Reprogramming the Suburbs

Abstract

Housing shortages have plagued many large North American cities and urban areas over the last several decades. In many such regions, less affluent areas are rapidly redeveloped and densified to keep up with housing demand. This frenetic development displaces lower income residents and tears apart community networks. Meanwhile, affluent areas resist development, maintaining low densities despite their relative proximities to jobs, schools, transportation networks, and other resources. Consequently, patterns of inequality which have persisted in American Cities for decades, if not centuries, remain in-tact. Furthermore, these low-density areas contribute to sprawl, car culture, habitat destruction, and other harmful social and environmental phenomena. Additionally, many of the low density urban and suburban residential neighborhoods which were developed en masse over the last century–so-called 'cookie-cutter' neighborhoods–fail to readily accommodate the diverse and ever-changing needs and circumstances of the people who currently inhabit them, having been built with outdated and inflexible notions of the 20th century ideal family in mind.

This thesis explores the redevelopment of a single family residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C. By exploring the densification of the neighborhood and the addition of new programs to the suburban landscape, the thesis seeks to identify strategies by which we might one day convert massive and sprawling cookie-cutter suburbs into denser, more sustainable, and more diverse neighborhoods which serve a wider array of residents better while contributing additional housing and other resources to the broader population.