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WEEK
7. SUBURBAN DREAMS AND NATIONAL URBAN POLICIES
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Builders, banks, bureaucracies and the cartographies of suburban development; architects’ visions; the real estate lobby; families, mobility and the marketing of controls and freedoms.
READING:
Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows: How the Suburbs
Happened (New York, 2000), esp. pp. 143-157
D.J. Waldie, Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (New York, 1996), esp.
pp. 1-14
Andreas Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Spark, Suburban Nation:
The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (New
York, 2000), pp. 39-57
Recommended:
Greg Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the 20th-Century
Metropolis (Baltimore, 1997)
John Findlay, Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Cities after
1940 (Berk., l992)
Cynthia L. Girling and Kenneth I. Helphand, Yard—Street—Park: The Design
of Suburban Open Space (New York, l994)
Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New
York, l987)
Kenneth T.Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier:The Suburbanization of the United
States (N.York, l985)
Roberto M. Behar and Maurice G. Culot, Coral Gables: An American Garden
City (Paris,1997)
Marc A. Weiss, The Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real
Estate Industry and Urban Land Planning (New York, l987)
Barbara Kelley, Expanding the American Dream:Building/ Rebuilding Levittown
(Albany,1993)
Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing,
Work and Family Life (New York, l984)
Mary Corbin Sies, The Suburban Ideal:A Cultural Strategy for Modern
Am. Living (Phila., 2000)
Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in
America (New York, l98l)
Peter G. Rowe, Making a Middle Landscape (Cambridge, 1991)
Philip Langdon, A Better Place to Live: Reshaping the American Suburb
(Amherst, 1994)
QUESTIONS:
l. Why do so many Americans prefer suburbs? What are their associations and experiences?
2. How have Americans suburbs changed over time? (Think about the dwellings, the streets, the roads, the public spaces, the kinds of people and activities one might find there in l880, 1920, 1950, 1980, 2000.)
3. How many different kinds of suburbs have you seen? What are their differences and similarities?
4. How have suburbs affected American cities and the larger national environment?
5. Are suburbs a viable way of life in today's society? How do they affect the environment? What can be done to improve them?