The City and Citizenship 1. Suburbs and the Evolution of Modern Cities Modern cities first centralized, then decentralized Fishman: decline of central

The City and Citizenship 1

Suburbs and the Evolution of Modern Cities Modern cities first centralized, then decentralized

Fishman: decline of central cities part of “constant upheaval and self-destruction”

Consider not just suburbs, but their emergence in the context of metropolitan trends (and their effect on central cities)

Demographic evidence Population shifts : 23% suburban in 1950, >50% by 2000 Commuting patterns: 38% from suburb to suburb, 19%

suburb to city Office space: 57% now in suburbs

Suburbanization Classic (since early 19th century): "a process involving the

systematic growth of fringe areas at a pace more rapid than that of core cities, as a lifestyle involving a daily commute to jobs in the center"

Contemporary (late 20th century): suburbs now have complex economies with specialized services, retail, hospitals, etc.

April 18, 2023The City and Citizenship 2

Suburban Form: Sprawl

Sprawl Skyline v. sprawl Fishman: "familiar decentralized world of highways and tract

houses, shopping malls, and office parks” Suburbs lack "dominant single core and definable boundaries" “Technoburb has no proper boundaries; however defined, it is

divided into a crazy quilt of separate and overlapping political jurisdictions”

Panoply of names: "exurb, spread city, urban village, megalopolis, outtown,

sprawl, slurb, the burbs, nonplace urban field, polynucleated city, technoburb“

Mumford: “formless urban exudation” Seemingly unplanned: "no one imagined the form of the new.

Instead it was built up piecemeal, as a result of millions of uncoordinated decisions made by housing developers, shopping-mall operators, corporate executives, highway engineers and, not least, the millions of Americans who saved and sacrificed to buy single-family homes in the expanding suburbs"


Subdivisions & Tract Housing


Colorado Springs

Suburban Ranch House

Newer Suburban Tract House

Causes of Suburbanization Emergence of suburbs not an accident Technological developments

Advantages of geographical concentration (primarily for industry and transportation) undermined by technological developments

mass transportation, first buses and trains, then cars Spread of electrical grid

Mass marketing Especially of new housing developments Linked to “labor-saving” devices, peacetime economy

Suburban “utopias” Played on cultural ideal of land Ideal of domesticity, especially for middle-class women

Political interventions Housing policy, e.g. FHA loans Planning by municipalities Federal government support for development/maintenance of

highways


Levittown


Curving Streets

Dream House

Promoting Suburbia


1958 California advertisement

Cabinets!

Closets!

Highways


Highway interchangeDallas, 1960

Paying for highways

Shopping Malls


Lakewood, California

Sharpstown Mall, Houston TX

Woodfield Mall

Suburbs and Car Culture

Facilitated by development of Interstate Highway System

Garages and houses Motels supplant hotels Theaters: movie palaces, drive-ins, multiplexes Gasoline service stations (suburban “corner

stores”?) Shopping: downtown department stores, mall

complexes, strip malls Production

Factories move to suburbs Corporate offices move (and are “balkanized”)


The Impact of Cars


Shopping, Working, Walking?


Signs, Signs, Everywhere…


Are Suburbs “Cities?”

No, not according to typical definitions, even of “modern” cities No center or boundaries Little distinction between functional zones

Yes, according “post-modern” criteria "Instead of a single privileged center, there would be a multitude of

crossings, no one of which could assume priority. And the grid would be boundless by its very nature, capable of unlimited extension in all directions"

Not defined by space, but by time (how long it takes to get to something, not how far it is)

The City “a la carte” defined by each family for own purposes: "each family home

has become the central point for its members. Families create their own 'cities' out of the destinations they can reach (usually traveling by car) in a reasonable length of time“

Overlapping networks Household: moving kids around to school, practice, lessons Consumption (Mallopolis) Production


Suburban Form: Technoburbs and the Technocity Technoburbs are part of a broader technocity

Resulted from the “almost simultaneous decentralization of housing, industry, specialized services, and office jobs”

No longer suburbs, but new form of city Technoburbs no longer need urban “core”

They are “a peripheral zone, perhaps as large as a county, that has emerged as a viable socioeconomic unit”

Residents oriented to immediate surroundings rather than to central city (multicentered)

Technoburbs in more direct communication with each other (or other technocities) than with “center”

Symbolized by “beltways” (the “Main Streets” of the technoburb)

Decline of “suburbs” and rise of “technoburbs” “Renewed linkage of work and residence” Commuting is multidirectional, rather than “tidal wash”


Back to Sprawl – A Critique Duany, et al paint a grim picture:

“cookie-cutter houses, wide, treeless, sidewalk-free roadways, mindlessly curving cul-de-sacs, a streetscape of garage doors – a beige vinyl parody of Leave It to Beaver. Or, worse yet, a pretentious slew of McMansions”

“a national landscape that is largely devoid of places worth caring about”

Sprawl built by insisting on segregation of the five key components Housing subdivisions Shopping centers Office and business parks Civic institutions Roadways End result: “an uncoordinated agglomeration of standardized single-use

zones with little pedestrian life and even less civic identification, connected only by an overtaxed network of roadways.”

That is, sprawl the result of planning designed to “make cars happy”

This contrasted to “traditional neighborhoods” and to possibility of “good growth”


Sprawl – Bruegmann’s “Defense” Sprawl not a recent American development

Many cities in history have experienced “sprawl” American sprawl distinctive because it’s a mass

phenomenon Sprawl happens when there is prosperity and

(housing) choice Examine “sprawl” as cultural concept

Set of diagnoses and solutions that reveal cultural and historical contexts

Thus, Duany’s description of sprawl reveals author’s attitudes more than it defines what sprawl is

Bruegmann’s definition: “low-density, scattered urban development without systematic large-scale or regional public land-use planning”


Documents

The City and Citizenship 1. Suburbs and the Evolution of Modern Cities Modern cities first centralized, then decentralized Fishman: decline of central