Focusing the Scope

New thoughts and updates—where this project is going:

1. I've been visiting suburban projects with different degrees of public space—private outdoor space, semi-private outdoor space, privately shared outdoor space, public outdoor space. And I've been studying the juxtapositions of these types of space. Hoping to do behavioral studies of some of them next Spring when the weather is nice. It is fascinating to see these different types of outdoor spaces—even the market-driven single family detached homes are quite interesting and much different than the American model.

2. Surprisingly (at least to me) I am actually finding a good bit of written work out there about adding shared streets and spaces in existing American suburbs. A lot of this work is from the 1980's, but the next issue of Places will focus entirely on suburban retrofits. Most of the material I am finding is focused on the policy level and the processes for initiating changes; there is less material on design approaches.

I am trying to develop 3 or 4 different categories of retrofits. For now the list includes shared spaces, shared streets and single family detached dwelling lots/accessory dwelling units. The plan now for the next 2 months is to continue visiting good examples of projects that are related to these categories and to begin writing an essay for each. The site visits can touch on design issues while the writing can focus more on related histories and policies for these types of places.