The Urban World,
J. John Palen
th
9
Ed.
Chapter 6: The Suburban Era
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Introduction
Suburban Dominance
Emergence of Suburbs
Causes of Suburban Growth
Contemporary Suburbia
Categories of Suburbs
Exurbs
Rurban Areas
Characteristics of Suburbanites
Suburban Poverty
The Myth of Suburbia
Minority Suburbanization
Latino Suburbanization
Asian Suburbanites
Summary
Introduction
• A role reversal has occurred between cities
and suburbs
• Suburbs have radically changed, while many of
our images of suburbia have remained set in
the past
• Polls indicate that substantial numbers of
those still living in large cities would prefer not
to be
Suburban Dominance
• Economically the suburbs now rule
• Politically, suburban voters are in the majority,
and their interests now set national and state
agendas
• The out-movement of offices, manufacturing,
and shopping has turned Burgess’s zonal
hypothesis inside out and created a multinucleated pattern of outer suburban centers
or edge cities
Emergence of Suburbs
• Suburbs have been called “bourgeois utopias”
• Suburbs have been growing faster than central
cities for a century
• Suburban as defined by the Bureau of the
Census simply means territory inside the
metropolitan area that lies outside the central
city
• The 19th Century
– The American City of the 19th century was
compact, had high density, and could be walked
rather quickly
– The first to move out were the wealthy
– The railroad was important due to the lack of
reliable transportation
• Electric Streetcar Era: 1890-1920
– The coming of the electric streetcar in 1888
changed the spatial configuration of Boston and
other American urban areas from that of a
compact city to that of a star-shaped urban area
• Annexation
– A move from suburbs desiring annexation to be
included in big cities to the reverse: suburbs
increasingly actively sought “home rule” and
opposed annexation
– Today the city line is commonly viewed as a social
and economic boundary as much as a legal
boundary
• Automobile Suburbs: 1920-1950
– Ironically, the automobile was initially praised as
solving the serious pollution problem cause by
horses
– To real estate developers, the adoption of
automobiles was a boon, for it meant that open
land lying between the rail and streetcar axes was
now available for residential development
• Mass Suburbanization: 1950-1990
– Following the was the exodus of whites from the
city included not only the rich and well-to-do but
also large numbers of middle-class families and
even working-class families
– Farmers’ fields were converted to single-family
housing developments is well known
• Metro Sprawl: 1990-2010
– Sprawl is the term commonly used to refer to the
automobile-dependent, low-density housing and
commercial development taking place in the outer
reaches of metropolitan areas
– Sprawl is inherently economically inefficient,
wasteful of time and resources, and destructive of
the environment
– With dispersed growth often comes larger new
homes, but also congestion and gridlock
– Sprawl has moved to among voters’ top concerns
nationally, along with the economy, crime, taxes,
and education
Causes of Suburban Growth
• Postwar Exodus
– Six Reasons:
• Government policies
• Government financing of a system of metropolitan
expressways
• Land within the legal boundaries of the city had already
been developed
• Suburban housing costs were initially lower
• Demographic changes
• Preference of single-family homes with own lots
• Non-Reasons
– Although the “cause” of suburban growth is
commonly contributed to the deterioration of
central-city services, poorer-quality city schools,
higher urban crime rates, and the high proportion
of minorities in city neighborhoods, NONE of
these factors had much impact during the first
two decades of massive postwar suburbanization
– It is important not to automatically project
contemporary patterns into the past
Contemporary Suburbia
• Today suburbs are the major center of
employment
• An increasingly diversified notion of suburbia
• No real decline in the movement to the
suburban periphery
Categories of Suburbs
• Persistence of Characteristics?
– In suburbs, the assumption of status change is
replaced by the assumption of status consistency
• Ethnic and Religious Variation
– Within the metropolitan area different ethnic,
religious, and racial groups historically often
followed specific patterns of suburbanization
• High-Income Suburbs
– Today, ethnicity and religion tend to have lesser
relevance, so long as one has sufficient cash
• Gated Communities
– As of 2001, over 20,000 gated communities
housing over 8 million people have been built,
especially in the Southwest
• Common-Interest Developments
– CIDs are private, self-governing, homeownermembership associations to which everyone in a
development must belong as a condition of
purchase
– Essentially private governments that set the rules
for the community
• Working-Class Suburbs
– The new postwar working-class suburbanites that
followed the factories to the suburbs were not
fleeing decaying city neighborhoods. More often
than not, they were somewhat reluctantly leaving
tight ethnic neighborhoods with high levels of
social interaction
– With the closing of factories, the commercial tax
base sharply erodes
– Poverty rates are now increasing faster in suburbs
than in central cities
• Commercial Definitions
– Claritas has developed a system that places every
zip code in the country into one of 40 different
types of communities
– These areas have become a virtual Bible for
market researchers
Exurbs
• Exurb refers to the upper-middle-class
settlement that is taking place in outlying
semirural areas beyond the second ring of
densely settled subdivisions
• Exurbanites as a rule are affluent, welleducated professionals
• Demographic characteristics offer no support
for the belief that exurbanites are significantly
different from other same-status suburbanites
Rurban Areas
• Those places beyond the exurbs that are not
oriented toward a major city
• Some of those living in such “rurban” areas
are barely getting by economically in spite of
low housing costs and low taxes
• These residents are people on the economic
margins living in marginal areas
Characteristics of Suburbanites
• Suburbs are now a microcosm of America
• Tend to be homeowners
• Young singles, elderly widows, and other such
“non-family households” now outnumber
married-with-children homes in the nation’s
suburbs
Suburban Poverty
• As of 2010, there were 1.6 million more
suburban poor than city poor
• Suburban poor are both less served and less
seen
• Declining property values have reduced local
government revenues
The Myth of Suburbia
• The myth is the belief that there is, in fact, a
uniquely suburban way of life
• The new myth of suburbia is one that sees the
compulsive group conformity of the postwar
years replaced by competitive selfadvancement and manic self-fulfillment
• The number of scholars studying suburbs
remains limited
Minority Suburbanization
• Suburban Diversity
– The reality is that roughly half (47 percent) of the
minorities in the nation’s 102 largest metropolitan
areas live in the suburbs
– Suburbs are increasingly multiethnic and
multiracial
• Black Flight
– White flight to suburbs is largely history
– Large central cities continue to have a high
proportion of blacks only because of somewhat
higher black birthrates
• Integration or Resegregation?
– Suburbs are becoming more diverse racially
– Rather than invasion-succession, with one group
supplanting another, stable multiracial suburbs
are now more common
– While racial equality has not yet arrived, suburban
middle-class blacks are becoming more similar to
suburban middle-class whites
Latino Suburbanization
• Latinos are the nation’s largest minority
population, and half the Hispanics in the
United States today are suburbanites
• Half of all Latinos live in either California or
Texas
• For Hispanics suburban residence is closely
associated with higher income levels
Asian Suburbanites
• Asians, who numbered 14 million in 2010, are
the most suburban minority group, with 6 of
10 Asians in America living in suburbs
• Over half of all current Asian immigrants
bypass the city and go directly to the suburbs
• Generally Asians live in suburbs that have a
strong Asian presence but are not
predominantly Asian