Making Suburbia: New Histories of Everyday America

Description

What are the suburbs? The popular vision of monotonous streets curving into culs-de-sac and emerald lawns unfurling from nearly identical houses would have us believe that suburbia is a boring, homogeneous, and alienating place. But this stereotypical portrayal of the suburbs tells us very little about the lives of the people who actually live ther

John Archer is professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Architecture and Suburbia and The Literature of British Domestic Architecture, 1715-1842. Paul J. P. Sandul is assistant professor of history at Stephen F. Austin State University. He is the author of California Dreaming: Boosterism, Memory, and Rural Suburbs in the Golden State. Katherine Solomonson is associate professor of architecture at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition: Skyscraper Design and Cultural Change in the 1920s. Margaret Crawford is professor of architecture at University of California, Berkeley.

"Contributors attempt to remove stereotypes-- plenty are called out-- and to legitimate suburbs as a field of study. The topics covered here might fall into several fields ranging from sociology to urban planning, remain peripheral to them, or provoke further investigation."-CHOICE "The book succeeds in demolishing the single sterile stereotype of suburbia."-Planning Magazine "Demonstrating suburbia's mobility as both metaphor and materiality, the collection's diverse accounts of communities, families, and their dwellings evidence how the borders between the cul-de-sac and beyond remain malleable. Take together, the collection answers "yes" to the question, "Do these places matter?" and reaffirms the call for scholars to further study the complexity of suburbia."-Historical Geography "I greatly enjoyed reading Making Suburbia and highly recommend it for academic study as well as personal interest."-Journal of Planning Education and Research