ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, following decades of seemingly unstoppable post-World War II centrifugal urban expansion, two distinct modes of thought arose within architecture and urban design for engaging suburbia and the suburbanized metropolis as sites of formal and spatial inquiry. One mode—the self-named and highly organized New Urbanism—offered a pragmatic polemic and a unitary spatial and formal approach. The other mode—unnamed and largely unaffiliated—offered a provocative poetics that provided a framework for new formal and spatial possibilities. Today, as never-monolithic suburbia undergoes significant cultural and demographic change, it is the second mode of thought that provides the most fertile ground for contemporary attempts to rethink the future of rapidly evolving suburbia.
