TOWARDS A SUBURBAN RENAISSANCE

By Richard Rogers

Urban renaissance needs to spread out beyond our city centres: we need to create beautiful and family-friendly suburbs too. Architects and planners have often neglected, or even derided, suburbs. Suburbs may lack the urban vitality and mix many of us enjoy, but they provide a quieter, greener environment for families and can enhance the mix of housing that a city can offer. The best suburbs already offer a model for a different style of environmentally sustainable urban living. We need to bring all of them up to this standard, through intensification and new infrastructure.

But to make our suburbs work, you need intelligent and design-led planning. We must continue to choose a more sustainable urban form of development, which minimises car use and maximises access to local shops and services within walking or cycling distance – and provide good public transport to enable travel over longer distances.

Architecture is not just aesthetic; it has social, moral and political dimensions. The urgency of climate change makes the urban – and suburban – renaissance crucial to the survival of our planet as well as our cities.

I am delighted to support The Architecture Centre’s 2008 Spring Green season. I urge you to join the debate and help contribute to the renaissance of our urban and suburban environment.

Lord Rogers is a Chairman of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, and former chair of the government's Urban Task Force. He is the author of Towards an Urban Renaissance and is a Patron of The Architecture Centre.

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