The revival of urban design in the past 25 years has been supported by a discourse centered around compact city policies and the design of public space. This discursive kernel is being challenged as the agenda of urban renewal is shifting from the urban core to the (old) suburbs and the fringes of the metropolitan area. Within the context of ‘suburban renewal’, the discipline of urban design has to come to terms with ‘new urban questions’ that emerge within the contemporary context of a boundless process of urbanization (Merrifield 2014) – a process that is increasingly taking shape through variable geometries and scales, changing the territorial frames within which it is governed. The context of ‘suburban renewal’ provides the right background to reconstruct the question of ‘collective consumption’ as part of a wholesale process of ecological retrofitting. This paper argues that today’s efforts of ‘suburban renewal’ contain fertile leads to build new matters of concern beyond the traditional focus on the city (Wachsmuth 2014) and ground urban design within a theory of urbanization (Brenner 2014).
In order to substantiate this argument, this paper will discuss the results of the urban design Laboratory Labo XX within which the city of Antwerp asked four urban design firms to devise strategies for the renewal of its suburban belt (Grafe, Verhaert, et.al. 2014)
