The Reburbia contest by Dwell magazine and Inhabitat.com,

The Reburbia contest by Dwell magazine and Inhabitat.com, a design competition for reinventing the suburbs, is one clear case where the people are smarter than the experts. The most online votes, by a wide margin, were cast for the “Urban Sprawl Repair Kit,” a project lead by Galina Tahchieva of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company of Miami. The project explores how to realistically densify and improve walkability for five common conditions of suburbia: gas station/store, strip center, fast food restaurant, ranch house, and McMansion. Architect Walter Chatham said of the Repair Kit: “This is an incredibly thoughtful and practical solution to poor urban design, but it also suggests how the many, many “tired” relics of the twentieth century can find intelligent and useful life well into the twenty-first century.” By contrast, the winners selected by judges are a collection of mostly bland and/or impractical ideas. First place was awarded to “A Frog’s Dream,” an idea for turning McMansions into wastewater treatment wetlands. Second place went to a proposal called “Entrepreneurbia,” which calls for rezoning housing pods to allow businesses. Pointing in the right direction, Entrepreneuria lacks awareness of how urban form relates to mixed use or how retail operates. Third place went to a far-fetched proposal for turning big box store sites into farms. For finalists and winners, see www.re-burbia.com