'The evolving metropolis after three decades: a study of community, neighbourhood and street form at the urban edge' by Mahbub Rashid: Michael Southworth reflects on The Evolving Metropolis after three decades

摘要

I began research on the morphology of the urban edge in the late 1980s to help counter urban design's almost exclusive focus at that time on the urban centre, when the form of the vast metropolitan periphery was largely ignored. Suburbia was considered to be formless and banal cookie-cutter development lacking in identity and community, yet more than half the US population lived and worked there. We felt that a closer look was needed to learn about its typologies and character, from the small scale of house and lot, to neighbourhood street layouts and community-wide patterns of activity. My research with Peter Owens focused on typologies of the public framework in suburban communities of varied ages and types in the San Francisco Bay Area.