Not the time to settle

Aren't you glad you aren't wearing the same clothes you wore when you were 15? Of course, we'd love that perfect skin and awesome body, but the clothes, the make-up, the hair! I think of the suburbs in the same way.  We have almost freeze-framed them in their adolescence. While cities have had a consistent pattern of growth for millennia, suburbs are only about 50 to 70 years old, in their current configuration. 

Are we stalling them in their adolescence? 

What if we are building over our biggest opportunity to re-vision our suburbs in a falsely urgent effort to capture today’s trends?  

It is so like an adolescent to want to be just like everyone else, to not be different, to not stand out. This explains why as there are notable and admirable efforts to revitalize old shopping centers, we then begin to see them re-created again and again.  As they are copied over and over, the magic starts to fade.  This is why many suburban critics see our communities as bland and repetitive.

A corridor of opportunity

The patterns of lifestyles available today provide the most dynamic opportunity we've ever had to help our suburbs grow into their potential. Creating places that are built for today and for the community in which they are designed. Suburbs have a chance to leverage their underutilized and painfully ugly corridors into nodes of community and commerce in ways never dreamed of before. 

This takes honest conversations about communities’ resources and priorities, along with acknowledging economic realities.  It will be hard. Sometimes it will be wildly exciting. It will be worth it. 

Time to gather at the table. It is not the time to settle.