SUBURBAN PLAN
THE H E A LT H Y COMMUNITY
SUBURBAN LIVING In the 21st century the suburbs often get a bad rap. Thus the online Urban Dictionary, a slangy compendium created by volunteers, defines “suburb” as “a mind-numbingly dull place located on the outskirts of a larger, and probably more interesting, city. Completely devoid of culture, activities, black people, good coffee, independent business and pedestrians.” This may be disregarded as the smug slur of a publication whose title alone indicates its bias. Increasingly clear are the health consequences in suburbs. All the cars create congested streets, which engender air pollution and stressful commutes. The people in those cars are sitting, not walking. Basic exercise thus is not an incidental part of daily life but a discrete event—trips to the gym or park--that suburbanites must program into schedules already tight because of all the time spent sitting in cars. Cities clearly will not abandon their suburbs, nor scrape them and start over. What we must do is reshape them.
Suburban Community Basic Characteristics For planning purposes, suburban areas share many of the following characteristics: • Single-family residences predominate in low to moderate density patterns. • Condominium and apartment complexes, in the suburbs that permit them, are frequently clustered adjacent to major roadways.
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Typically, though not necessarily, suburbs are commuter communities. Many amenities, including retail, food, entertainment and commercial facilities. These are located in malls, commercial strips, and stand-alone lots, none of which are easy to access other than by car.
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Access to institutions such as churches and schools primarily via automobile. Increasing congestion on arterials and major collector roads. Limited public transportation.
Analysis and Strategies The key challenge is the car-dependency inherent in the suburban form of development of the last 60 years. Reducing the need to drive will require denser residential development in selected locations, primarily along the arterials and collector streets, to enable a larger ridership pool for mass transit, thus increasing transit’s financial viability and frequency of service. The installation of a more complete system of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure is also necessary. Integrating a mixture of land uses can reduce the distance between destinations and encourage residents and workers to walk and cycle to meet the needs of daily life rather than drive to large-scale pods of commerce.
Neighborhood Design and Development Health-Promoting Some private suburban developments offer residents recreational amenities such as sidewalks, pools, walking trails, gyms, and golf courses. Metro Planning’s new land use policies encourage mixed-use development along suburban road corridors. The department’s updates of its subdivision regulations over the last decade have been intended to counter “conventional development planning” and correct suburban residential sprawl. Revisions in 2006, and further amendments in 2011, produced the following examples of how regulations are being used to create greater connectivity and pedestrian safety. Additional new subdivision regulations include: • Limited direct access from subdivisions to arterial and collector streets to avoid excessive curb cuts
on major roadways. Curb cuts put pedestrians on sidewalks in conflict with turning vehicles. Numerous curb cuts also increase turning incidents, which slow vehicular traffic. • Requirements for pedestrian and bicycle easements, as well as facilities such as bike racks. Specific locations are recommended by the Strategic Plan for Sidewalks and Bikeways or in an adopted Community Plan. Health-Defeating Deliberate separation of housing from other land uses. As a result, residents, especially those seeking to walk or bike, are poorly connected to the wider community and must depend on cars for transportation. Those without the ability to drive or the means to own a car have few or no transportation options.
Strategy: Suburban Retrofit Retrofitting suburbs is the concept of directing growth to existing suburban areas by means of infill and redevelopment to prevent additional sprawl and consumption of remaining rural land. The benefits are the preservation of open space and the reduction of costs to government because the infrastructure already exists. In retrofitting, the emphasis should be on the mixture of land uses, including residential with smaller scale commercial, and on providing street and sidewalk connections to surrounding neighborhoods and commerce. Significant economic redevelopment opportunities may be found all along our arterials, especially in “dying” shopping centers, malls, and outdated big box stores. “The belief that the commercial-only arterial is best must
be rethought in favor of concentrated commercial nodes linked by higher density mixed-use corridors,” writes Rick Bernhardt, Metro Planning director, in his 2005 essay, “Reforming the Arterials.” “There is much more property along our arterials zoned for commercial use than can be economically sustained. And the amount of existing arterial commercial development—in the form of the big box and the strip mall—cannot be supported under today’s economic realities.” This is even truer now, with the escalation of online shopping. Increasing the density of development along the historic pikes and arterials that are now mostly commercial will create a larger ridership pool for public transit, while protecting existing neighborhoods served by local streets.
Transportation Health-Promoting The addition of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and commuter rail to the public transit menu offers commuters alternatives to cars along the corridors served. BRT operates on major roads, providing fewer stops and more frequent service than the regular lines on these roads, improved transit shelters, and digital signage that informs riders of approaching buses. Health-Defeating The traditional suburban design focus on the automobile inhibits other forms of transportation, such as mass transit, walking, and biking. Statistics from the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) show that, in 2011, the citizens of Davidson County (Metro Nashville) drove 21.75 million miles per day, an average of 34.7 miles per person. And each year Middle Tennessee commuters, waste the most hours of any region—120—trapped in
what a report by CEOs for Cities report calls the “sprawl crawl.” Being stuck in traffic for all those wasted hours increases air pollution, stress, and the risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease. The reasons for suburban traffic congestion are rooted in development patterns that concentrate traffic on arterials, such as Gallatin Road, Hillsboro Pike, Harding Road, etc. Despite the fact that these roads are expected to carry a heavy load of traffic, however, Metro has zoned these roads almost entirely commercial. Quick and efficient traffic flow occurs when cars stop infrequently. Commercial areas, however, induce frequent stops, slowdowns, and turns, as drivers access parking lots. That each business typically has its own parking, immediately adjacent, increases the amount of turning. Recurrent curb cuts for all these parking lots erode sidewalks, if they are present at all, and force intrepid walkers into conflict with cars. Vehicular mobility reduced to a crawl undermines efficient mass transit. Thus the focus on cars has created a roadway system that is dysfunctional for all forms of transportation.
Strategy Independence from the Automobile Suburban communities require alternatives to car travel to reduce air pollution, driving related stress, and vehicular accidents, while providing people with the opportunity to become more active—ultimately improving their health and saving money. The American Public Transportation Association estimates that households can save an average of $10,000 per year by giving up one car and taking public transportation. The savings come from the elimination of fuel and maintenance costs, vehicle depreciation and insurance premiums. Create viable transportation alternatives for the large number of suburban commuters by increasing public transit services (routes and frequency) between suburban communities and primary employment areas. The lowto-moderate density of residences and the arterial focus of the road pattern in the suburban transect zone,
however, do not lend themselves to a fine grain of transit lines. More park-and-ride areas throughout the county is one option for enhancing ridership, which would enable better commuter service. These lots can be shared with facilities that do not fully use their parking during peak commuter hours, or installed on vacant land that can be banked for future high-density, mixed-use development at commuter stops. It is important to point out, however, that many car trips are not generated by commutes to work. Shopping, dining out, going to the gym, delivering children to and from day care, school and extra-curricular activities, and other errands occupy a significant amount of American travel time. The 2009 National Highway Travel Survey concluded that over 79 percent of all trips are not work-related. Of those, 28 percent are 1 mile or less, 40 percent are 2 miles or less, and 50 percent are 3 miles or less. With the FHWA’s defined bikeable distance at 5 miles or less, most trips taken can be accomplished by alternative means to the personal vehicle. Thus prying people out of their cars also depends on increasing public transit service and active transit amenities— more sidewalks and bike lanes—within the community. Bus “connector” routes collect people at key locations—schools, medical clinics, senior towers—on secondary roads and deliver them to and from the main transit lines located along the major roads.
Walkability & Pedestrian Safety Health-Promoting Trips taken on foot enhance physical activity, opportunities for social interaction, and air quality (by decreasing the amount of car-generated exhaust). Metro has made progress on constructing and improving sidewalks, pedestrian crossings, and traffic calming measures to aid pedestrian safety. In the past five years, the Public Works budget had funds to build 3.5 miles of new sidewalks in suburban communities and repair another 2.5 miles. New subdivisions now required to have sidewalks on both sides of the streets. Greenways, where available and connected to existing infrastructure, offer safe walking and cycling paths. Metro’s Strategic Plan for Sidewalks and Bikeways, updated every five years, features an interactive map of the county showing existing and planned bikeways sidewalks and greenways.
Health-Defeating Post-World War II suburbia’s focus on the automobile as the primary means of travel has created a hostile environment for pedestrians. Suburbanites who do walk, bike, or wait at bus stops on the arterials are vulnerable to injury because of proximity to fastmoving traffic. Tennessee’s culture has reinforced the supremacy of the car on the roads. Drivers often ignore pedestrians in clearly marked crosswalks or the “walk” signs at signalized intersections. When cars and pedestrians or cyclists do come into contact, cars inevitably win. Slowing cars down, however, improves the pedestrian’s chance of non-fatal injury. A car striking a pedestrian at 40 mph results in death 85 percent of the time, whereas the same car traveling at 20 mph only has a five percent chance of killing someone. Lack of connectivity is a problem. While sidewalks do exist in some locations, they are often discontinuous, hindering a suburban resident from walking on a sidewalk from home to schools, parks, shops, and services. Pedestrian crossings are often inadequate or absent, even at major intersections. Main corridors are encumbered with heavy traffic and lack such pedestrian infrastructure as mid-block crossings and refuge islands for safe crossing of multi-lane roads. Transit stops are frequently not aligned with pedestrian crossings and sidewalks. Strategy Make it Safe and Convenient to Walk Increase opportunities for incidental exercise and fewer car trips through the installation of an active transportation infrastructure connecting residential subdivisions to
Food Health-Promoting Suburban communities are generally well served by large-scale grocery stores. These stores are oriented towards car access, but their typical location on large commercial roads enables access by public transit. Metro land use policy allows community gardens, commercial gardens, and chickens on private lots. Suburban lots are frequently large enough for some food growing. The rise of food options such as CSAs offer alternatives to grocery stores for local produce. Health-Defeating Because residential areas are not well connected to commercial centers for foot or bicycle traffic, residents in most suburban neighborhoods need a car to access food stores. Studies of “food deserts� (areas lacking access to affordable fresh foods) have been conducted in urban areas, but exten-
sive studies for suburban areas of the county have not been completed. According to Dr. David Padgett of Tennessee State University, research shows that poverty is much more prevalent in the suburbs now than in past decades. It stands to reason that food deserts might be another ill normally associated with the inner-city that has migrated to the suburbs.
Strategy Access to Healthy Food Options Provide increased alternative transportation options to enable those without cars to access existing food stores along the commercial corridors. Strategies must be tailored to the specific suburban context. Conduct an analysis to determine levels of food insecurity in suburban areas. Areas that are determined to be food insecure should receive attention from Metro to increase access to fresh foods, with methods such as increased transit services, construction of sidewalk and multi-use paths, as well financial incentives that would help promote grocery store construction. Expand gardening options in suburban communities. Resources such as the Nashville Grown online interactive map (www.nashvillegrown.org) connect landowners to those wanting to grow food, often in exchange for a share of the produce.
Housing Health-Promoting A wide range of housing types, lot sizes, and prices are available in the suburban transect zone. Newer residential development forms include condos, zero-lot-line single-family homes, and planned communities that offer a diversity of housing, as well as cohousing proposals. Health-Defeating Housing tends to be segregated by type, lot size and price, with singlefamily homes dominant. Recent down-zoning in suburban residential neighborhoods—usually from duplex max to single-family only—were intended to preserve the quality—i.e., property values--and character of existing neighborhoods. Both segregation and down-zoning limit a resident’s ability to “age in place.”
The down-zoning was an attempt to prevent the intrusion of out-ofscale or badly designed duplexes on scraped lots. Design guidelines are a solution that would still allow some increased density. The ability to create an additional residence on a lot—such as a loft over a garage— increases the diversity of the population and preserves the affordability of communities.
Strategy Housing Diversification The demographic for which the suburban transect zone was designed, the couple with children, no longer dominates the American housing market. Recent trends show a rise in single-parent households, couples without children, and those who live alone. The population bulge known as the boomers is reaching retirement age. If the suburbs are going to house these groups, they must offer more residential variety. Suburban infill and new development should integrate housing for a variety of family sizes, ages, and incomes. Design guidelines for duplexes, especially size limits, can prevent the erosion of community character. Enabling residents to live a lifetime in a neighborhood will increase neighborhood stability and cohesiveness. Modify residential zoning codes to allow for the construction of accessory dwelling units. These units can provide supplemental income to homeowners, accommodations for young professionals and aging seniors, and bring affordable housing options to established neighborhoods, while maintaining the physical character of suburban communities.
Parks and Open Space Health-Promoting Low density housing usually correlates to significant private open space around individual homes. Subdivisions and apartment complexes may have shared open space, as well as recreational facilities such as tennis courts, pools, and walking paths. Numerous regional parks and open space with sports-oriented amenities like baseball diamonds, basketball courts, and walking loops are scattered throughout suburban communities. Some segments of the suburban zone, as in the southeast quadrant of the county, however, are underserved in this regard. Communities having water access, some with water-based recreation and walking trails. The suburbs were designed with large lots, emphasizing private greenspace. Thus this zone lacks public open space on a neighborhood scale. The rains of May 2010, however, have provided an opportunity to create smaller scale greenspace in suburbia. Health-Defeating Existing open space is often not connected to surrounding neighborhoods by sidewalks, trails, bike paths, or public transit; therefore, a personal vehicle is required for access. Few pocket parks lie in close proximity to residences in the suburban transect zone.
Strategy More Interconnectivity and Public Neighborhood-scale Greenspace Improve connectivity between residential areas and existing open space and public recreational facilities. Prevent future development in floodplains Floods can affected areas in the suburban transect zone, especially residential ones. More recent suburbs were built on the land that was left, which was frequently located on steep slopes and in floodplains. Some Metro Departments still allow for some construction on land designated as floodplain. This control should be tightened. The financial costs of the May rains and the environmental costs of future floodplain development are too steep to pay in the future. Preserving floodplain land as open space would provide the opportunity for more suburban neighborhoods to share it.
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Provide a safe and reliable transportation system for people, goods and services that supports economic prosperity in Tennessee.
Founded in 2000, the Nashville Civic Design Center is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to elevate the quality of Nashville’s built environment and to promote public participation in the creation of a more beautiful and functional city for all.
June 2016