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Real-estate legend Sam Zell said recently that the “End of Suburbia” might be

happening. Right here and now.

Of course, all the suburban dreck that was built in the last six decades isn’t going

to vaporize. But, in terms of new construction — in other words, the real estate

development business — reproducing the postwar, automobile-dependent Suburbia

pattern is a money-losing proposition.

“You’re drawing all the young people in America to these 24/7 cities,” said Zell

last October. “The last thing they want to do is live in the suburbs.”

Of course, as people get a little older, compromises ensue. But, that doesn’t mean

they like it. “Why would anyone live in the suburbs, except to provide schools for

their kids?” Zell asked.

The first criticisms of the American automobile suburb began about the same time

as the suburbs themselves appeared in the 1920s and expanded in the postwar

period. “There’s no there there,” lamented Gertrude Stein about Oakland,

California, in 1937. She would know — she grew up there.

But, if we aren’t going to build suburbs, what should we build?

I propose that we build what I call the Traditional City — the normal form of

human urban living for the last five thousand years. The Traditional City is the

basic form of historic cities in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and

both pre-Columbian and post-Columbian Americas.

It is the form of ancient Rome, of the Aztecs’ capital city Tenochtitlan, of ancient

Cuzco and Machu Picchu, of Alexandria in Egypt, and medieval Kyoto. It is also

the basic form of most of modern Tokyo (built after 1950), central Paris, and

Kathmandu, Nepal.

Hundreds of millions of people — perhaps billions — are living in Traditional City

environments today, throughout Europe and Asia. You could hardly think of

anything that has a longer track record of proven success.

The world’s most beloved urban places — central Paris, Venice, Florence,

Santorini, Greece, the best parts of Kyoto, Hanoi, Bangkok and Quebec City — are

inevitably in the Traditional City form. Obviously, it is popular.

Americans spend thousands of dollars and travel for days to escape their Suburban

neighborhoods, and enjoy a week in Barcelona, Amsterdam, or Innsbruck.

Alas, here in the United States, we hardly have any examples of the Traditional

City form. We have what I call 19th Century Hypertrophism, the form of all U.S.

cities and towns built after 1780 or so. This later morphed into two new forms in

the 20th century — automobile Suburbia and the high-rise 20th Century

Hypertrophism popularized by French architect Le Corbusier in the 1920s and

exemplified today by places like Dubai, New York’s Stuyvesant Town, and much

recent highrise construction in places like Shanghai.

Think of the best parts of Europe’s best cities — places like Rome, Lyon, Lisbon

or Madrid. Is there anything like that in the U.S.? Obviously not.

If 19th Century Hypertrophism worked, then we would today be celebrating the

beauty of places like Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Buffalo and the Bronx.

Despite some pleasing elements, our 170-year experiment in 19th Century

Hypertrophism (1780-1950) was a failure. Alas, even the confused “New

Urbanists” in the U.S. don’t really grasp this, and attempt to reproduce this failed

experiment, with predictably mediocre results.

After literally decades of real-world experience, we can conclude today that 19th

Century Hypertrophism and 20th Century Hypertrophism are failures.

Besides creating better living spaces for people (as demonstrated by thousands of

existing successes worldwide) — which also happen to be inherently cheaper to

build and live in — the Traditional City, in its modern form today in places like

Osaka with a fully-developed train system, is also vastly less consumptive of

resources. It is the path not only to a more pleasant lifestyle, but also a much more

environmentally-friendly one.

Read full article at Forbes