Long Island was initially built out in the years following World War II, when it helped define for much of the rest of the country the idea of suburbia. As that idea has aged, though, the island has more recently struggled to hold the interest of young professionals not particularly enamored with mass-produced ranch houses and tidy but dull Cape Cods (or the job prospects and affordability issues that have grown up around them).
Young people have in recent years been leaving these villages at a much higher rate than New York’s other neighboring suburbs, a problem not helped by the fact that as little as 17 percent of Long Island's residential real estate offerings are rentals. The Index has been studying why people leave, what exactly they’re fleeing, and what might be put in place to keep them here – all while allowing local businesses and communities to grow without up-ending the island’s culture as a distinctly non-urban place.
The group counted 8,300 acres of land on the island ripe for denser, mixed-use redevelopment, all within just half a mile of the village downtowns. Surface parking lots sit on 52 percent of that land, a prime opportunity to try something new. Residents weren’t quite getting what that new thing should be, though, so last week the Index launched a different strategy: buildabetterburb.org.
The project dispenses with all the statistics and reports and maps and goes straight for the suburban eye candy: beautiful photos of actual communities across the country who are redefining a modern suburb where actual 20-somethings might want to live.
Literally, she is talking about inspiring beautiful design – and better places – by making people jealous.
The slogan itself – Build a Better Burb – implies that the object isn’t to urbanize Long Island out of the character that made people want to live there in the first place. People there are particularly skeptical of the urbanist’s common prescriptions: build high and dense.
Their best shot at keeping it, she says, is to go denser near the downtowns. But who’s to say that can’t look like this?