How to Reinhabit the Suburbs

AT THE VERY hour when modern humanity arrived at the pinnacle of triumph—a global marketplace promising riches for all—the skies have been darkened by the terrible specters of ecological crisis and social disruption. This realization dawns just as the urban age has been declared: More than half of humanity now lives in cities.

Surely these occurrences—the urban age and the overlapping crises of our time—are connected. Indeed, any reconciliation with the Earth will doubtless involve a “great resettlement” of our species, through which we, homo urbanis, endeavor to reconcile our urbanity with planetary limits—the epoch of the great suburban dispensation.

Our work defines this challenge by focusing on the suburbs: the sprawling, low-density urban landscape that surrounds large cities, especially in the “new world” of North America, Australia, and New Zealand.

Suburbia is typically inhabited by high-impact and aspiring consumers, who are both creatures and creators of the growth economy. Every aspect of the modern suburban existence is dependent on fossil fuels, but what fossil fuels giveth, fossil fuels threaten to taketh away.

Rather than seeing suburbia as a consumerist wasteland, we see it as having a latent capacity to become something new. Of course, the suburbs will not be knocked down to be built again in a “green” way. Instead, the task is to resettle or reinhabit the suburbs from the grassroots up, according to a new vision of progress.

The new vision we propose is that of “degrowth,” which refers to a bold process of planned contraction of overgrown economies. Given that the global economy is in gross ecological overshoot while billions still live in destitution, it follows that justice and sustainability require degrowth in the richest nations. This may not seem likely—and it isn’t—but we argue degrowth is the most coherent paradigm for resolving the crises of our times.

Fortunately, when approached creatively, the low-density suburban landscape shows itself to be a more promising place to start a transformative retrofit than the high-density urban areas. While governments do little or nothing to respond positively to social and environmental issues, suburbanites could be growing food, turning their houses into places of local production, sharing their resources with neighbors, and developing the skills and values of self-sufficiency and frugality.

Eventually we will need governments to get on board, but our theory of change is that there will never be radical state action for a degrowth society until there is a culture of sufficiency that demands it.

Today we see a diverse range of movements working toward a new urbanity. These include local food initiatives—from local farmers markets and community gardens—and larger urban agriculture projects. It includes the participants and organizers of emerging sharing economies, as well as the growing pool of climate activists, divestment organizers, permaculture groups, transition towns, and progressive labor unions. In Australia, there is the small but vocal “save our suburbs” network, in which we see the seeds of more progressive and resilient city planning. And it includes the energy-frugal households quietly moving toward solar, one by one undermining the fossil fuel industry, as well as the artists, musicians, storytellers, and filmmakers that are redefining and telling new stories of prosperity.

Theologian Paul Tillich called suburban Christianity “one of the greatest dangers for Protestantism.” What would it take to turn that danger into an opportunity to creatively build new communities for climate resilience? We hold up urban social movements as a key driver for suburban renewal. We hope faith-based communities in the suburbs engage with degrowth practices and make them their own—and create a new, more humane and compassionate world within the shell of the old.