Agriculture is the New Golf
Rethinking Suburban Communities
Good Magazine, The Neighborhoods Issue
by Allison Arieff, April 18, 2010
There is new movement to plan suburban communities around farms instead of golf courses. Can it catch on?
It has often been observed that suburbia is a place where the developer displaces animals and rips out trees, and then names the streets after them.
“We’re at a watershed in terms of reaching the limits of sustainability both environmentally [and in] time and expense,” says June Williamson, coauthor with Ellen Dunham-Jones of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs. “There are many dynamics pushing and encouraging a rethinking of our development patterns. The opportunity is there to reshape those settings in a way that will reflect changing demographics, recognize climate change, and acknowledge the need for new suburban development patterns.”