Re-designing America’s suburbs for the age of climate change and pandemics

The USA is the leading emitter of greenhouse gases among the developed countries, in part because it is the only developed country with more of its population in suburbs than in cities. Cities produce less greenhouse gas emissions per capita than suburbs. Meanwhile, the US and the world have been wrestling with the public health emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic. But as US cities recover from the pandemic, they are unlikely to add more population than their suburbs because of changes in favor of working from home, online shopping, and the search for more affordable housing and green space, as well as concerns about population density and contagious diseases. So, the challenge is how to design and redevelop suburbs to make them more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable to address both climate change and the threat of future pandemics. A sustainable suburb scenario offers an alternative to the sprawling development, separation of land uses and income classes, and automobile dependence that characterizes the typical American suburban landscape. This essay reviews the literature on re-designing suburbs and describes and evaluates both a business-as-usual suburb scenario and a sustainable suburb scenario. Though challenges exist, sustainable suburbs will be needed in order to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions, to achieve greater resilience in adapting to the effects of climate change, and to guard against future pandemics while providing economic opportunities and greater equity over the long run.