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I GIVE UP BIG LAWNS 1 ONE USEFUL WAY TO DEFINE A SUBURB is "a place that grows lawns." The great postwar disillusionment began for many Americans when they left the city in search of a simpler life and discovered that watering, fertilizing, weeding and mowing the measliest yard takes more time over a year than the average New Yorker spends looking for parking. And the expanses of front lawn themselves serve no purpose but their owners' vanity - except that most sub- urban communities require them, on the theory that large setbacks help preserve the bucolic character of a community, That may have been true in the 1920s, when suburbs were being settled 30 houses at a time. But when highways opened up huge areas of countryside after the war, large-lot zoning had the opposite effect: by spreading population over a larger area, it accelerated sprawl. If zoning boards weren't so fearful of "density," they could require developers to cluster houses and set aside land nearby for open space and recreation. This is also a more efficient way to build a community. Houses that are 100 feet apart, obviously, have 100 feet of unused road and utility lines between them. School buses have that much farther to travel. And the goal of making a walkable com- munity is defeated when houses are spread out on huge lots. Even the depth of the front yard turns out to make a crucial psychologi- cal difference. When houses are set back behind 30 feet of lawn, the streetscape be- comes oppressively desolate; your perspec- tive changes so slowly you don't feel you're reaching a destination. Probably no single change would improve the quality of subur- ban life as much as shrinking the size of lots-and it would actually make houses cheaper. BRING BACK THE CORNER STORE io\!: JOHN HUMBLE This wide street in Temecula, Calif., is fine for cars but not for kids and other pedestrians MAKE THE STREETS SKINNY 3 Modern subdivisions are designed to be driven, not walked. Even little-used streets are 36 feet or 40 feet wide, with big sweeping curves at the corners. It's great for cars: traffic barely needs to slow down. But for those on foot, the distance is daunting. Narrow streets-as little as 26 feet wide - and tight, right-angled corners are a lot easier for walkers, and probably safer as well, because they force drivers to slow down. One objection: fire departments worry about getting trucks through. But that hasn't been a big problem in old nabes in cities like New York and Boston. 2THE SUBURBAN CONDmON, SAYS architect Peter Calthorpe, "is a land- scape of absolute segregation . . . not just in tenns of income, age or ethnicity, but simple functional uses." This is so obvious that most people no longer see the absurdi- ty of making a five-mile round trip for a loaf of bread, That is, as long as they have a car; for anyone not so blessed-children, the elderly or handicapped, people who can't afford a car for every member of the family-it's nuts. Again, this is a function of good intentions undone by the explo- sion of suburbia. What worked in a compact neighborhood in a city-a dry cleaner, a drugstore, a comer grocery-became gr0- tesque when blown up a hundredfold and applied to whole coun- ties. Shopping strips stretched for dozens of miles along the highways, while the curving streets of suburbia wonned their way ever deeper into the countryside. Obviously, malls and supennarkets, with their vast selections and economies of scale, will never be supplanted by neighborhood shopping streets and comer groceries. But it still should be possible to provide some of the necessities of life within walking distance of many people. Then you could send your kid out for that bread -and a newspaper while he's at it. M ^ Y 15, 1995 NEW 5 WEE K 47