Regional and Urban Design Committee

To say "suburbia" doesn't have parks with civic presence or contact nature, etc., is too broad a generalization.
The town of Greenwich, like most towns in the New York suburbs, has some fine, well designed parks, by no means "leftover" space, but developed quite intentionally.
In the adjoining city of Stamford (poised between being a suburb and a city) a central park is in the final phase of remodeling by the famous firm of Olin.
This has something to do with having been towns, long before being absorbed in "suburbia."
So even for towns that don't have well-considered parks, there are instructive examples in other suburbs.
A couple of caveats:
The tendency to turn them into ball fields and parking must be resisted continually. But in the central city, as well. When I lived for more than a decade near Olmsted's brilliant Prospect Park in Brooklyn, there were "community" people who wanted much of it flattened and fenced for ball fields, while others in the community pressed for preservation/restoration.
In suburbs such as Greenwich and Stamford, CT, any redesign or restoration -- anything beyond mere maintenance -- is generally paid for by "Friends of..." types of groups, collecting contributions.
And that's as true in the heart of the city. The wonderful gardening and maintenance of Bryant Park and parts of Central Park in Manhattan is attributable to essentially private funding (in the form of Business Improvement Districts or "Friends of..." groups).

The tendency of city dwellers to trash the suburbs -- no culture, no social life, ethnic homogeneity, etc.,-- gets very tiresome and  is generally inaccurate.

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John Dixon FAIA
Editor + Consultant
Old Greenwich CT
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Agreed that when the discussion is limited to the relative merits of suburb vs. contemporary city, comparisons tend to the quotidian.  However, in a sense, turnabout is fair play.  Suburbanites have been trashing the city for many years as a center for crime, urban poverty, industrial pollution, godless immorality, stifling congestion, and a toxic place to live, especially with respect to child rearing.  It is true that many older inner suburbs could be richly sylvan, convenient places to live prior to the exodus of whites - not because of any ethnic superiority, but because the anglos took their wealth and political influence with them, leaving the remnants to a poorer class of more vulnerable folks - and, often, landlords unable or unwilling to maintain their properties.  The endless repetition of the model, a.k.a., sprawl, has been a disaster in environmental terms, however, certainly as great as any pollution or social pathology attributable to the old industrial city - deficiencies the outer suburbs have increasingly come to share under the stresses and economic realities of modern life and the diminution of the legendary middle class.  Additionally, the very term "inner city" is a code word for racial and ethnic identification - and enmity.  Although not universally apt, the identification of "suburb" with banalty and conservative whitebread sensibilities seems at least marginally justified.
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Gary Collins AIA
Principal
Gary R. Collins, AIA
Jacksonville OR
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I agree that the barbs of urbanistas against "suburbs" get tiresome and are generally unproductive. Settlements are a continuum from hamlets to big cities and everything in between. What we should fight for together is good places to live and work, both in cities and in suburban centers. Good parks are one ingredient. We need to city and suburb in a regional context, for, neither natural systems nor man-made ones (transportation, water, sewer) follow neatly jurisdictional boundaries anyway.

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Klaus Philipsen FAIA
Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
Baltimore MD
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