The Future of American Suburbs within a Sustainable Metropolis

This treatise is a by product of long research inteding to study the urban form in the United States in the broad context of sustainability. Articulating its urban and suburban communities, history and type, the outcome of the anaylsis lead to reaching a model that cohesively conciles both in a harmoniose overall. The analysis takes a genealogical approach establishing the past and present context of urban and suburban communities. As syentsis, it reaches a group of principals that lead to a new paradigm, one that can serve as foundation for a cohesive and sustainable regional and national strategy. The design and planning of the proposed new paradigm, a semi-urban model tightly connected to a major population center, take into consideration data and elements such as densities, architectural types, urban types, transportation models, sustainability thresholds and state of art components such as electronic applications (apps), and explores their potential use in an urban and semi-urban context. While we are perfectly aware of the recently observed health risks associated with urban living, we envision nonetheless that such risks to be dissoluble through the proposed strategy, by reincrating existing urban building types through new health conscious building regulations and the insertion of highly desirable open space urbansitically and architecturally.