Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Suburbia

Turning a Suburban Retail Bus Stop Into a Place People Want to Go

By Tanya Snyder | Aug 11, 2014 | 9 Comments

This post is part of a series featuring stories and research that will be presented at the Pro-Walk/Pro-Bike/Pro-Place conference September 8-11 in Pittsburgh. Last week, Pittsburgh got its first suburban bus stop makeover. And the results were beautiful. The new IKEA “super-stop” lies in a shopping center along an interstate highway, surrounded by surface parking, between a TGI Fridays […]

The Regions With the Most Potential to Build New Walkable Development

By Angie Schmitt | Jun 17, 2014 | 3 Comments

To get the economy humming again, America’s metro regions need to build more walkable places, according to a new report from a coalition of real estate developers. The report from LOCUS [PDF], a group of developers and real estate investors who specialize in building walkable projects, examines which regions are seeing the fastest growth in walkable urban […]

Pew Survey: Liberals Want Walkability, Conservatives Want a Big Lawn

By Angie Schmitt | Jun 13, 2014 | 21 Comments

Americans are increasingly sorted along ideological lines. There is less diversity of opinion among the people we associate with, in the media we consume, and even where we want to live. That’s according to a new report from Pew Research Center studying political polarization in the United States. Perhaps most interestingly, the report found stark differences in preference for […]

Will This Be the Decade of Big City Growth?

By William H. Frey | May 29, 2014 | 2 Comments

William H. Frey is an internationally regarded demographer and senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. This article was originally posted by the Brookings Institution. Figure 1: Large City Growth* For the first third of this decade, big city population growth continues to outpace the rates of 2000 through 2010 while suburban growth continues to lag behind, according to new […]

Omaha Developer Sells “Walkable Main Street” of Parking Lots

By Angie Schmitt | May 1, 2014 | No Comments

As the downside of sprawling development becomes better understood, some developers are getting better at greenwashing sprawl. Here’s a pretty great example from Omaha, Nebraska. Charles Marohn at Strong Towns came across a story about Lockwood Development’s new office park in the Omaha World-Herald. And he was so taken aback by the disparity between the rhetoric […]

Book Excerpt: “Dead End,” a Look at Sprawl and the Rebirth of Urbanism

By Ben Ross | Apr 22, 2014 | No Comments

“Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism” is a new book by Ben Ross, longtime president of Maryland’s Action Committee for Transit and a frequent contributor to Greater Greater Washington. This excerpt is preceded by a section describing the post-war expansion into the suburbs and the surrender of public space to automobile traffic. Highways […]

Show More Stories