Suburban Living vs. the Environment.

• Position: Brief Article

Even though the political climate suggests it is a popular time to complain about suburban sprawl, the suburban lifestyle is what most Americans want--because it suits their values, maintains John Warfield Simpson, associate professor of landscape architecture and natural resources, Ohio State University, Columbus, and the author of Visions of Paradise: Glimpses of Our Landscape's Legacy. "It's culturally chic to slam suburbs right now, and people have been slamming suburbs since the 1950s. But it's still the preferred lifestyle. We want homeownership, private property, our own little corner of the world," he says.

Yet, despite the current popularity of suburban living, Simpson believes Americans eventually will find the lifestyle too isolating. "An interesting question to me is whether suburbs on the outer rings of cities now will have the same desirable characteristics as the ones built 50 years ago. I don't think so. I think they're too low-density, provide too few opportunities for social contact, and the economics of suburbanization will undermine their affordability. Gas isn't going to stay cheaper than water forever."

Simpson argues that Americans would take better care of the land if they sought a deeper understanding of the landscape and developed a stronger connection to the earth. He says Americans have developed a sense of separation from and superiority over what they...