Build a Better Burb

Location: Nationwide

Website: www.buildabetterburb.org

Build a Better Burb is an online publication dedicated to improving suburban design and planning. It uses engaging visuals to help suburban residents and leaders explore solutions from across the country that can be applied to their communities.

By showcasing innovative ideas and outstanding projects, the site seeks to inspire conversation about the importance of design and planning within suburban communities.

The articles on the site highlight bold ideas for improving housing, regional planning, parking and transit, and a sense of place within suburban downtowns and neighborhoods.

The Build a Better Burb website evolved from a design competition that was sponsored by the Long Island Index in 2010. The Build a Better Burb competition called for bold ideas from architects, urban designers, planners, and visionaries for the underutilized land in Long Island’s downtowns.

The goal was to reimagine what might be possible for our region. Seeing the scope of the problems facing Long Island, we realized that small tinkering at the edges wasn’t going to stop the brain drain or create vibrant town centers or convince businesses to locate here in order to reinvigorate our sagging economy.

We knew there was land to build on – 8,300 acres, in fact, within just ½ mile of our over 100 downtown communities. But where were the exciting ideas of what we might create there? For too long, there has been a crisis of imagination.

Bold new ideas are urgently needed. So in recruiting designers for the competition, we asked that they drop any preconceived notions about what was or was not possible.

We asked:

What would you do on these acres of opportunity? Build a car-free community? Plant an oasis of urban agriculture? Produce renewable energy and with it, provide well-paying green jobs? Use landscape systems to repair regional ecologies? Enhance public space and the civic realm?

The Build a Better Burb competition asked for innovative solutions at a variety of scales, from small-scale to regional. It sought both prototypical ideas as well as concepts tailored to particular downtowns. Photographs, renderings, plans, diagrams and other illustrations were requested to illustrate entrants’ ideas.

The Long Island Index

Location: Long Island, NY

Website: www.longislandindex.org

The Long Island Index created the Build a Better Burb competition and maintains the Build a Better Burb website. The Index is a project of the Rauch Foundation, a Long Island-based family foundation established in 1961.

The Foundation acts as the convener of the Long Island Index Advisory Committee and the financial underwriter of the Index.

In 2011, the Long Island Press described the Index as “the most definitive status report on the quality of Long Island life.

Long Island is one region with a shared history, geography, beaches, aquifers, and a shared future. But from day- to-day, our differences seem more apparent than our similarities. We are 2 counties, 2 cities, 13 towns, 95 incorporated villages, 37 legislative districts. We have 110 library districts, 125 school districts and 187 fire districts plus hundreds of other special districts. Sometimes it is easier to see these as many fragments rather than our shared whole.

We created The Long Island Index to focus on our region as a whole – those things that unite us, issues that can only be understood by looking at the big picture. Whether it is how our economy is changing, the types of jobs we are creating, how well our schools are doing to educate all students, our political structure, the health of our natural environment, or types of housing we’re providing, the Index explores all these issues and more by analyzing how each plays out across our 1,198 square miles.