Fixing the "ugly" and "inefficient" 'burbs

Inefficient. Inflexible. And oh yes, ugly.

Those were a few of the terms renowned architect Andres Duany used to describe the suburbs to more than 200 Judson University architecture students and area municipal planners Friday afternoon.

The good news? They can be fixed.

"Because what was built was normative, you can learn to retrofit a subdivision. A strip mall," he said. "This is a precise disaster with a very precise solution."

Duany's lecture at the Centre of Elgin centered around the topic "Make No Small Plans in the New Economy."

Duany, a 2008 Driehaus Prize Laureate, is a partner at Miami-based Duany, Plater-Zyerk and Company, and the founder of the Congress for New Urbanism, a leader in the movement that seeks to end suburban sprawl and urban disinvestment.

Among those sponsoring the lecture were Judson, the City of Elgin, and the Congress for New Urbanism's Illinois Chapter.

Duany spent much of his 90-minutes taking his audience through the history of recent urban planning movements, from the 19th century through the depression era to postwar suburban development.

Various aspects of the suburbs - shops, homes, schools and community centers - were built far away from one another, he said, with the understanding that residents would be wealthy enough to afford cars to drive to and from different destinations.

Much of New Urbanism, he said, is focused on correcting what its proponents say is wrong with the suburbs - of allowing people to live with fewer highways and more public transportation, to be able to walk to shops, restaurants and libraries.

"Sixty percent of what we have in America is dysfunctional suburban sprawl," he said. However, "it's not so dysfunctional that we can abandon all that."

He urged students and established architects alike to task themselves with rethinking affordable housing and mobile homes, making them more functional and desirable; to plan for naturally occurring retirement communities; for residents to grow their own food.

"It isn't the green buildings that make an area green," he said. "Those buildings have to be within walking distance to public transportation, to other facilities."

Not enough architecture schools in the area are teaching new urbanism, Duany said. Judson, the University of Notre Dame and Andrews University in Michigan are among the few.

Those three schools, he said, are all religious institutions, pairing ethics with the way they think.

"Engage as serious individuals the reality that needs to be done because society needs you," he told students.

Duany spent the rest of the afternoon at Judson University, reviewing student work at the school's Harm A. Weber Academic Center.