Suburban Retrofit

Current suburban development is plagued by a number of problems, including dependence on the car and high land and energy consumption. Often, suburban designs have created situations where individuals have no choice but to drive for all of their daily needs (e.g., shopping, commuting to work or school, or recreation). The concept of sustainability applies to urban planning and civil engineering, whereby we hope to maintain the economic, environmental, and social aspects of communities, while allowing future generations the same opportunities we have had. However, because of diminishing resources, future generations may be required to travel without the widespread use of automobiles. Thus, reduced energy consumption may be achieved by having suburban neighbourhoods designed in such a way to allow people to walk or cycle for some of their needs, and to be well-connected to a regional transit system. For new development, it is relatively easy to meet some of these objectives, but there is the difficult question of what to do with the existing stock of already-built suburban neighbourhoods.

The research done by Todd Randall for his PhD has identified aspects within current suburban neighbourhoods that are amenable to retrofitting. ArcView GIS extensions have been developed (or pending) as decision support tools to generate and evaluate possible retrofitting alternatives. The need to retrofit is based upon an objective to have our suburban neighbourhoods become more sustainable. The decision support tools provide the user the opportunity to modify neighbourhood aspects, and then to evaluate the expected improvements to the neighbourhood. Aspects that a user can modify include (those with an asterisk[*] have been completed and a downloadable copy of the ArcView extension and supporting files is provided):

These decision support tools will provide planners and engineers with an approach capable of weighing vast amounts of neighbourhood information, adjudicating it against sustainability criteria, and suggesting retrofit measures to solve specific problems or enhance specific neighbourhood characteristics. No such methodology to provide suburban retrofitting solutions currently exists. With the extensive areas of suburban sprawl surrounding many cities in North America, there will be a great deal of future work in retrofitting these areas to more sustainable forms. It is the hope that this research will be able to provide some insight on potential solutions.

The decision support tools are intended for the Urban Planner, Municipal Engineer, or an individual/group involved in the urban planning process. They could be used at various stages within the planning process such as:

  1. during the development or review of a community's Official Plan;
  2. at the time of street re-paving, where retrofit options could be explored and evaluated; or,
  3. when additional development is planned for an existing suburban neighbourhood.

To date (June 2003), three decision support tools have been created as ArcView GIS extensions. These extensions can be used with versions of ArcView 3.2 and earlier. Click the links below to read about and download these extensions.

The output from the tools is intended to provide a number of options to the user, often in 2-dimensional map form. Work is underway in creating 3-dimensional visualizations of retrofitting output, as described in the Virtual Communities section.


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