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American suburbs expanded massively in the 1950s as World War II soldiers returned home, seeking a place to rest, live, and raise families. Ebenezer Howard’s utopian vision of combining the best of both urban and rural life in “Garden Cities” quickly took root across the country, with single-family homes arranged in homogeneous sprawl. Now, after seventy years of suburbia’s widespread growth, this project examines its legacy—from physical patterns to the ways it shapes people’s behaviors and lifestyles. Factors like car dependency and the loss of walkability, the rise of the “1-minute city,” corporate branding over the landscape, the lack of spontaneous personal interaction, and the shift toward a digital world accelerated by the pandemic have transformed suburban areas into isolated, comfortable, yet disconnected bubbles. Therefore, this project delves into the apparent homogeneity of American suburbs with the aim of identifying local distinctiveness to cultivate placemaking. The research explores how graphic design can empower a sense of ownership over the landscape, viewing territory as a place shaped by people, stories, and memory. By focusing on horizontal public space—the sidewalk tissue—this project proposes a scalable visual system, a storyteller of narratives, seeking to achieve local distinction in suburbia and enabling people to connect more deeply to the spaces they inhabit.

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