The economic and environmental side effects of suburban living have gradually become more and more apparent, but what’s less apparent is what we can do about it. Here’s a suggestion: let ’em fix themselves.

Rigid zoning laws have created many of the problems typically associated with suburban sprawl. Possibly the largest of these problems is the segregation of residential and commercial spaces. The problem is fairly straight forward. When people do not live, work, shop and eat within walking distance of where they live, extensive transportation infrastructure is needed to allow people to regularly travel greater distances.

In Entrepreneurbia, such problems do not exist. Entrepreneurbia abolishes poorly conceived zoning laws to attract forward-thinking small business owners and start-up companies. The result is a community of entrepreneurs who transform inefficient single-family dwellings and purely decorative landscape spaces into intelligent home-based businesses. From chic shops & showrooms to designer offices, award-winning restaurants, and even boutique farms the new residents of Entrepreneurbia infuse once sterile suburbs with a distinctive sense of character & community.

OK, sure, it’s a design competition entry, there’s more than a hint of the ecotopian about it, and given the current backlash against anything that smacks of letting emergent markets have free rein (which I’d give greater credence to if I thought any of us had ever experienced a truly free market) this probably won’t be a popular idea.

But it sure is elegant in its simplicity, no? [via Inhabitat]