Richboro, PA

Richboro, Northampton Township, Bucks county, PA is a typical suburban Philadelphia town but typical may not be such a good thing. Suburban sprawl and the decline of the American dream is the title of a book published over ten years ago which describes almost to a tee exactly what Richboro is and it is not good. With virtually no sidewalks this pedestrian unfriendly town requires that you drive an automobile to arrive at virtually any destination. It’s antiquated zoning requiring all businesses to reside in one central area with housing spread out over a large surrounding area make it impossible and unsafe to reach necessities by anything but an automobile, but even that is unsafe due to the congestion caused by tens of thousands of residents trying to access one central and very congested area.

This has been the model for zoning in America and Northampton Township for at least the last fifty years. Mixed zoning outlawed, McMansions built in in inaccessible areas without pedestrian access to services or even their neighbors, and ugly strip malls and box stores all lumped together in what you might call a town center.

Davis Pontiac's closing will add another box store and additional traffic to the downtown area

The Richboro “town center” has changed significantly over the last fifty years. In the 1960′s it was a sleepy farm town a general store, gas station, post office, and a very few retail businesses. In the next twenty years through the 1970′s and 80′s several large strip malls were built, and gas stations and banks were added. The character of the town quickly changed as historically significant buildings were demolished to make way for the commercial sprawl. Meanwhile builders were feverishly at work clearing land in the surrounding area putting in massive housing developments. Zoning only knew one thing, you can’t mix residential and commercial properties, keep the people far away from the services they need.

Because of the errors of the past, today in 2011 we face a real dilemma with traffic out of control and expected to get far worse, a town with a significant amount of empty commercial real estate, and a zoning and comprehensive plan not up to par with the communities needs. In short a real mess.

Fixing this problem will require some real changes and substantial challenges. Professional help beyond the grasp of the amateur planners currently running the township will be required. The people of the township should demand no less. Doing nothing or staying on the current course is not an option if we want to preserve and bring back the quality of life many of us remember.


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These pictures, taken in late 2009, represent some of the worse sites in Richboro.  Sites that are empty, under construction but not going anywhere, dilapidated or dangerous. As of early 2011 a few of these sites have been corrected.


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Up until the early 1990′s a small fifty eight acre farm existed on the north side of Almshouse Road just west of the cemetery. It was known as the Weir farm and for much of the 20th century it produced food for the area. Unfortunately Harold Weir and his wife past away and the farm became yet another development in Northampton. The story just happens to fit the typical perfect storm of suburban sprawl.

Harold had sold the land before he died with the understanding that it would remain in his hands until that time. When he did die in the early 1990′s there was a chance to save the beautiful barn and farmhouse. The developer wanted to use the barn as professional offices. This was immediately rejected as “mixed use” zoning.  The result was the complete demolition of the property.

Weir farm in a Christmas card aerial view, massive barn to the right and Almshouse Road in the foreground.

Thus an exceptional Bucks county barn was destroyed and yet another isolated neighborhood was created.

Harold Weir’s grand-daughter wrote a report about this at the time.  Read the report.


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You’re stuck in traffic again, 30 minutes from home, on ribbons of concrete that stretch away to the horizon in front of you.  The six or eight or ten lanes of traffic are agonizingly slow and push through more concrete and paved entry roads and parking lots with giant warehouse stores that offer a body more goods than anyone ever needs.  It isn’t pretty. In fact, when we vacation and come back, we wonder for a few days why it is this way, how the suburbs became an unending twist of cul-de-sacs and streets that turn inward, how it is that you can’t walk to buy groceries or anything else, how it is that the route to your job is an hour commute or more.  You think about community, family, neighborhood, character, values.  And then someone cuts you off in traffic, you lay on the horn and the thoughts sprint away as you focus on just surviving the drive
home.

Suburban sprawl—defined as inefficient land use, increased traffic, more pollution and a general breakdown of community as a whole living being—is what you’ve unwittingly become ensnared and enslaved by.  Don’t feel special.  It’s the plight of you and just about everyone else in America. In the minds of Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck, authors of  “Surburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream,” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), sprawl is what has caused neighborhoods to become places that are not only economically and environmentally unsustainable but simply not functional because they isolate and place undue burdens on at home mothers, children, teens and the elderly.

Recent stories in The New York Times highlighted a controversial development in Los Angeles, another focused on a progressive developer who’s fighting sprawl by creating sustainable communities within shouting distance of downtown Atlanta, and a whole issue of The New York Times magazine was devoted to the suburbs and their impact on society, all of which serve to emphasize just how quickly sprawl and it’s child, the suburbs, is becoming a center stage topic.  Perfect timing for the publication of “Suburban Nation” which takes the problem, dissects it and focuses on solutions. Authors Duany and Plater-Zyberk lead a firm based in Miami that has designed more than 200 new neighborhoods and community revitalization plans worldwide.  In addition to their design work, they travel extensively and lecture widely, and are co-founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism.  The third partner in the book, Speck, is director of town planning at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.

In the introduction the authors state the problem.  “Somewhere along the way, through a series of small and well intentioned steps, traditional towns became a crime in America.”  The authors also point out that at the same time the home building industry developed a system of land development that was based on sprawl, a system that has ingrained itself to the point it is deemed the way.  And this is where the challenge begins.

The authors take great pains to explain the mess, the history, the victims (and there are many).  But they don’t walk away from the problem.  They offer solutions, answers, models, guidelines, and encouraging words.  From the government, to architects, to every day citizens like you and me, they outline the roles that are played, the players, and how to work with them.

The book is inspiring if for no other reason than it dares to dream that the future isn’t just more of the same. If you’ve ever driven on Northwest Highway and wondered how in the world that monstrosity came into being, this is the book for you.  There is another way -- beautiful streets, towns and cities can still be built, older communities revitalized. Cities can be more than a series of giant parking lots and warehouses to be waded through and abandoned.  And we can all still have a corner of turf, creating places to be cherished, valued not only for their beauty but for their ability to make the heart sing, to give a neighborhood back its soul.

In “Surburban Nation” the future neighborhood is more than a snow globe world, or a sketch in a book, or a place we watch in black-and-white and wish still existed.  It is in the pages of the book, in a series of logical steps waiting to be acted upon, to be made real.  It is a bright hope that we can create “places that are as valuable as the nature they displaced.”

• Wikipedia Urban Sprawl Definition
• Suburban Nation: Avoiding Obsolescence
• Plan to reduce sprawl will boost health, environment
• Partnership for Sustainable Communities
• Suburban Sprawl in the Northeast
• Andres Duany Lecture from Youtube – Great Summary Of Urbanism
• Sprawl: Going Nowhere Fast
• Suburbs import urban features to create sense of community
• Suburban Sprawl, Its Causes, and Its Effects on the Region
• Open Space Loss and Land Inequality in United States’ Cities, 1990–2000
• Sprawled out -- the search for community in suburban life
• American Society of Landscape Architects -- Interview with Jeff Speck, Hon. ASLA
• Sprawl of America
• Encounter 08: Jeff Speck on New Urbanism (Q&A) (video)

Did you know?

Did you know that the company that built Levittown, N.Y., which has come to represent the quintessential suburb, not only mass-produced houses but entire suburbs? Levitt and Sons built four Levittowns in New York State, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico. However, in Levittown, P.R., you won’t find any of the famous Cape Cod houses; construction standards don’t allow wooden houses because of potential hurricane and termite damage. Instead they are made of concrete.

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