What it means. Reburbia is the name of the design competition in which sponsors Dwell magazine and Inhabitat.com asked "future-forward architects, urban designers, renegade planners, and imaginative engineers" to reimagine cookie-cutter suburban communities like those we covered in our Buzzword on boomburg/boomburg.

Here's how the folks in charge described the goals of the competition:

"In a future where limited natural resources will force us to find better solutions for density and efficiency, what will become of the cul-de-sacs, cookie-cutter tract houses and generic strip malls that have long upheld the diffuse infrastructure of suburbia? How can we redirect these existing spaces to promote sustainability, walkability, and community? It's a problem that demands a visionary design solution and we want you to create the vision!"

Why the buzz? The Reburbia competition kicked off on July 8, with participants submitting entries through the end of last month. After judging, 20 finalists were selected, and the public had until August 17 to vote online for their favorite entry.

Among the concepts were the Miller|Hull Partnership's plan to turn a strip mall into a soilless farm, Forrest Fulton's concept of converting big-box stores into greenhouses and restaurants, and Alexandros Tsolakis and Irene Shamma's idea for "airbia," a way to link suburbs and city centers.

The grand-prize winner was announced today. Calvin Chiu will receive $1,000 for his vision of converting a McMansion into a biofilter water-treatment plant (shown).

"I love [Chiu's] trans-species approach, the acceptance of certain economically obvious shifts that are occurring already in many a recently constructed suburb, and the hydrological inventiveness. It's poetic, not practical ­, and that's exactly why this project is positive evidence of how we might really rethink suburbia," said Geoff Manaugh, a Reburbia judge and the author of BLDGBLOG.

Chiu's concept will be featured in the December issue of Dwell.—Daniel DiClerico | e-mail | Twitter | Forums | Facebook

Essential information: Learn more about the leading edge in planning and home design by reading "Buzzword: Rightsizing" and our 10 Questions for . . . interviews with architect Marianne Cusato and architect Sarah Susanka.