VIRTUAL London.
Abstract
Residents of America’s single-family home neighborhoods have adapted their car-oriented built environments in resourceful and creative ways. They have integrated gentle housing density, repurposed streets for arts and socialization, and established community gardens, which may help them lead more socially connected and healthier lives. This research advances this conversation by using a mixed-methods qualitative approach to comprehensively describe residents’ adaption of two underexamined neighborhood spaces: single-family home garages and driveways. We use photographs and interviews representing diverse Phoenix region neighborhoods to theorize these spaces as an adaptive neighborhood infrastructure that may help households and communities thrive. We show that a sizable minority of residents are using these spaces for purposes other than to park cars and articulate a holistic typology of adaptation that includes expression, consumption and production, housing, recreation, social engagement, nature restoration, and surveillance. Choices to adapt are motivated by a culture of consumerism, lifecycle changes, and desires to engage with neighbors. Adaptations enable households to age in place and communities to socially connect but also break land use rules and fuel neighbors’ anxiety about ruined aesthetics, reduced parking capacity, and community decline. Together, these findings reveal that single-family home garages and driveways are an overlooked infrastructure within neighborhoods worthy of integration into frameworks of neighborhood systems.
Deirdre Pfeiffer’s scholarship, teaching, and community engagement focuses on housing strategies to advance social equity, the relationship between housing and health, and the socioeconomic impacts of housing market disruptions. She is Principal Investigator of the Arizona Research Center for Housing Equity and Sustainability (ARCHES), a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Hispanic Serving Institution Center of Excellence that is advancing knowledge and evidence-based solutions related to problems of housing security, climate, and health in the arid Southwest. She also is Senior A
Rababe Saadaoui is a PhD student in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on the interconnections between planning and mental health.