Suburban Sprawl

Bringing the Workplace to Outer Suburbia

“The great city is a recent event, with devastating consequences! The menace of tomorrow.” (Le Corbusier, p 84 The City of Tomorrow)

This essay discusses a design solution for contemporary cities to minimise the geographic dislocation between home and work through the adaptive reuse of suburban shopping centers. Introduction:

The Australian urban landscape is largely defined by people who live in the suburbs and work in the city. This spatial polarisation is only successful when people can commute efficiently between work and home. The problem occurs when you encounter a long commute from the outer suburbs on heavily congested motorways. This separation between work and home creates a range
Peter Katz – one of the movements founders - believes suburban sprawl has become the biggest problem of human habitation and has resulted in fragmentation, alienation and environmental degradation (Katz 1994). Because of Australia’s abundance of land we have a sprawling suburbia of very low density which Robin Boyd called "the dominant element of Australian society” (Boyd 1960). Historically the phenomenon of suburban sprawl is relatively new. Human society has traditionally banded together in tight communal clusters based on shared values and resources. As humankind evolved from an agrarian to industrial economy these communities moved in a centripetal manner towards urban areas for employment as jobs were clustered centrally in the newly formed cities. With the ascension of the automobile in the 20th century human society dispersed away from urban areas into the countryside as communities - typically young couples with young families - pursued cheap housing. (Diagram) This quest let to a dominant new centrifugal spatial typology called suburbia. This suburban dispersion has resulted in a dislocated society that is increasingly encroaching on the natural environment. Peter Calthorpe – a founder of New Urbanism - concisely outlined the problem when he stated, "Settlement patterns are the physical foundation of our society and, like our society, they are becoming
In simple terms TOD is about increasing density around transit stations and is not limited to the formal neo-classical building typologies propounded by early versions of New Urbanism. TOD promotes a dense mixed use area combining living, working and leisure space within walking distance of a transit node. The transit hub can be multimodal and promotes efficiency and human engagement in walking catchment of transit nodes. Melbourne has implemented these principles with a master plan which plans high density development - limited to five stories high - within a 400-meter radius of train, tram and bus routes. (Rob Adams TEDX Sydney 2010). While this approach has worked in the inner suburbs the question remains how the concept can be achieved in the outer suburbs which are not serviced by efficient public transportation. A solution may be in reusing or redesigning redundant places such as shopping