Reviewed by:

• Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges by June Williamson and Ellen Dunham-Jones
• Douglas R. Appler (bio)

June Williamson and Ellen Dunham-Jones have been advocates for reimagining suburbia at least since the 2009 publication of their first co-authored book, Retrofitting Suburbia. That book quickly became a standard in the field of urban design because it so clearly addressed a glaring need. It documented how existing suburban form could be made more urban, more sustainable, and more vital. Retrofitting Suburbia enjoyed a revision in 2011, and the book presently under review, Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia, represents a logical continuation of those earlier works. As Williamson and Dunham-Jones indicate in their introduction, it is meant to be a sequel, not a revision. At this point, the case no longer needs to be exhaustively made that the suburban landscape presents challenges that can be addressed through more thoughtful urban design. But things do change, even in suburbia. This book is a successful effort to respond to those changes, and it puts a finer point on the issues facing suburbia today.

The first of the book's two chapters is devoted to identifying the most significant design challenges that the authors see as facing suburbia. The second chapter includes thirty-two case studies that approach at least one of the challenges introduced in the first chapter, though most of the case studies address two or more. The case studies are typically five to six pages in length, and are richly illustrated with color photographs, renderings, and maps. The ample footnotes include sources and supplementary information that students and other researchers will appreciate.

The six challenges presented by the authors help to situate the book within various planning and design discourses, while also serving as an organizational device. The challenges featured are: disrupt automobile dependence; improve public health; support an aging population; leverage social capital for equity; compete for jobs; and add water and energy resilience. While the challenges themselves are not necessarily new, in many ways they manifest themselves differently in the suburbia of 2021 than they did in the suburbia of the late twentieth century, or even suburbia at the time of their first publication in 2009. Disrupting automobile dependence has long been a goal of New Urbanists and public health advocates, for example, but no one writing in 2009 was thinking about the consequences of [End Page 154] ride-sharing apps, and driverless cars were even more experimental than they are today. Other forces that have influenced the changes required of suburbia since this series first began include the rising purchasing power and changing lifestyle preferences of the Millennial workforce, the consequences of the Great Recession (though the first waves of that event did shape the 2011 revision), greater awareness of the relationship between racial inequality and the built environment, and the increasingly obvious pressures of climate change.

The case studies that the authors use to explore how suburbia can be retrofitted in response to these challenges are geographically diverse, with Georgia, California, Texas, and the DC Metro area receiving similar levels of attention. The Upper Midwest, Southern New England, seven other states, and the Province of Quebec are also represented.

The case studies range in scale from less than an acre in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, to a four-mile stretch of the Rockville Pike in Montgomery County, Maryland. Without getting into the specifics of the case studies, for which one should certainly buy a copy of the book, they highlight the redevelopments, re-inhabitations, and re-greenings (the authors' terms) of a variety of existing suburban forms.

From an instructional perspective, the book will be very useful. The case studies are current, the indexing system used makes it a simple process to see why the given case studies are being highlighted, as well as to find other, related cases. Students will have no trouble determining which of the book's case studies align with their interests.

From a preservationist's perspective, the idea of thirty-two case...

审核人：

• 郊区改造案例研究：应对紧迫挑战的城市设计策略，作者 June Williamson 和 Ellen Dunham-Jones
• 道格拉斯·R·阿普勒 (简历)

至少自 2009 年他们的第一本合着书《改造郊区》出版以来，琼·威廉姆森和艾伦·邓纳姆-琼斯一直倡导重新构想郊区。那本书很快成为城市设计领域的标准，因为它非常清楚地解决了一个明显的需求。它记录了现有的郊区形式如何变得更城市化、更可持续和更重要。改造郊区在 2011 年进行了修订，目前正在审查的书，改造郊区的案例研究, 代表了那些早期作品的逻辑延续。正如威廉姆森和邓纳姆-琼斯在他们的介绍中指出的那样，它是续集，而不是修订版。在这一点上，不再需要详尽地说明郊区景观带来的挑战可以通过更深思熟虑的城市设计来解决。但情况确实发生了变化，即使在郊区也是如此。这本书是对这些变化的成功回应，它对当今郊区面临的问题提出了更精细的观点。

本书两章中的第一章致力于确定作者认为郊区面临的最重要的设计挑战。第二章包括 32 个案例研究，这些案例研究至少解决了第一章中介绍的一个挑战，尽管大多数案例研究涉及两个或更多。案例研究的篇幅通常为 5 到 6 页，并配有丰富的彩色照片、效果图和地图。充足的脚注包括学生和其他研究人员会欣赏的来源和补充信息。

作者提出的六项挑战有助于将本书置于各种规划和设计话语中，同时也可以作为一种组织工具。面临的挑战是：破坏对汽车的依赖；改善公共卫生；支持人口老龄化；利用社会资本实现公平；竞争工作；并增加水和能量的弹性。虽然这些挑战本身并不一定是新的，但在许多方面，它们在 2021 年的郊区表现出与 20 世纪后期的郊区甚至 2009 年首次出版时的郊区不同。例如，长期以来一直是新城市主义者和公共卫生倡导者的目标，但没有人在 2009 年写作时考虑过[End Page 154]拼车应用程序和无人驾驶汽车比现在更具实验性。自本系列首次开始以来影响郊区所需变化的其他力量包括千禧一代劳动力不断增长的购买力和不断变化的生活方式偏好，大萧条的后果（尽管该事件的第一波确实影响了 2011 年的修订），对种族不平等与建筑环境之间的关系以及日益明显的气候变化压力有了更多的认识。

作者用来探索如何改造郊区以应对这些挑战的案例研究在地理上是多样化的，乔治亚州、加利福尼亚州、德克萨斯州和华盛顿特区都受到了类似程度的关注。上中西部、新英格兰南部、其他七个州和魁北克省也有代表。

案例研究的规模从罗德岛东格林威治的不到一英亩到马里兰州蒙哥马利县的洛克维尔派克绵延 4 英里。在没有深入了解案例研究的细节（人们当然应该为此购买一本书）的情况下，他们强调了各种现有郊区形式的重新开发、重新居住和重新绿化（作者的术语）。

从教学的角度来看，这本书将非常有用。案例研究是最新的，使用的索引系统使其成为一个简单的过程，可以查看为什么突出显示给定案例研究，以及查找其他相关案例。学生可以毫不费力地确定书中的哪些案例研究符合他们的兴趣。

从保护主义者的角度来看，三十二箱的想法......