Shared landscapes : building connections in the suburbs

American suburbs are repeatedly assailed for being placeless, with restrictive zoning that isolates the public realm from the private. Critics accuse the suburbs of over-emphasizing castle-like detached single family homes at the expense of civic or community spaces. Recent interest in mixed-use residential communities indicates a desire for a greater reintegration of the individual household with the collective life of a larger community. A crucial place to investigate this urbanistic transformation of suburban development is at the basic 'building block' of community: the micro-neighborhood of dwellings within close proximity. The thesis attempts to answer these questions: at this finer scale, how can one develop a community-oriented civic presence that fosters neighborly interactions in a residential setting? How can this presence connect micro-neighborhoods to the surrounding community? And how does the looser density of the suburbs affect a transplanted, urban-derived sense of shared space?

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1994

Author dc:creator

• Dunn, Alice W. (Alice Winthrop)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Rosemary Grimshaw.

• Architecture

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/65694

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/65694