Rethink suburban home landscapes

Abstract

Conventional suburban residential development in the southeast has a huge environmental impact. Their uniform landscape aesthetics contrasts with the “messy” appearance of typical ecological habitats. These aesthetics differences make bringing an ecological approach to suburban landscape challenging. In order to bring ecological values into suburban home landscapes without compromising their traditional aesthetics, this thesis explores the cultural history of American suburbs, their aesthetics, and ecological design approaches that can bring ecological design into suburban home landscapes. The research is primarily done by literature review and field study. In the end, a list of proposed design guidelines is given as a result of the research. A conceptual design of a suburban garden in Athens, GA is devised to showcase a possible outcome of implementing the design guidelines, and to test the conclusion of this thesis.