; it is weakened by a limited historical perspective, turgid data reporting, and jargon. Graduate and professional readers. J. Borchert; Cleveland State University