Suburbia

‘Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough’

- John Betjeman

This article examines Suburbia, which can be seen as the characteristic environment of the postmodern age. Millions of us live in suburbs and we tend to take them for granted because they are so familiar and mundane – it has been said that Suburbia is ubiquitous, but invisible.

The term ‘sub-urban’ defines an environment that is semi-rural – it is halfway between town and country. Suburbs usually consist of detached single-family houses with private gardens. They have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods and they are often perceived as a safer, healthier, more peaceful environment.

Suburbs have a long history. They began in the 19th century when the middle classes moved out of towns and cities to escape the grime and pollution caused by the Industrial Revolution.

Suburbs were made possible by expanding transport networks. Railways made it possible to live further away from one’s place of work and this gave rise to large residential areas on the outskirts of cities. In Britain, for example, the Metropolitan Railway built its own housing estates north-west of London along the Extension Line. These consisted of detached houses on large plots, which came to be known as ‘Metro-land’. Metro-land was marketed as a semi-rural paradise, publicity material produced by the Metropolitan Railway testifies. The former poet laureate Sir John Betjeman produced a documentary about Metro-land in 1973.

Suburbs continued to grow in the 20th century as car ownership became widespread. After World War II there was a housing boom in America and new suburban communities grew up. The use of cars and the extension of highways made it easier to work in the city and commute from the suburbs. This was termed the urban exodus. By 1950 there were more people living in suburbs than anywhere else. Levittown was a famous suburb outside of New York. The image encapsulates the suburban dream of the nuclear family.

In many ways, suburbia represents the middle class domestic ideal: it consists of private houses for the individual family. The houses have private gardens, which provide defensible space. They embody the middle class values of individualism, freedom and privacy. Suburbia offers a safe neighbourhood free of the dangers of the city.

This disadvantage of suburbs is that they can be dull, homogenous and conformist. Suburbs have spread around the world. It has been argued that suburbs form a bland uniform environment served by equally bland supermarkets and shopping malls. Suburbia can be mind-numbing.

Within a given residential development, the houses are virtually identical, which means they cost more or less the same. Residents therefore come from the same income bracket, and tend to be white middle class professionals. There are few people from ethnic minorities. This can lead to a homogenous population, which means that suburbia can be very bland and boring. At the same time, suburbs are sold as being exclusive, and what they exclude is social and ethnic diversity.

It can be argued that Suburbia represents a retreat from society and from social responsibility. People enclose themselves in sequestered communities that embody the ideals of privacy and independence and many suburbanites see this separation from the city as an asset. The environment is a means of keeping out people who cannot afford to live there – i.e. the working classes and ethic minorities.

Suburbia often represents a retreat from the city into a cosy, semi-rural fantasy. The city is full of perceived dangers – it is chaotic, uncoordindated and ethnically diverse. This makes it intimidating to the middle classes. In Britain there is currently a range of TV programmes made up of CCTV footage from the inner-cities: this creates the strange situation of people are sitting at home in the suburbs, watching the supposed horrors and perils of the city on TV. This reinforces the perception that the city is a realm of danger and licentiousness.

Suburbs exclude the perceived danger of the city, but they also exclude the vibrancy and vitality of the city. The American author Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cites in which she celebrated Greenwich Village, a vibrant neighbourhood within a larger city. Suburbia lacks the vibrancy of inner city life.

The architecture of suburbia often reflects middle class pretentions. It emulates historical styles to give a sense of social status, but it does so in a very superficial way. This is a house built in the vague Georgian style loved by estate agents. It has a Classical portico around the door and fake sash windows with UPVC frames. The double doors in the upper storey are absurd because they break with Classical conventions. Most of these houses are built of modern synthetic materials, which look thoroughly artificial.

Mock-Tudor is another style used extensively. This is a mock-Tudor house with fake timbering. Half-timbering is supposed to be structural – in the Tudor period the upper storey was often built of wood. Here the wood has just been slapped onto the façade as a decorative affectation. The Tudor style conjures an image of Merrie England; the imagery is rustic and vernacular, but it’s a synthetic modern version. The architecture of suburbia consists of banal reproductions - postmodernism without the irony.

In the last few years a huge amount of housing has been squeezed onto former derelict land to capitalise on the booming property market (which has now gone bust, of course). Modern suburbs are much higher density. The new houses are densely packed and the rooms are much smaller, but the houses are still detached or semi-detached. They still embody the middle class domestic ideal of the private house even though they are on a miniature scale.

Further reading

Fishman, R. (1987) Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia. New York: Basic Books.

Silverstone, R. (ed.) (1997) Visions of Suburbia. London: Routledge.

For a discussion of cultural representations of suburbia see:

Frith, S. ‘The Suburban Sensibility in British Rock and Pop’ in Silverstone, R. (ed.) (1997) Visions of Suburbia. London: Routledge, pp269-279.

Medhurst, A. ‘Negotiating the Gnome Zone: Versions of Suburbia in British Popular Culture’ in Silverstone, R. (ed.) (1997) Visions of Suburbia. London: Routledge, pp240-268.