First Suburbs

Auto-oriented suburbs have been the dominant form of American urbanization since World War II. Because of their age and location in their regions, the earliest of these - the first suburbs - face a unique set of dilemmas. Kansas State University landscape architecture students have spent the summer of 2010 addressing these dilemmas through two projects: the Build a Better Burb design competition in Long Island, New York and proposals developed in partnership with five cities in the Kansas City First Suburbs Coalition. The projects encapsulated in this book cover a range of ideas. Some are theoretical while others are concrete. Some are prototypes; others idiosyncratic. While they all address community-level concerns, many projects also operate at larger or smaller scales. Each proposal addresses multiple dilemmas facing First Suburbs, but no single proposal claims to solve them all. The projects do not offer a panacea, taken individually or as a whole: rather they take a step in the right direction.