the previous situation, and ever will be, for the historical prototype, the European
inner suburb.^52
Co-housing, advocated by McCamant and
Durrett (1994) in a book of that title, warrants co-
consideration along with TODs and MUDs. Again
this is a residential pocket arrangement for selected
sites, which fulfils the needs of specific interests.
Within those constraints it works well, achieving
medium net density outcomes, maximizing at
around 30 dwellings per hectare (12 per acre) for the
site considered as a whole, the houses being a
mixture of units with one, two, three and four bed-
rooms. Co-housing fits in some ‘common’ estate
space – but notas public realm open space. Some of
this common space is used for car parking at the
edge-entrance to the site, with a larger proportion
available for wider outdoor activities such as
strolling, pooping the dog, improving golf swings,
playing hide and seek and simply living a bit more
of life outdoors. The pluses are, especially, the extra
‘common’ space and the added personal security, the
big negative being exclusivity, for the extra space
belongs to the group and is not of the public realm.
My colleague James Lunday’s findings on sustain-
able urban design profiles the following as the sub-
urban outcomes most sought by owner-occupiers:
sociability, accessibility, healthiness, local identity
(‘legibility’ to Lynch 1960), security, resilience
(namely compact form and robustness), and a ‘to
hand’ level of concentration reflected in accessibility
and availability. Security is not about exclusion
beyond the defensible home-space; it is more about
occupation of the public realm and the presence of
people in the ‘third spaces’ beyond home and work.
To this listing I would add ‘profitability’ simply
because for most suburban dwellers the home place
is also a tradable, appreciating, capital commodity.
Into the mix planners, bureaucrats and local politi-
cians strive to achieve ‘enjoyability’ – an accessory to
sociability – perhaps the least tangible, yet arguably
the most significant ingredient.
What has to be acknowledged and lived with is
that, as critical as one might be of suburbanization
as a ‘problem’, it has been and largely remains for
society at large the settlement growth ‘solution’. This
behoves planning operatives to do all that is within
Urban Growth Management 231Cul-de-sac arrangements are preferred
by many homeowners. A principle dis-
advantage is the way they concentrate
onto collectors. But for many planners
the neighbourhood-defining feature of
collector roads supports the provision
of a system of pedestrian-linked culs-
de-sac and crescents. Vital to the induc-
tion of neighbourliness is the inclusion
of pedestrian linkages. Layouts with all
streets as through streets offer an un-
neighbourly way to even out a suburb’s
traffic load.