Suburb

Tract housing and culs-de-sac are hallmarks of suburban planning.
A suburban development in San Jose, California.

Suburb mostly refers to a residential area. They may be the residential areas of a city, or separate residential communities within commuting distance of a city. Some suburbs have a degree of political autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods. Modern suburbs grew in the 20th century as a result of improved road and rail transport and an increase in commuting. Suburbs tend to proliferate around cities that have an abundance of adjacent flat land.[1] Any particular suburban area is referred to as a suburb, while suburban areas on the whole are referred to as the suburbs or suburbia, with the demonym being a suburbanite. United States colloquial usage sometimes shortens the term to burb.

Contents

Etymology and usage

The word is derived from the Old French subburbe and ultimately from the Latin suburbium, formed from sub, meaning "under", and urbs, meaning "city". In Rome, important people tended to live within the city hills. "Under" in later usage sometimes referred variously to lesser wealth, political power, population, or population density. The first recorded usage, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, comes from Wycliffe in 1380, where the form subarbis is used.

The word Suburb is used a variety of ways around the world.

In the United States and Canada, suburb can refer either to an outlying residential area of a city or town or to a separate municipality, borough, or unincorporated area outside a town or city. The latter definition is evident in the title of David Rusk's book Cities Without Suburbs (ISBN 0-943875-73-0 ), which promotes metropolitan government. Note, however, that this definition is not universal. In fact, many of the classic streetcar suburbs are within the political boundaries of their respective cities, such as West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a part of which has is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the West Philadelphia Streetcar Suburb Historic District. American journalist and social commentator Joel Garreau criticized the common use of the term solely to areas outside the political boundaries of major cities in his 1991 book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier when he discussed the phenomenon of edge cities in Atlanta (emphasis added):

“ Meanwhile, "suburban" is usually defined for statistical purposes as any place in a metropolitan area outside the central city. That definition is less than ideal in both directions. There are beautiful, affluent, quiet, black and white neighborhoods within the political boundaries of the city of Atlanta that feature trees, lawns, and single-family detached homes. For all practical purposes, they look and function like suburbs even though they are usually counted as urban. Similarly, there are downtrodden neighborhoods in outlying "suburban" jurisdictions that are nothing but extensions of either urban or rural poverty. Suppose, therefore, a neighborhood is functionally suburban, regardless of its location within a metro area, if it is predominantly residential, well off, and marked by single-family homes.[2] ”

In Ireland and the United Kingdom, suburb merely refers to a residential areas outside the city centre, regardless of administrative boundaries. Suburbs in this sense are not separated by open countryside from the city centre. In large cities such as London, suburbs include formerly separate towns and villages which have been gradually absorbed during a city's growth and expansion.

In Australia and New Zealand, suburbs have become formalised as geographic subdivisions of a city and are used by postal services in addressing. In rural areas of Australia their equivalent are called localities (see suburbs and localities). In Australia, the terms inner suburb and outer suburb are used to differentiate between the higher-density suburbs with close proximity to the city centre, and the lower-density suburbs on the outskirts of the urban area. Inner suburbs, such as Te Aro in Wellington, Prahran in Melbourne and Ultimo in Sydney, are usually characterised by higher density apartment housing and greater integration between commercial and residential areas.

History

Prior to the 19th century, suburb often correlated with the outlying areas of cities where work was most inaccessible; implicitly, where the poorest people had to live. Charles Dickens used the word this way, albeit not exclusively, in his descriptions of contemporary London. The modern American usage of the term came about during the course of the 19th century, as improvements in transportation and sanitation made it possible for wealthy developments to exist on the outskirts of cities, for example in Brooklyn Heights. The Australian and New Zealand usage came about as outer areas were quickly surrounded in fast-growing cities, but retained the appellation suburb; the term was eventually applied to the original core as well.

The growth of suburbs was facilitated by the development of zoning laws, redlining and numerous innovations in transport. After World War II availability of FHA loans stimulated a housing boom in American suburbs. In the older cities of the northeast U.S., streetcar suburbs originally developed along train or trolley lines that could shuttle workers into and out of city centers where the jobs were located. This practice gave rise to the term bedroom community, meaning that most daytime business activity took place in the city, with the working population leaving the city at night for the purpose of going home to sleep.

Economic growth in the United States encouraged the suburbanization of American cities that required massive investments for the new infrastructure and homes. Consumer patterns were also shifting at this time, purchasing power was becoming stronger and more accessible to a wider range of families. Suburban houses also brought about needs for products that were not needed in urban neighborhoods, such as lawnmowers and automobiles. During this time commercial shopping malls were being developed near suburbs to satisfy consumer needs and their car dependent lifestyle..[3]

Long Island, New York in the United States became the first large scale suburban area in the world to develop, thanks to William Levitt's Levittown, New York which is widely considered to be the archetype of Post-WWII suburbia. Long Island's significance as a suburb derived mostly from the upper-middle-class development of entire communities in the late nineteenth century, and the rapid population growth that occurred as a result.

The growth in the use of trains, and later automobiles and highways, increased the ease with which workers could have a job in the city while commuting in from the suburbs. In the United Kingdom, railways stimulated the first mass exodus to the suburbs. The Metropolitan Railway, for example, was active in building and promoting its own housing estates in the north-west of London, consisting mostly of detached houses on large plots, which it then marketed as "Metro-land".[4] As car ownership rose and wider roads were built, the commuting trend accelerated as in North America. This trend towards living away from towns and cities has been termed the urban exodus.

Zoning laws also contributed to the location of residential areas outside of the city centre by creating wide areas or "zones" where only residential buildings were permitted. These suburban residences are built on larger lots of land than in the urban city. For example, the lot size for a residence in Chicago is usually 125 feet (38 m) deep, while the width can vary from 14 feet (4.3 m) wide for a row house to 45 feet (14 m) wide for a large standalone house. In the suburbs, where standalone houses are the rule, lots may be 85 feet (26 m) wide by 115 feet (35 m) deep, as in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. Manufacturing and commercial buildings were segregated in other areas of the city.

Increasingly, more people moved out to the suburbs, known as suburbanization. Moving along with the population, many companies also located their offices and other facilities in the outer areas of the cities. This has resulted in increased density in older suburbs and, often, the growth of lower density suburbs even further from city centers. An alternative strategy is the deliberate design of "new towns" and the protection of green belts around cities. Some social reformers attempted to combine the best of both concepts in the garden city movement.[5]

View of housing development near farm in Richfield, Minnesota (1954)

In the United States, since the 18th century urban areas have often grown faster than city boundaries. Until the 1900s, new neighborhoods usually sought or accepted annexation to the central city to obtain city services. In the 20th century, however, many suburban areas began to see independence from the central city as an asset. In some cases, white suburbanites saw self-government as a means to keep out people who could not afford the added suburban property maintenance costs not needed in city living. Federal subsidies for suburban development accelerated this process as did the practice of redlining by banks and other lending institutions.[6] Cleveland, Ohio is typical of many American central cities; its municipal borders have changed little since 1922, even though the Cleveland urbanized area has grown many times over. Several layers of suburban municipalities now surround cities like Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, San Francisco, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.

Post-war years

While suburbs had originated far earlier; the suburban population in North America exploded during the post-World War II economic expansion. Returning veterans wishing to start a settled life moved in masse to the suburbs. Levittown developed as a major prototype of mass-produced housing. At the same time, African Americans were rapidly moving north for better jobs and educational opportunities than were available to them in the segregated South. Their arrival in Northern cities en masses – in addition to race riots in several large cities such as Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia – further stimulated white suburban migration.

De-investment in American cities was rampant during the time of mass suburbanization. Aging cities were left to fall apart, during the time when the country was experiencing tremendous prosperity. Industrial factories that were once the heart of the city were now being abandoned and jobs were shifting to the service sector jobs.[7]

In the U.S., 1950 was the first year that more people lived in suburbs than elsewhere.[8] In the U.S, the development of the skyscraper and the sharp inflation of downtown real estate prices also led to downtowns being more fully dedicated to businesses, thus pushing residents outside the city center.

Historiography

The history of suburbia is a subfield of urban history and enlists scholars across the world. Most published work looks at the origins, growth, diverse typologies, culture, and politics of suburbs, as well as to the gendered and family-oriented nature of suburban space.[9][10] Many people have assumed that early-20th-century suburbs were enclaves for middle-class whites, a concept that carries tremendous cultural influence yet is actually stereotypical. Many suburbs are based on a heterogeneous society of working-class and minority residents, many of whom share the American Dream regarding home ownership as defined by developers and the power of advertising. Sies (2001) argues that it is necessary to examine how "suburb" is defined as well as the distinction made between cities and suburbs, geography, economic circumstances, and the interaction of numerous factors that move research beyond acceptance of stereotyping and its influence on scholarly assumptions.[11]

Suburbia worldwide

Canada

Suburban development in Maple, Ontario
Canadian suburban sprawl in Markham, Ontario, north of Toronto

Urban development in Canada has largely paralleled development in the United States. After World War II, large bedroom communities of single-family homes and shopping centres sprouted on the outskirts of Canadian cities.

However, Canada has far fewer suburban municipalities than the U.S. Many large cities, such as Winnipeg, Calgary, and Edmonton, extend all the way to, and even include the countryside. However, the fact that literal boundaries of suburbs are not present in Canada does not eliminate suburbs, per se. The boundaries of Canadian cities are under the jurisdiction of the provinces, which have imposed city-suburb mergers. Vancouver and Montreal regions still have suburban municipalities, although their suburban areas are generally grouped into fewer cities than is typical in the United States. British Columbia created a "metropolitan" government for the Vancouver area in 1965, but the urbanized area has since grown well beyond it.

Today, Toronto has some of the largest suburban municipalities in North America, and the two largest suburbs in Canada are in this metro area. Just west of the Toronto boundary, the neighbouring cities of Mississauga [pop. 668,549] (6th largest city in Canada) and Brampton [pop. 433,806] (11th largest city in Canada) together claim 1.1 million inhabitants, and would be the third largest city in Canada if merged. Many Toronto suburbs have significantly improved on the suburban philosophy, adding a downtown to many suburban centers, notably Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan and Markham. In 1998 the governmental structure was reorganized to include many of these formerly independent suburbs into the Greater Toronto Area.

However, the strain on infrastructure and low use per capita is having a crippling effect on transportation, productivity as well as environmental damage due to increased traffic, increased pollution, the over-taxing of insufficient roads, and among the longest commute times in North America. Many Canadian cities are seeing a rejection of the sprawl that defined twenty years from 1960-2000, and a "return to the city", as people increasingly give up their 4-bedroom, two-car garages of the surrounding area for urban communities experiencing a new wave of gentrification. An example of this trend is the Junction, Riverdale and the Regent Park Revitalization projects in Toronto.

Vancouver has several large suburbs, with more than three quarters of a million people living in Surrey (the third largest suburb in Canada), Richmond, and Burnaby. Montreal has its two largest suburbs, Laval and Longueuil, as well as a suburban group of smaller municipalities neighbouring Montreal known as the West Island. Ottawa has a large neighboring city of Gatineau, together with neighboring suburban towns form the National Capital Region.

United States

In the United States, suburbs have a prevalence of usually detached[12] single-family homes.[13]

Many post-World War II American suburbs are characterized by:

By 2010 suburbs increasingly gained people in racial minority groups as White Americans moved back to city centers.[17]

Other countries

In many parts of the developed world, suburbs are different from the American suburb, both in terms of population and in terms of what they represent. In some cases suburbs of cities outside of North America are economically distressed areas, inhabited by higher proportions of recent immigrants, with higher delinquency rates and social problems. Sometimes the notion of suburb may even refer to people in real misery, who are kept at the limit of the city borders for economic, social, and sometimes ethnic reasons. An example in the developed world would be the banlieues of France, or the concrete suburbs of Sweden, even if the suburbs of these countries also include middle-class and upper-class neighborhoods that often consist of single-family houses. Thus some of the suburbs of most of the developed world are comparable to several inner cities of the U.S. and Canada.

Suburbs of south west Greater London showing the rows of semi-detached housing on local roads branching from trunk roads.

In the UK, the government is seeking to impose minimum densities on newly approved housing schemes in parts of southeast England. The goal is to 'build sustainable communities' rather than housing estates. However, commercial concerns tend to retard the opening of services until a large number of residents have occupied the new neighbourhood.

Slums in Soweto, suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa.

In the illustrative case of Rome, Italy, in the 1920s and 1930s, suburbs were intentionally created ex novo in order to give lower classes a destination, in consideration of the actual and foreseen massive arrival of poor people from other areas of the country. Many critics have seen in this development pattern (that was circularly distributed in every direction) also a quick solution to a problem of public order (keeping the unwelcome poorest classes together with the criminals, in this way better controlled, comfortably remote from the elegant "official" town). On the other hand, the expected huge expansion of the town soon effectively covered the distance from the central town, and now those suburbs are completely engulfed by the main territory of the town. Other newer suburbs (called exurbs) were created at a further distance from them.

Bangsar, a suburb outside of downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

In China, the term suburb is new, although suburbs are already being constructed rapidly. Many new suburban homes are similar to their equivalents in the United States, primarily outside Beijing and Shanghai, which also mimic Spanish and Italian architecture.[18] In Hong Kong, however, suburbs are mostly government-planned new towns containing numerous public housing estates. New Towns such as Tin Shui Wai may gain notoriety as a slum. However, other new towns also contain private housing estates and low density developments for the upper classes.

In Malaysia, suburbs are common, especially in areas surrounding the Klang Valley, which is the largest conurbation in the country. These suburbs also serve as major housing areas and commuter towns. Terraced houses, semi-detached houses and shophouses are common concepts in suburbs. In certain areas such as Klang, Subang Jaya and Petaling Jaya, suburbs form the core of these places. The latter one has been turned into a satellite city of Kuala Lumpur. Suburbs are also evident in other smaller conurbations including Ipoh, Johor Bahru, Kota Kinabalu, Kuching and Penang.

Traffic flows

Suburbs typically have more traffic congestion and longer travel times than traditional neighborhoods.[19] Only the traffic within the short streets themselves is less. This is due to three factors: almost-mandatory automobile ownership due to poor suburban bus systems, longer travel distances and the hierarchy system, which is less efficient at distributing traffic than the traditional grid of streets.

In the suburban system, most trips from one component to another component requires that cars enter a collector road, no matter how short or long the distance is. This is compounded by the hierarchy of streets, where entire neighborhoods and subdivisions are dependent on one or two collector roads. Because all traffic is forced onto these roads, they are often heavy with traffic all day. If a traffic accident occurs on a collector road, or if road construction inhibits the flow, then the entire road system may be rendered useless until the blockage is cleared. The traditional "grown" grid, in turn, allows for a larger number of choices and alternate routes.

Suburban systems of the sprawl type are also quite inefficient for cyclists or pedestrians, as the direct route is usually not available for them either. This encourages car trips even for distances as low as several hundreds of yards (meters) (which may have become up to several miles, or kilometres, due to the road network). Improved sprawl systems, though retaining the car detours, possess cycle paths and footpath connecting across the arms of the sprawl system, allowing a more direct route while still keeping the cars out of the residential and side streets.

Cultural depictions

See also

References

  1. ↑ The Fractured Metropolis: Improving the New City, Restoring the Old City, Reshaping the Region by Jonathan Barnett
  2. ↑ Garreau, Joel (1991). "Chapter 5: Atlanta — The Color of Money". Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. The Garreau Group. http://www.garreau.com/main.cfm?action=chapters&id=25. Retrieved 2009-12-29. 
  3. ↑ Beauregard, Robert A. When America Became Suburban. New York: Univ Of Minnesota P, 2006.
  4. ↑ London's metroland
  5. ↑ Garden Cities of To-Morrow
  6. ↑ Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival By Paul S. Grogan, Tony Proscio. ISBN 0813339529. Published 2002. Page 142. "Perhaps suburbanization was a 'natural' phenomenon—rising incomes allowing formerly huddled masses in city neighborhoods to breathe free on green lawn and leafy culs-de-sac. But, we will never know how natural it was, because of the massive federal subsidy that eased and accelerated it, in the form of tax, transportation and housing policies."
  7. ↑ Beauregard, Robert A. When America Became Suburban. New York: Univ Of Minnesota P, 2006.
  8. ↑ Managing Urban America
  9. ↑ Ruth McManus, and Philip J. Ethington, "Suburbs in transition: new approaches to suburban history," Urban History, Aug 2007, Vol. 34 Issue 2, pp 317-337
  10. ↑ Kenneth T. Jackson. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (1987) excerpt and text search
  11. ↑ Mary Corbin Sies, "North American Suburbs, 1880-1950," Journal of Urban History, March 2001, Vol. 27 Issue 3, pp 313-46
  12. ↑ Land Development Calculations 2001 Walter Martin Hosack. "single-family detached housing" = "suburb houses" p133
  13. ↑ "Housing Unit Characteristics by Type of Housing Unit, 2005" Energy Information Association
  14. ↑ Barlow, Andrew L. (2003). Between fear and hope: globalization and race in the United States. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-7425-1619-9. http://books.google.com/?id=2gJhgr0BrooC&printsec=frontcover. 
  15. ↑ Noguera, Pedro (2003). City schools and the American dream: reclaiming the promise of public education. New York: Teachers College Press. ISBN 0-8077-4381-X. http://books.google.com/?id=bfuFosKIPeEC&printsec=frontcover. 
  16. ↑ Naylor, Larry L. (1999). Problems and issues of diversity in the United States. Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey. ISBN 0-89789-615-7. http://books.google.com/?id=y7-EyumYyCUC&printsec=frontcover. 
  17. ↑ Yen, Hope. "White flight? Suburbs lose young whites to cities." Associated Press at Yahoo! News. Sunday May 9, 2010. Retrieved on May 10, 2010.
  18. ↑ Modern suburbia not just in America anymore
  19. ↑ Why adding lanes makes traffic worse
  20. ↑ Little Boxes: The Architecture of a Classic Midcentury Suburb by Rob Keil, Daly City, CA: Advection Media, 2006. ISBN 0977923649.

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