To go back to the drawing board

Chris:	Jessica, what’s “the American Dream”?
Jessica:	These days? I honestly don’t know... I know what it used to be...
Chris:	If you asked anyone in the 1950s, the answer would be to own a house with a white picket fence, on their own land, a car, 2-3 kids, and a dog.
Jessica:	That was my family’s dream, for sure – a home in “suburbia!”
Chris:	You know, the story of how that all started is pretty interesting. For most Americans in the 30s or 40s, owning a home and a piece of land was a crazy, impossible dream.
Jessica:	I don’t think that suburbs as we know them today even existed before the World War II.
Chris:	It’s true! But, it all started to change in the post-war years thanks to one person: William Levitt. He was contracted by the federal government during the war to quickly build housing for military personnel. The types of houses that most architects built back then would have required too much time and money. So, do you know what Mr. Levitt did?
Jessica:	Let me guess. He went back to the drawing board and came up with a new housing concept.
Chris:	Exactly! In 1947, he created the largest planned-living community in the United States on farmland, just outside of New York city. He came up with 27 different steps to build a house and he hired 27 teams to work on each step.
Jessica:	Like an assembly line!
Chris:	Precisely!
Jessica:	I bet that produced houses that looked pretty similar… Hey! Is that why most houses built in the 50s and 60s look alike? Two bedrooms, one bathroom, no basement, the kitchen near the back so mothers could keep an eye on their children in the backyard...
Chris:	That’s right! Within one year, Levitt was building 36 houses per day.
Jessica:	Wow! The American Dream: Mass produced!
Chris:	...and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg! His concept made the houses extremely affordable. At first, the homes were available only to veterans. Eventually, though, everyone was buying them.
Jessica:	And that’s when the exodus to suburbia began.
Chris:	And then... a miracle!
Jessica:	A miracle?
Chris:	Yeah! Shopping malls!
Jessica:	Come on!
Chris:	Architects needed to make their suburban developments more attractive. So, once again they went back to the drawing board and invented malls.
Jessica:	Ah, yes… The mall. Malls everywhere. Malls so big, you can get lost in them! A family can spend an entire day shopping, dining, watching movies... But, you know, “mall culture” is in decline.
Chris:	You’re right. There are roughly 1,200 enclosed malls in the U.S. and only about a third of them are doing well.
Jessica:	I’m not surprised. More and more people do their shopping online these days.
Chris:	And that has created a new problem: huge empty malls.
Jessica:	So... back to the drawing board?
Chris:	Yep!
Jessica:	I’ve heard about re-purposing old malls. The vacant one near my house is now office space.
Chris:	The one near my parents’ house was turned into a sports arena. Another one became a huge church. In one Texas town, a vacated Walmart is now the biggest single-story public library in the United States! It makes perfect sense, right? Most malls were strategically located close to regional roads and highways.
Jessica:	Re-purposing these structures is a fantastic trend, but I’m reminded of your first question... If living in the suburbs is not the American Dream anymore... If more young people are trying to make their lives in big cities... I’m not sure that all of those vacant malls can find a “new life.”
Chris:	Well, in that case, it’ll be back to the drawing board!

To go back to the drawing board

They say that failure is the best teacher…

When we try to do something and it doesn’t work, there are two options to move forward: Give up or try again. When we choose the latter, the process usually involves revisiting the original plan and making some changes. We learn from our mistakes and, hopefully, by applying what we learn we can succeed. This common idiomatic expression speaks to that very human process of trying, failing, and trying again. When we say that we are going back to the drawing board, we mean that we are looking critically at our first plan, searching for flaws and ways to improve that plan so that we can try again.

The “drawing board” mentioned in the phrase is a common tool for many professionals, from illustrators to engineers. It’s a large flat surface where everything from art to schematics are drafted. People who use drawing boards in their lives are very used to creating many versions of something before arriving at a design that “works”. In both a literal and figurative sense, getting back to the drawing board can mean another draft, or in more extreme cases, starting all over.

There are other idioms that express a similar idea, but “back to the drawing board” first appeared in 1941, in a cartoon by Peter Arno published in The New Yorker magazine. In that comic strip, a man holding rolled up blueprints is walking away from the site of a crashed airplane. His thought bubble simply says “Well, back to the old drawing board”.

Example 1:

With their star player injured, the team’s future is uncertain. As far as a strategy for the rest of the season, it’s back to the drawing board.

Example 2:

We were very optimistic going into this presentation, but since the board of directors rejected all of our proposals, I think we have to go back to the drawing board.

Example 3:

The experiment was a massive failure, but there’s no point in sulking, get back to the drawing board and try again!