Suburbanization

10 Key excerpts on "Suburbanization"

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  Handbook of Urban Studies

  • Ronan Paddison(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  There is, however, ample evidence that over time the process has grown to become very different from its original nature and has more recently been manifesting itself in novel forms. One distinction has already been drawn above, in terms of the geographical scale shifting from lateral extension of the main built-up area to decentralization over a broad commuting field. A second, equally important development is the progressive disappearance of the ‘sub’ element of the process, as the arrival of residential population has since the 1950s been followed by the decentralization of industrial, commercial and retail activities and lately by the growth of office and high-tech sectors, the latter being seen as the ‘third wave’ of Suburbanization in the USA (Cervero, 1989). Over the past ten years American commentators have been coining terms suggestive of a revolution in the form of the city, as the ‘new Suburbanization’ (Stanback, 1991) – with its ‘suburban downtowns’ (Hartshorn and Muller, 1986) and ‘edge cities’ (Garreau, 1991) – is increasingly being seen as challenging the central cities and threatening to turn the traditional metropolitan area inside out. In short, the past quarter of a century has seen nothing less than the urbanization of the suburbs, or – in the far-sighted words of Birch (1975: 25) – a transformation ‘from suburb to urban place’. While this process appears to have progressed further in the USA than elsewhere (including Canada) and much debate is taking place even in America about the significance of these ‘new suburban landscapes’ (Bourne, 1989, 1994), there is no doubt that the distinction between ‘urban’ and ‘suburban’ has become increasingly blurred across the more developed world.

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  Urbanization and Urban Planning in Capitalist Society

  • Michael Dear, Allen Scott, Michael Dear, Allen Scott, Michael Dear, Allen J. Scott(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  15   A theory of Suburbanization: capitalism and the construction of urban space in the United States Richard A. Walker

  Suburbanization is clearly a process of enormous complexity, forming one part of the entire urbanization process, one aspect of the social whole. We approach it as a geographic problem, although it is not ‘in essence’ this any more than it is essentially an ‘economic’ or ‘sociological’ problem. Part of the difficulty in making sense of Suburbanization is the power of the myth that it can be defined in a purely geographic fashion, when, in fact, understanding spatial relations necessarily means confronting social relations as a whole.1

  As a geographic problem, modern Suburbanization has three major defining characteristics: spatial differentiation, decentralization, and identification with the waves of urban landscape laid down since the Second World War. Virtually everyone writing on the topic recognizes these three dimensions as empirically valid, with the disputes being over matters of degree and timing. The eminent historical geographer, J. Vance, for example, observes that ‘functional decongestion’ is ‘still the main dynamic force at work in our cities’ and that since the Second World War a ‘new city’ has come into being, which ‘differs in both scale and functional structure from the metropolis of pre-war days’.2 In fact, spatial differentiation, déconcentration and the phenomenon of successive, distinct waves of urbanization have been at work since the capitalist revolution transformed American cities in the nineteenth century and have become, in absolute terms, more pronounced over time. The principle difficulty, of course, is not descriptive specification of the three shaping forces but in coming up with a satisfactory explanation for them.3

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  Research in Urban Sociology

  • Mark Clapson, Ray Hutchison, Ray Hutchison(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  As Richard Harris argues in the first and in many ways defining chapter of this volume, almost all development beyond the city centre might well be incorporated within the broad umbrella term of ‘Suburbanization’. Metropolitan regions have expanded as a consequence of continuing population growth, particularly in the large developing economies of Brazil, China and India, and in the emerging, if smaller, post-colonial countries in Africa and Latin America. Suburban sprawl and edge cities – an important area of research in the EU as well as the United States ( Garreau, 1991 ; Lang, 2003 ; Phelps, Parsons, & Ballas, 2008 ) – have collided with an increasingly fragile notion of traditional urbanism, based on the high-density walking city, rich in historical architecture and cultural and economic resources, and producing, in theory at least, a high level of civic pride and engagement. However, in Chapter 6, the traditional urbanity of Italian cities is attacked as a valid mode of assessing the ‘urban’ qualities of new suburbs in the Italian capital city. Urban sociology began with the study of the impact of the socio-economic changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, and for most of the past century it has remained embedded in the city, with a focus on urban lifestyles and urban problems of the central city, even while people and employment moved to the suburbs. If the majority of persons live, and most development occurs, in areas beyond the central city, suburban studies might well deserve to become the new scholastic shorthand for the increasingly diverse field of academic endeavour seeking to make sense of the myriad social, cultural, economic and political processes that are inextricably intertwined with Suburbanization in a global society. It is time for urban sociology to move out of the city and explore the new suburban world of the twenty-first century.

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  Manufacturing Suburbs

  Building Work And Home

  • Robert Lewis(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Temple University Press

    (Publisher)

  The different processes of Suburbanization have been active in every urban area, but not to the same degree. Scholars, including many of the con-tributors to the present collection, have suggested why Suburbanization took particular forms in specific urban areas, but in an ad hoc manner that has not led to systematic reflection. For this reason we have little idea whether the importance of the different processes changed over time. In the second and third sections of this chapter I discuss the causes of local variation before considering the question of historical trends. The arguments that I develop are speculative. To test them it will often be necessary to under-take time-consuming research with primary records. In the final section I indicate how such research might proceed and why it should be undertaken. Processes of Suburbanization Logically, the suburban trend can be led by jobs, by residential settlement, or by a mixture of the two. Until the third quarter of the twentieth cen-tury the most common types of jobs were in manufacturing. 5 This suggests 222 Richard Harris three processes of Suburbanization: industrial, residential, and balanced, with the last involving the joint decentralization of roughly equal numbers of workers and jobs. It is easy to find examples of places that were produced by one or another of these processes. As Richard Walker describes it in Chapter 6, Emeryville, California, was driven by industrial development; Mary Beth Pudup shows that the commuter suburb of Riverside, west of Chicago, was first and foremost a residential project, and that Harvey, Illi-nois, was designed to contain a mix of homes and industry. 6 Each place retained its original character over a long period. But historical develop-ment is rarely linear. To be successful, places planned for industry soon needed to acquire homes. In so doing, they attracted other manufacturers, who in turn drew workers whose settlement reinforced the suburb’s appeal to employers.

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  A Social History of Twentieth-Century Europe

  • Béla Tomka(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  12 Nevertheless, it has to be emphasized as well that this periodization is only of an approximate validity, not only because the demarcation lines of certain periods of social history rarely coincide with calendar decades, but also because even within Western Europe, these processes did not occur with the same intensity. They varied to such an extent that several of the terms referred to above generated heated debates among scholars, questioning their applicability and utility, and also raising the issue of whether in some cases, these concepts merely mask short, transitional phases, or particular developmental anomalies of certain regions or countries.

  Suburbanization

  The antecedents of Suburbanization can be traced back to the nineteenth century, because already at that time successful entrepreneurs and financiers preferred their stately homes to be built on the outskirts of industrial and commercial cities. The improvement of transport rendered it possible to increase the distance between the home and the place of work, so this type of urban habitat acquired an increasing popularity among wealthier citizens in the time to come.13

  In the interwar period, Suburbanization gained further impetus in some Western European countries: new, more loosely built districts appeared in the territories around cities, which primarily provided housing and lacked important urban functions. Consequently, these were closely connected to the urban core.

  In the interwar period, it was the development of garden suburbs that particularly advanced in England. These suburbs usually consisted of detached or row houses with small gardens, and were often constructed in order to provide homes for the not so well-off as well; the houses had a simple design and finish to make them more affordable. In addition, these projects also conformed to the Home Fit for Heroes

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  Governing Metropolitan Areas

  Growth and Change in a Networked Age

  • David K. Hamilton(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  7 Still others moved out, particularly after the mid-twentieth century, because of the influx of blacks and poor people. As described in Chapter 1, the philosophical and social influences in the development of the local government system also contributed to the Suburbanization movement. Anti-city bias of philosophers and writers in the 84 Suburbanization and Annexation nineteenth century, such as Herbert Spencer, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry James, encouraged people to move out of the cities. In addition, the Jeffersonian ideal of direct democracy and individual participation afforded by small communities influenced the movement. Although America became an urban nation because of economic and technological forces, its social, cultural, and intellectual heritage fostered the desire for small, independent, exclusive communities. Within urban areas people tend to identify with their neighborhood before they identify with the larger city. Their comfort level is in the small neighborhoods. The large sprawling city is a forbidding, but necessary, place where one ventures for work or business. People moved out of the cities not only to seek a better environment in which to raise their families, but also to be in a better position to have their own exclusive community. 8 Moreover, the desire for a more private lifestyle influenced the Suburbanization movement. A house on a big lot in the suburbs where a person could retreat and not have to interact with others was appealing both to apartment dwellers and people living in row houses in the city. Thus, within the urban milieu people sought to live in small communities where they could maintain their privacy and feel comfortable within their own small Gemeinschaft. Suburban Government With the suburban movement, the basic government structure remained but evolved in various permutations. Additional layers were added to accommodate changing technology and to meet the needs of the residents.

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  Working-Class Suburb

  A Study of Auto Workers in Suburbia

  • Bennett M. Berger(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • University of California Press

    (Publisher)

  Chapter I The Myth of Suburbia In recent years a myth of suburbia has developed in the United States. In saying this, I refer not to the physical facts of the move- ment to the suburbs; this is an ecological tendency to which all recent statistics on population mobility bear eloquent testimony. 1 I refer instead to the social and cultural ramifications that are perceived to have been inherent in the suburban exodus. Brunner and Hallenbeck, for example, call the rise of suburbia "one of the major social changes of the twentieth century," 2 and the popular literature especially is full of characterizations of suburbia as "a new way of life." The significance of the past decade cannot be overestimated since it is only in this period that suburbia has become a mass phenomenon and hence prone to the manufacture of modern myth. Suburbanization, however, goes back as far as the latter part 1 In 1953, for example, Fortune reported that suburban population had increased by 75 per cent over 1934, although total population was increasing by only 25 per cent; between 1947 and 1953 the increase was 43 per cent. See HThe New Suburban Market," Fortune (November, 1953), p. 234. That this trend is con- tinuing is indicated by a recent Census Bureau report showing that between 1950 and 1956 the population of suburbs increased by 29.3 per cent, although their central cities gained by only 4.7 per cent. For a full discussion of this whole tendency, see Donald Bogue, Population Growth in Standard Metropolitan Areas, 1900-1950, especially pp. 18-19, tables 13 and 14, p. 30, and table 19, p. 34. 'Edmund aeS. Brunner and Wilbur C. Hallenbeck, American Society: Urban and Rural Patterns, p. 253. 2 THE MYTH OF SUBURBIA of the nineteenth century, when the very wealthy began to build country estates along the way of suburban railroad stations.

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  Urban Geography

  An Introductory Analysis

  • James H. Johnson, W. B. Fisher(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Pergamon

    (Publisher)

  between the limits of individual cities as legally defined and the limits of actual cities as functioning units of settlement, which frequently include unincorporated settlements on the urban fringe. Nevertheless, there are a number of new elements which have intro-duced a faster pace of suburban development. Just before the First 8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 -0 -POPULATION (MILLIONS) 136 Urban Geography World War industry was beginning to discover the advantages of a sub-urban location, and this trend was elaborated between the wars.* The growth of employment in the outer ring of cities encouraged suburban residential expansion between the wars and this same process continued with undiminished force after the Second World War. In addition, an increased amount of the more routine forms of office employment has been moving to the suburbs, partly following the female labour force, and partly driven out by rising land values and increased congestion in city centres. This trend is found in many parts of the Western world; but a further stimulus to suburban growth in the post-war period has been more restricted to the United States, although it is very likely that it will spread elsewhere in due course. This is the construction of sub-urban regional shopping centres, which are an expression of the great rise in the number of privately owned cars, of the growing purchasing power of American households, and of the physical expansion of larger cities. A second element creating a new situation around American cities in particular is the shifting balance between the growth of urban popula-tion and the rate at which new buildings are being constructed. The demand for housing after 1945 was inflated by the halt in building during the war and by the impact of rising marriage rates in the 1940's, with the result that the economics of mass production have been further applied to the building of large housing estates.

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  Readings in Urban Sociology

  Readings in Sociology

  • R. E. Pahl(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Pergamon

    (Publisher)

  12 In fact, American cities have sometimes been described as collections of small towns. 18 There is some truth to this description, especially if the city is compared to the actual small town, rather than to the romantic construct of anti-urban critics [33]. Postwar suburbia represents the most contemporary version of the quasi-primary way of life. Owing to increases in real income and the encouragement of home ownership provided by the FHA, families in the lower-middle class and upper working class can now live in modern single-family homes in low-density sub-divisions, an opportunity previously available only to the upper and upper-middle classes [34], The popular literature describes the new suburbs as com-munities in which conformity, homogeneity, and other-direction are unusually rampant [4, 32]. The implication is that the move from city to suburb initiates a new way of life which causes con-siderable behavior and personality change in previous urbanites. A preliminary analysis of data which I am now collecting in Levittown, New Jersey, suggests, however, that the move from the city to this predominantly lower-middle-class suburb does not result in any major behavioral changes for most people. Moreover, the changes which do occur reflect the move from the social isolation of a transient city or suburban apartment building to the quasi-primary life of a neighborhood of single-family homes. Also, many of the people whose life has changed reported that the changes were intended. They existed as aspirations before the move, or as reasons for it. In other words, the suburb itself creates few changes in ways of life. Similar conclusions have been reported 12 These neighborhoods cannot, however, be considered as urban folk societies. People go out of the area for many of their friendships, and their allegiance to neighborhood is neither intense nor all-encompassing.

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  The Japanese City

  • Pradyumna P. Karan, Kristin Stapleton, Pradyumna P. Karan, Kristin Stapleton(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • The University Press of Kentucky

    (Publisher)

  5 Suburbanization of Tokyo and the Daily Lives of Suburban People KOHEI OKAMOTO In 1990, 43 percent of Japan's population was concentrated within a 50-kilometer (31-mile) radius of the three large metropolises: Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. The majority of this population lived in the metropolitan suburbs. The suburban residents of these three large metropolitan areas number 41 mil-lion, which corresponds to one third of the total population of Japan. The metropolitan suburbs expanded rapidly during the period of high economic growth in the 1960s. During this period, Japan experienced a major internal migration, as large numbers of people moved into the urban areas from the rural countryside and settled in the metropolitan suburbs. This massive mi-gration tapered off in the late 1970s, and the increase in population of the sub-urbs has now slowed down considerably. Today, the suburbs are populated by second-generation migrants who were born and grew up in the suburbs. Many Japanese will spend their entire lives in the suburban areas of large cities, so it is very important to study the metropolitan suburbs and suburbanites when considering Japan's society of today and the future. This chapter consists of two parts. The first part describes the process of urbanization and Suburbanization in Japan after World War II. A recent struc-tural transformation of the Tokyo metropolitan area will be examined closely. The second part, based on data on Kawagoe (a suburb of Tokyo), evaluates the quality of life in Japan's metropolitan suburbs. The analysis will focus on time-space constraints among suburbanites, centering on their working activities from the time-geographic perspective. URBANIZATION AND Suburbanization OF JAPAN'S MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREAS In the course of Japan's postwar recovery and period of high economic growth, there have been major employment shifts away from primary industries and toward secondary and tertiary industries.

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