From what I understand, much of the United States suburban sprawl was a result of WWII veterans coming home, getting married and working enough to afford a car and commute into the city from the outskirts daily. Today, cities have suburbian areas that easily match the city proper in square milage. Not to sound like a stupid American, but what of suburbs in other cities outside of the United States and Canada? Could I go live in the suburbs of London? Paris? Beijing? Tokyo? Calcutta? Tel Aviv? Suburbian existance is a fact of life here in the states; we see it in the media, on TV shows, in books and on film. Yet I never see anyone living in the Parisian suburbs, even in French films. Same with the British. Seems that it’s always “live in the big city” or else “live in some little country town.” Not that I’d be suprised, but has the modern entertainment culture been deceiving me?
Can’t speak for Europe, but the major cities of Australia all have suburbs.
Of course no one’s ever shot a film there. Who would want to? Have you been there? 
You’ve been misled by the media. All of those cities do, indeed, have suburbs. They generally don’t look nearly as faceless as the suburbs of the US, but they function in the same manner.
From “Suburb” by Peter O. Muller, Ph. D., in World Book Multimedia Encyclopedia (© 1998 Worldbook, Inc., and its licensors):
Some foreign suburbs I found after a quick search using Sherlock™:
[ul]
[li]Giza is suburb of Cairo, the capitol of Egypt. Also see this map of the Cairo Underground Metro Network.[/li][li]Kunming, capital of the Chinese province Yunnan, contains a suburb.[/li][li]Longueuil and Laval are suburbs of Montreal, a city in the Canadian province Quebec.[/li][li]Netzahualcóyotl** is a suburb of Mexico City, capital of Mexico.[/li][/ul]
Kenneth Jackson, a professor at Columbia University, wrote the book “Crabgrass Frontier: the Suburbanization of the United States”; it is considered a – if not the – definative treatment of the subject.
As you suspected, American cities differ from many of the world’s cities – and the roots of this difference, Prof. Jackson points out, are old and deep.
In 1815 every major city in the world was a “walking city.” They had the following traits: 1. dense population 2. clear distinction between city and country, often with rigid stone walls to define the difference (though, except for Quebec City and Montreal, massive walls were not a feature of most North American cities) 3. a mixture of functions (churches, shops, homes, etc.) throughout 4. inhabitants who lived short distances from their workplaces, and 5. a tendency of the affluent to live in the center of town.
He writes: “… To live outside the walls, away from palaces and cathedrals, was to live in inferior surroundings. In eighteenth century Paris, the suburbs were populated largely by persons who were prevented – by taxes collected at the gates or by guild restrictions – from settling in the city proper, or by outcasts of one sort or another…”
In other words, the suburbs were the slums.
But then there was a mind-shift, inspired by American planners, reformers and authors, that took hold in the United States (and London) more strongly than elsewhere in the world: “By romanticizing the benefits of private space and by combining the imagery of the New England village with the notion of Thomas Jefferson’s gentleman’s farmer, individuals like Catherine Beecher, Andrew Jackson Downing, and Calvert Vaux created a new image of the city as an urban-rural continuum… By the 1870’s the word suburb no longer implied inferiority…”
Jackson argues that this mind-shift drove the growth of commuter transportation facilities (essentially, rail lines), NOT the other way around, as is often asserted.
This new “American model” of a city (the affluent living on the outside, the impoverished living downtown) was embraced by urban planners – and even subsidized by the American government after WWII.
(Jackson notes that New York City stands as an exception to this “American model,” with the most affluent zip codes located in the city’s center, on Manhattan Island.)
America’s pro-suburban mentality, Jackson argues, has resulted in our inner-city ghettos, a frightening dependence on the automobile, and a dispiriting loss of community in metropolitan America.
I spent last semester suffering through a Canadian Cities course, and what I can tell you is that Canadian suburbs are fundamentally different from American ones. For example, American suburbs are very much bastions of wealthy whites, and the reverse in the inner city; Canadian suburbs are much, much more culturally and socioeconomically mixed.
Suburbs in Europe also often tend to be the demographic opposites of their American counterparts. Since they were often built quickly for cheap housing (usu. in the form of monstrous flat blocks) many of them have quickly turned into run-down slum-like areas, where I certainly wouldn’t want to live. Of course, there are also affluent bedroom communities outside European cities as well, but they tend to grow in former villages and often maintain the village form for a long time, including the resentment of old-time villagers.
Let me add that these observations are mostly based on Germany (where I am based) and France, and might not apply everywhere in Europe.
After WWII, more federal/state programs were put in place to help people buy homes (e.g., mortgage programs). This helped extend the suburbs. Not to mention the expansion of the interstate highway system, which made commuting possible.
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** said:
Bull hockey. While there are portions of suburbs that are very much upper class and mostly white, suburbs in America in general are solidly middle class. My home in the suburbs of Washingtion DC is in a very diverse area. It has everything from subsidized lower income housing to upscale single family homes.
Most of the suburbs I’ve seen have followed the same pattern. Sure, you can find “gated communities” everywhere, but they are still the minority.
gEEk
not true.
in many (most?) places in the USA the very rich and the very poor live in the cities. The middle classes, both upper and lower, black and white, live in the burbs.
A little data to back up my assertion that American suburbs are not “bastions of wealthy whites”.
This data comes from the US Census Bureau and is based on the 1990 census.
Place: Columbia MD
Population: 75,883
Total occupied housing units: 28,591
White households: 22,242 (77%)
Black households: 5,114 (17%)
American Indian, Eskimo or Aleut: 61 (.2%)
Asian or Pacific Islander: 1,038 (3.6%)
Other: 136 (.4%)
Total owner occupied units: 16,209
<$50,000: 41 (.2%)
$50,000-$99,999: 1,430 (9%)
$100,000-$149,999: 6,589 (40%)
$150,000-$199,999: 4,572 (28%)
$200,000-$299,999: 2,957 (18%)
>=$300,000: 620 (4%)
Compare those numbers to the US as a whole:
Total households: 91,947,410
White: 76,880,105 (83%)
Black: 9,976,161 (11%)
American Indian Eskimo or Aleut: 591,372(.6%)
Asian or Pacific Islander: 2,013,735 (2.2%)
Other: 2,486,037 (2.7%)
Thus, at least for this one suburb, (which I would claim is a good representative of suburbs throughout the US) we see that the racial composition closely matches the general population. In fact, whites are actually under-represented in this area by 6%. In terms of home value, a good predictor of income, fully 77% of the homes are worth less than $200,000. This indicates that the area is very much middle class.
If you want to claim that American suburbs are either predominantly white or wealthy, I’m gonna need to see some data to back that up.
gEEk
One thing to keep in mind is that even in America, suburbs vary greatly, especially in some place like New England. In areas like the Northeast, where it isn’t possible to drive 10 miles without hitting a sizable settlement of some sort, most “suburbs” are really just old towns that have increased in population over time, and have a character to reflect that. Look at Boston, for example, where “suburbs” include Cambridge, Salem, Malden, Natick, Sommerville, Danvers, Revere, Lynn; etc. All towns with a history back to the 18th century (or earlier), and these places feel quite different than a “model” suburb. Now, compare to Chicago or LA, with sprawling suburban communities, “Edge Cities” like Schaumburg or Ontario, certainly the “classic” U.S. urban/suburban models. Throw into the mix cities like Jacksonville, which have effectively “absorbed” their own suburbs and become Megacities, with a single municipality covering the entire population base. One would be hard-pressed to find that the majority of places fit into the “standard model”
the fuel to this god-awful suburban american sprawl can be summed up by americans feeling of entitlement to a piece of the abundant land, and the cheapness and abundance gasoline.
There’d no need to be near a city center, I don’t need public transportation…I’ll just drive
I get the perhaps erroneous impression that the old railroad
suburbs in upstate NY, CT, LI, etc. tended to be very affluent, mainly the abodes of New York executives. From
books and depictions in films, which I am sure are very incomplete, it seems that spacious houses built of wood, brick and stone were the rule. Not like the little stucco boxes we usually associate with suburban living.
I wonder if this pre-war image of suburban life contributed
to the postwar flight thither? Or was city life already
perceived as so bad that people felt they had to get out?
"Can’t speak for Europe, but the major cities of Australia all have suburbs.
Of course no one’s ever shot a film there. Who would want to? Have you been there?"
I saw a film shot in an Oz suburb: Holy Smoke. They made it look as hideous and kinky as possible, to give Kate Winslet’s character a plausible motive for defecting to a Hindu cult. Next to Sans Souci as depicted in the film, anything would be preferable.
Out west it’s probably a simpler look, but here in the East (in in North Jersey), things are much like jayron 32 describes around Boston.
Interesting fact: most of the towns around here have had big centennial celebrations in the last ten years or so. Only a few of the towns much predate the 1890s (the big cities mostly predate that era, but the towns, townships and so forth were only incorporated about that time), and only a few postdate that. It was clearly a time of building and consolidating, and the railroads drove much of the traffic.
As to javaman’s point, let me sketch out one picture, from my area. Paterson was a large city from the Colonial period (founded, it claims, by Alexander Hamilton and a major silk center). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the mill hands (and their bosses) started moving outside the city of Paterson. So, you have the city of Paterson, with the usual slums and housing projects (these are mostly of more recent vintage) along with some neighborhoods of wonderful Victorian homes (for the bosses). The surrounding towns include Haledon (called the first “streetcar” suburb around here, and mostly home to overseers and skilled workers – middle to upper-middle class) and Hawthorne (the working class suburb).
So suburbs can be from all parts of the socioeconomic spectrum (except the very bottom, of course), from the relatively poor working class through the most common middle-class suburbs up to the enclaves of wealth (and we’ve got them in Jersey, let me tell you).
yeah, only Americans want their own land.:rolleyes:
Some of us don’t like living in cities, the highest paying jobs are in cities, and public transportation is poor outside of city limits. Thus the sprawl.
so, why is public transportation poor outside city limit? because people can still drive in most situations. But the honeymoon will end, example Atlanta.
It’s not till traffic becomes such a miserable issue, that people begin to take notice. An example is Wahington DC. A well thought out city, $300 a month to park, traffic is horrendous, so it is easier to take public transportation to get to work. The city is growing so quickly, that public transportation, once seen as a pro-active measure, is now having to re-act to the increasing traffic distances people travel.
Smart growth this, smart growth that. reality is that in most developments folks still drive to buy groceries, developers are too cheap to put in sidewalks.
We’ll just build more outer beltways to accomodate. The growth, which will become outdated a couple of years after they are opened.
I don’t know where you live, but it is no longer necessary to go to the big city to get to work. More companies are moving to the suburbs to accomodate their emnployees. In fact while I was pondering my move to the big city, suburban companies offered greater incentives and pay to come work with them, since they didn’t have the draw of the big city.
As a commuter from Arlington, VA to DC, I can attest to the fact that the Metrorail is already running at close to capacity. By the time a train starting in Vienna makes its fifth stop (Ballston) between the hours of 7 am and 9:30 am, there is standing-room only. The Orange line makes four more stops in Virginia before a significant number of people begin to offload in DC. The situation is similar returning in the afternoons.
Two consecutive days of snow tends to bring Metrorail to its knees due to the increased traffic imposed by fed-up drivers who decide to try the Metro for once. These particular people are wholly ignorant of subway etiquette and cause interminable lines at ticket machines, entrances and exits. They block both sides of the escalators, and treat the doors of a subway as if they were elevators, resulting in humorous examples of people getting temporarily squished–and very irate–as they try to pack themselves onto overcrowded trains. The combination of delays can telescope a twenty-minute train ride into an hour-long ordeal from hell.
These are usually the days when that spooky Psycho Catholic Guy starts singing hymns in latin, a cappella, while the train is stranded under the Potomac River. He scares the shit out of me.
But at least sometimes on those days I can free one arm enough to bring a magazine up to my face and read it one column at a time. I see the whole thing as a glimpse into DC’s future.
Not only are there suburbs in Europe, but even in Paris, long the model of a great livable city, people are fleeing the city in droves to the suburbs. However, the Parisian suburbs are about as dense as the US’s most dense cities. From what I hear, Paris is not building any more subways, but rather focusing on making things better for autos (they already have one of the best freeway systems in Europe).
However, it’s only a matter of time before Europe catches up to the US. Of course Asia will also quickly become completely suburban once there is more middle class there. Some places like Japan or England may never get much more suburban since they are running out of land.
Once Asia goes suburban, people will start to consider the problem more seriously. Imagine having another billion cars on the road…