The Fountain Functional, Minnetonka, Minnesota.
Black-and-white silver gelatin print Christopher Faust, Suburban Documentation Project, 1991

Do Hennepin County's small towns such as Maple Plain and Corcoran lose their character and "sense of place" when suburban sprawl approaches? Is it practical or even possible to have downtowns anymore? How will Hennepin County be a different place when most of its remaining farms are developed?

These are some of the questions posed by the photographs of the Suburban Documentation Project (SDP). Since 1990, this nonprofit organization has recorded in words and photos new suburbs across the Midwest. Of the project's 1,500 photos, more than 200 images are from Hennepin County. With an estimated two-thirds of its population of 1,000,000 people now living in suburban areas built since the 1940s, Hennepin County is one of the fastest growing regions in the Midwest. Much of Hennepin County's history is now being made in suburbs. On the western edge of the county and the Interstate-94 corridor, towns such as Maple Grove, Rogers, Corcoran, and Plymouth are experiencing extraordinary increases in population, commercial development, and job creation. In 30 years, historians will want to know how this growth occurred. The SDP gathers data today about popular tastes and development patterns in new suburbs so future historians might understand how late-20th-century suburbs looked when they were new.

It also seeks to spark a discussion of the consequences of this rapid growth. Civic officials, journalists, and citizens rarely question some of the most familiar patterns in suburban planning. Rarely, for instance, do suburban governments and their accredited planners challenge weed ordinances that prevent prairie restorations in front yards, transportation guidelines that mandate runway-like 35-foot-wide streets, or zoning codes that systematically separate all housing and commercial uses. The SDP's work is based on the faith that many ordinary citizens have memories of neighborhoods and streets, both urban and suburban, that allow for the unexpected, the playful, and the unzoned, and that most people would welcome these qualities in new communities as well.

Like much of contemporary American photography, Suburban Documentation Project photographs portray a fresh vision of familiar and generally ignored places. The project finds geometric beauty in the pure volume of new subdivisions before "landscaping," seeks out painterly compositions once the trees and sod have come, and loves scenery itself: the distant oaks and fields surviving beyond the sod line and the stage-set Neo-Georgian facade as experienced in an open-house tour.

Through these photos, the SDP is trying to provide a small jolt of reality that can lead one to ask: "Is there not a better way?" This does not mean that regional planning should stop change in an idealized small town past, but help people to remember real places in their lives that can set real design precedents for the future and help them to imagine the historic consequences of every local action. Setting higher standards for tomorrow means looking again at the problematic and often fascinating details of how we design, finance, sell, and ultimately make history today in America's newest suburbs. Documentary photos such as those that follow, taken in Hennepin County by Christopher Faust, prompt such responsible discussion.

The new villa-style houses behind this pond incorporate such historical details as dormers and Palladian windows. Although seemingly a visual design element, the water spout in the center actually exists to aerate the pond, which suffers from eutrophication, the algae boom that results from the runoff of nitrates and phosphates used in lawn fertilizers. Such remedial efforts are typical of the effort needed to cover up the environmental damage from the popular taste for perfect lawns.

1980s Housing Development, Chanhassen.
Black-and-white silver gelatin print Christopher Faust, Suburban Documentation Project, 1991

Taken from Highway 101, this view shows midrange contractor housing built on an old cornfield in the rapidly growing Chanhassen area. Developers typically bring character to their houses through high-pitched roofs, arched windows, and multiple gables. Note the large size of the houses relative to the lots.

Modern-style Executive Homes, Minnetonka, Minnesota.
Black-and-white silver gelatin print Christopher Faust, Suburban Documentation Project, 1991

These two houses in Minnetonka sold in the $300,000 range. They are unusual for a new subdivision in that they have been designed by architects, not contractors. Whereas most homes in this price range contain historical elements such as cedar-shake roofs, arched windows, and brick veneer facades, these houses are honestly modern in character. Again note the relatively small size of lots.

The Wetland Backyard, Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
Black-and-white silver gelatin print Christopher Faust, Suburban Documentation Project, 1991

While typical in its size, bay window, and backyard balcony, this upper-end developer house in Eden Prairie is unusual in its owner's attempt to embrace the wetland neighbor. Developers are not usually allowed to build on wetlands, but they have become important open-space amenities in some new Hennepin County neighborhoods. The "dock" serves to structure and provide visual order to an ecologically important site that a generation ago was considered "just a swamp."

Backside of Model Home, Chanhassen, Minnesota.
Black-and-white silver gelatin print Christopher Faust, Suburban Documentation Project, 1991

Located along the recently expanded Highway 5, this photo shows a model home in the brief instant after the house and its fence were completed but before sodding and "landscaping." The erosion in the soil shows how fragile the suburban landscape is after farms and topsoil have been graded away. Most suburban landscape design is simply a thin veneer, a horticultural illusion that conceals the massive disruption to groundwater and topsoil that occurs with development.

The Edge of Infrastructure, Eden Prairie, Minnesota
Black-and-white silver gelatin print Christopher Faust, Suburban Documentation Project, 1990

Here we see the effects of ten years of growth and aging on an apartment complex built around 1980. Although spruce trees and mowed turf seem unnatural next to the "prairie" where until recently there was a farm field, the entire scene is composed of non-native plants. Much of the suburban landscape that seems natural is actually an engineered illusion.