The City-Suburb Dichotomy: Forget it or Fix it?

The city depends on its surroundings and vice versa. Or does it really? The suburb and the city should not be perceived as two separated themes, fields nor distinct sites, but as two characteristics of the same fragmented entity, of the same socio-spatial landscape. Some experts even think that we should forget all about cities and suburbs as distinct sub-urbane zones, arguing that regions and neighbourhoods as socio-spatial typologies are the only meaningful structures that actually characterize today’s urban landscape. What we are witnessing here might be the death of the monolithic concentric city and the revitalization of the polycentric urban landscape where socio-spatial settlements are the key driver for urban place- and imagemaking, replacing the conventional physical constrains to the city.

If that’s the fact, how can we then support these centrifugal flows and decentralizing organizations instead of restraining them? The landscape is changing: the suburban and urban spheres are merging. Thus, in order to regain (lost) territory and reclaim (missing) purpose, we find ourselves forced to rethink both the city as well as its outskirts. Yet, the question is how these changes transform the socio-spatial landscape as well as the way in which we perceive and act according to this transformation? The process of reconstructing and constraining the city in opposition to the suburb is demanding, expensive and inefficient in the long term. Here some key questions must be asked prior to this type of dualistic enforcement - and in my opinion extremely limiting planning practice that is still taking place.

What is worth (and not worth) reconstructing? Why try to manage and control the incontrollable flows? Should we forget about the distinction between city and suburb or should we fix the image of a concentric city encircled by an outlining suburb? This is neither the death of suburbia nor the end of the centralized city, but maybe the absolute turning point for both? In order to “plan” a sustainable future for the urban landscape at large - in order to create a lasting image - we must recognize how these suburban and urban flows are interconnected and related physically, mentally as well as socio-spatially. When searching for new analogies, new typologies, and new images might show? 

Read article about Imagining a Sustainable Suburbia