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America's suburbs have been a subject of ridicule since they began their takeover of the national landscape after WWII. No critics are more vocal than "new urbanists," who believe in dense, lively, walkable, sustainable urban environments. New urbanist James Howard Kunstler calls suburbs "the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world."

The biggest criticism of suburban sprawl is that it forces us to drive instead of walking or taking public transit. NewUrbanism.org enumerates the costs of all this time behind the wheel:

• Social Costs:
  • Isolation (we don't stop and talk to people in the street)
  • Time stuck in traffic means less time for civic activities


• Economic Costs:
  • Wasted time
  • Wasted money (we spend nearly 30% our income on car payments)
  • Wasted public funds (endless civic spending on road upkeep)


• Environmental Costs:
  • Pollution from car exhaust
  • Loss of environment that's paved over


• Health Costs:
  • Toll of stress from road rage
  • Inactivity-related illnesses
  • Environmental diseases from pollution

Over the past three decades, the length of “rush hours” per day in major U.S. cities has continued to climb, according to government stats.

This is happening as cities have gotten more populated but less dense–i.e., sprawled.

Warning: The following may contain ennui.

“Little Boxes,” Malvina’s Reynolds’ 1962 song critiquing suburbia, has inspired many Youtube interpretations.

Suburbia stills

Claymation

Anime

Weeds Intro–”Little Boxes” Cover by The Individuals

Berkeley, CA, and its sister-cities, San Francisco and Oakland, rank among the Top 10 most sustainable cities in the country. They get  especially high marks for their public transit and their citizen engagement.

We wondered if Berkeley-ites had hit sustainability fatigue, or if they’d be willing to go even further. Is Berkeley an endpoint on the road to sustainability, or just a mile marker? So we asked people on the street: What would it take to make your life more sustainable?

– Hummers kick the bucket. | NYTimes Wheels Blog

– The habit of texting-while-driving has been hard to stamp out. Maybe the problem isn’t texting, but driving. | Wired

– Mumbai celebrates car-free day | City Fix

– Study finds bike-sharing is viable for Philadelphia. | Philly.com

– California wins $2 billion in stimulus money for high-speed rail. | CNN Money

– 2009′s top 10 most congested cities. | INRIX

Clusterfuck Nation – New urbanist Howard Kunstler’s blog

Ecocity Views – Richard Register on rebuilding a healthy relationship between cities and nature

How We Drive – Blog on traffic and driving by Tom Vanderbilt, author Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)

Inhabitat – Blog on all things green design, urban and otherwise

New Colonist: Vox Civitatis – News on sustainable urban design

Re:Vision Dallas – Updates on a sustainable design contest for a plot of land in downtown Dallas

The City Fix – Site on sustainable urban transport with local blogs in Mumbai; Washington, D.C.; and Mexico City

Into the mid-2000s, suburbia looked like it was going to keep growing forever. When Forbes released this 2007 list of the top 100 fastest-growing suburbs, based on census data, some had as much as doubled in size in six years. Click on the red markers to see the rank and growth rate.

Then the recession hit. Now suburbs have emptied so fast that the U.S. government is considering razing them. A pilot program in Flint, Michigan has already started knocking down vacant houses.

Getty images

Presenting at the 2004 TED conference, passionate “new urbanist” Howard Kunstler had some choice words for dreary American suburban landscapes.

Kunstler calls this suburban intersection two miles north of his town an “asteroid belt of architectural garbage.”

Boston City Hall? “A public place so dismal that the winos don’t even want to go there.”

Any way to improve this, the back side of Boston City Hall? “This, in fact, would be a better building if we put mosaic portraits of Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and all the other great despots of the 20th century on the side of the building, because then we’d honestly be saying what the building is really communicating to us. You know, that it’s a despotic building; it wants us to feel like termites.”

Public space, Kunstler says, conveys a message about who we are. This public building in his hometown?
“This is a building designed like a DVD player. Audio jack, power supply. …. The message of this form of architecture … is: We don’t give a fuck!“