How will our suburbs look 25 years

How will our suburbs look 25 years from now? Reid Ewing, a planner and professor at Rutgers University, predicts that a significant amount of new development will be new urbanist, but argues that the stronger trend will be toward the segmentation of the housing market and the hybridization of developments. In the article “There’s a Hybrid in Your Future” in the November 2000 issue of Planning Magazine, Ewing writes that various forms of hybrid development models will appeal to separate niches of home buyers. Some conventional suburban communities will add town centers with a formal, new urbanist design. Others will include traditional neighborhoods next to neighborhoods with cul-de-sacs and one-acre lots. In commercial development, malls will be turned into main streets, and pedestrian-oriented retail will coexist with conventional, auto-oriented shopping. Ewing notes that new urbanists typically heap scorn on conventional developments that add traditional architectural elements without changing the land use patterns or the street layout. “But they reflect movement toward New Urbanism,” he writes, “and progress is progress.” At the same time, the New Urbanism is evolving, becoming less rigid and incorporating informal elements like wooded buffers and pedestrian trails, Ewing writes.