Survival lessons from an ancient failed city

Cities can generate suburbs; but suburbs cannot save the city.

Many American cities have large suburban extensions held together by vast, over-stretched infrastructure. As Fletcher notes, the expansion of low-rise land use patterns require continued expansion of roads, water, and energy resources. This, in turn, could lead to a situation much like New Orleans, where the entire city framework is threatened when climate change alters rain, heat, and sea levels. Beijing experienced this phenomena last month with more than 30 lives lost because the expanded city could not support the volumes of flood water created by expansions of the city into surrounding natural habitat.

The lesson for American and similar land use pattern nations like Canada and Australia is to build compact, flexible settlements. One direction already underway is urban consolidation, in cities such as Miami, Indianapolis, and Louisville. Another is containment of sprawl, similar to Portland and Seattle and now Los Angeles.

Finally, Denver, Phoenix, and Dallas are trying to re-knit the suburbs with the cities using light rail to generate development along corridors rather than continuous outward development. All of these approaches at this point have merit, but they may not be enough to prevent massive systems failures. So as the nation debates the need for more infrastructure spending, it would be wiser to think of a strategy to improve city cores and reinforce transport spines. Angkor Wat is a useful lesson because it shows that if we don’t take drastic action, we are all facing the grim prospect of massive regional system failures.

Cities can generate suburbs; but suburbs cannot save the city.