Relational Design for Transitions Within US Suburbs

Suburbs in the United States are seedbeds for systemic change.  But entrenched stigmas often obscure the rapid social and environmental changes within suburbs and their untapped potential to catalyze transitions toward more equitable and sustainable futures.  

In the U.S.,more people live and work in suburbs than in urban and rural areas combined. Suburbs are also becoming some of the most demographically diverse places in the country, where most immigrants to the U.S. arrive and establish their lives. These in-between places  grapple with numerous complex challenges related to uneven mobilities, including institutional racism, lack of affordable multi-family housing, inadequate public transportation, and insufficient civic infrastructure. If national and international agendas for systemic change seek to progress toward more just and sustainable futures, acknowledging  U.S. suburbs as crucial sites for catalyzing transitions is imperative.

This dissertation, a culmination of 13 practice-oriented research projects, including the formation of a non-profit organization, Suburb Futures, operationalizes theories related to place, mobility, and relationality  through the framework of Transition Design. The dissertation contends  that designing for transitions requires transdisciplinary, community-led approaches that honor the primacy of motion and distributed and  polycentric relationships to place. It concludes with a proposal for an “ecology of systems interventions” to design for transitions through relational practices that leverage the trajectory of the suburbanization of place toward more equitable and sustainable futures