Suburbs
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related term Suburbia
Suburbs are inhabited districts
located either on the outer rim of a city or outside the official limits
of a city (the term varies from country to
country), or the outer elements of a conurbation.
The presence of certain elements (whose definition
varies amongst urbanists, but usually refers to
some basic services and to the territorial continuity) identifies a
suburb as a peripheral populated area with a certain autonomy, where
the density of habitation is usually lower than in an inner city area,
though state or municipal house building will often cause departures
from that organic gradation. Suburbs have typically grown in areas with
an abundance of flat land near a large urban zone, usually with minimal
traditions of citizens clustering together for defense behind
fortified city walls, and with transport systems which allow commuting into more densely
populated areas with higher levels of commerce.
Semantics
The word "suburb" is derived from the Old French
"sub(b)urbe" and ultimately from the Latin "suburbium," formed from
"sub," meaning "under," and "urbs," meaning "city." (Note that urbs
was pronounced oorps.) The first recorded usage
according to the Oxford English Dictionary
comes from Wyclife, in 1380, where the form "subarbis" is used.
In American English, the
word "suburb" usually refers to a separate municipality or an unincorporated area outside
of a central city. This definition is evident, for example, in the
title of David Rusk's
book Cities Without Suburbs, which promotes metropolitan government.
Colloquial usage sometimes shortens the term to "'burb" (with or
without the apostrophe), and "The Burbs" first appeared as a term for
the suburbs of Chicagoland.
In Britain, Ireland and New Zealand, "suburbs" are
merely residential neighbourhoods outside of the city centre. For
example, Wimbledon is considered
a suburb of London, England. In New Zealand suburbs can also
be inner city areas, such as Te Aro in Wellington.
Many characteristics of suburbia were found in Australia as early as the 19th
century. With huge expanses of land needing to be populated, lack of
need for defence as well as the popularity of railroads (which grew at
a swift rate) contributed to sprawling urbanism somewhat resembling
suburbia. However, the key commercial element - commuting to work - was
not really there, although it would appear during the 20th century.
The term suburb as used in Australia reflects this, and
thus has an ambiguous meaning to non-Australians. Suburbs there are
official postal and addressing subdivisions of a city. Inner
suburbs are subdivisions within the denser urban areas of the cities, and
correspond to what would be called neigbourhoods in North American
cities. For instance, Carlton, postcode 3053,
is an inner suburb of Melbourne, even though it lies
within the boundaries of the City of Melbourne. Locals will refer to
Carlton as a suburb even though it is a densely
urban neighbourhood. Outer suburbs are the postal
divisions found in the outer rings of the metropolitan areas, and
usually lie within the boundaries of a separate municipality, such as
the City of Greater Dandenong.
History
Many sociologists see suburbs as a post-urban area
which develops in response to worsening conditions within a city with a
communication and transport system which allows citizens to live
outside the city while doing business inside.
The suburbs and more distinct settlements around a
town or city may look towards the urban area for goods, services and
employment opportunities. That wider area may be called the hinterland of the town or a
"city region". In the era before motorised travel, the radius of the
hinterland roughly coincided with the distance that livestock could be
herded to and from a market during daylight hours. In lowland areas,
without severe geographic barriers to movement, a spacing of towns
between 15 and 20 miles is therefore quite common. Suburbs with a
healthier environment are often found upwind of those parts of a town
or city where heavy industry was first established. Naturally, the
suburbs suffering air pollution tended to be cheaper and hence tend to
be occupied by those with lower incomes.
The growth of suburbs was initially facilitated by
the development of zoning laws and more effective and
accessible means of transport. In the older cities
of the northeast U.S., suburbs originally developed along train or trolley lines that could shuttle
workers into and out of city centers where the jobs were located. This
practice gave rise to the term bedroom community or
dormitory, meaning that most daytime business activity took place in
the city, with the working population leaving the city at night for the
purpose of going home to sleep. The growth in the use of trains, and
later automobiles and highways, increased the ease with which workers
could have a job in the city while commuting in from the suburbs.
In the United Kingdom, railways stimulated the first mass
exodus to the suburbs, which were described as "Metroland" around
London, and were mostly characterised by semi-detached houses. As car
ownership rose and wider roads were built, the commuting trend
accelerated as in North America. This trend towards living away from
towns and cities has been termed the urban exodus.
Zoning laws also contributed to the location of
residential areas outside of the city center by creating wide areas or
"zones" where only residential buildings were permitted. These suburban
residences are built on larger lots of land than in the urban city. For
example, the lot size for a residence in Chicago, Illinois is
usually 125 feet deep, while the width can vary from 14 feet wide for a
row house to 45 feet wide for a large standalone house. In the suburbs,
where standalone houses are the rule, lots may be 85 feet wide by 115
feet deep, as in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Illinois.
Manufacturing and commercial buildings were segregated in other areas
of the city.
Increasingly, due to the congestion and pollution experienced in many
city centers (accentuated by the commuters' vehicles), more people
moved out to the suburbs. Moving along with the population, many
companies also located their offices and other facilities in the outer
areas of the cities. This has resulted in increased density in older
suburbs and, often, the growth of lower density suburbs even further
from city centers. An alternative strategy is the deliberate design of
"new towns" and the protection of green belts around cities. Some
social reformers attempted to combine the best of both concepts in the Garden City movement.
While suburbs had originated far earlier, the
suburban population in North America exploded after World War II. Returning veterans wishing to start a
settled life moved en masse to the suburbs. Between
1950 and 1956 the resident population of all
US suburbs increased by 46%. During the same period of time,
African-Americans were rapidly moving north for better jobs and
educational opportunities than they could get in the segregated South,
and their arrival in Northern cities en masse
further stimulated white suburban migration.
Many people equate suburbs with early planned
cities such as Levittown, New York
and Rohnert Park, California.
Rohnert Park, a suburb of Santa Rosa, California
and San Francisco, California
was originally marketed in the late 50's as "A Country Club for the
middle class."
In the US, 1970 was the first year that more
people lived in suburbs than elsewhere. (1)
The development of the skyscraper and the sharp
inflation of downtown real estate prices also led to downtowns being
more fully dedicated to businesses, thus pushing residents outside the
city centre. By 1980 this was often perceived as undesirable, extending
travel times and adding to people's sense of isolation and fear in
central areas outside trading hours.
Suburbs today
In North America, suburbs traditionally were
residential areas with single-family homes located near shopping areas and schools, with good access to trains, freeways or other transport
systems. Now, partly due to increased populations in many greater
metropolitan areas, suburbs can be densely populated and contain
apartment buildings and townhouses, as well as
office complexes, light manufacturing facilities, and shopping centers
or malls. An example of this is
Nassau County, New York
on Long Island which houses some
of New York City's suburbs,
where population density is just as big as some of New York City's boroughs. It
is not unusual for suburbs to house several hundred thousand people. In
fact, many American and Canadian suburbs are now larger than other
urban population centers. For example, Mesa, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona), is
larger than St. Louis, Missouri; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
and Salt Lake City, Utah,
and grew at a much faster rate than even Phoenix between 1990 and 2000.
Another example is Mississauga, Ontario
(a suburb of Toronto, Ontario).
Mississauga is the largest suburban municipality in all of North America, with a
population of 636,801 and a population density of 2125.1/km².
Mississauga is larger than the U.S. cities of Milwaukee, Wisconsin;
Boston, Massachusetts;
Washington DC; Nashville, Tennessee;
Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; New Orleans, Louisiana;
Las Vegas, Nevada; Cleveland, Ohio; Atlanta, Georgia; Sacramento, California;
Minneapolis, Minnesota;
Miami, Florida etc.
Mississauga also has a higher population than the city of Vancouver, British
Columbia. The five largest suburbs in North America, in
order, are Mississauga, Ontario;
Mesa, Arizona; Virginia Beach, Virginia;
Surrey, British Columbia;
and Laval, Quebec.
In one metropolitan area, the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, the largest city is
actually a suburb, namely Virginia Beach.
Although the United States Census
Bureau officially calls the area the Virginia
Beach-Norfolk-Newport News Metropolitan Statistical Area, in
keeping with its normal practice of putting the most populous city in a
metropolitan area in the lead position of its name, the naming does not
reflect the actual character of the area. Despite recent efforts by
city leaders in Virginia Beach to create a more urban environment, the
urban core of the area lies in Norfolk, which will soon
become the third-largest city in the region. Chesapeake, which is
not part of the area name but has already surpassed Newport News in
population, is growing at a rate that will probably see it also surpass
Norfolk in population well before the 2010 Census.
A socio-political movement called "New Urbanism" or "Smart Growth" is currently in
vogue in the U.S.A., Canada and northern Europe, in response to the
perceived threat of "urban sprawl". This movement
among city planners, builders, and architects
holds that denser, more city-like communities with less rigid zoning
laws and mixed-use buildings are desirable. Such communities ease
traffic, since people do not need to commute as far, and may foster a
better sense of community among residents. Some
of these communities seek to reduce car-dependency (and thus the use of
personal automobiles) wherever possible. This movement has resulted in
both the construction of new developments that embody these principles,
and renovation of areas in existing city centers for new residential
and commercial activities.
In the UK, the government is (2003) seeking to
impose minimum densities on newly approved housing schemes in parts of
southeast England. Whether any society succeeds in reducing the average
distance travelled by each citizen by means of such planning strategies
remains to be seen. The new catchphrase is 'building sustainable
communities' rather than housing estates. In England this is displacing
the now discredited notion of 'urban villages', but the credibility of
both ideas is challenged by the increasing involvement of commercial
interests in developing new hospitals, secondary schools and public
transport services. Commercial concerns tend to retard the opening of
services until a large number of residents have occupied the new
neighbourhood.
In many parts of the globe, however, suburbs are
economically poor areas, inhabited by people sometimes in real misery,
that keep at the limit of the city borders for economic or social
reasons like the impossibility of affording the (usually higher) costs
of life in the town. An example in the developed world would be the banlieues of France, which are comparable to the
inner cities of the UK and US.
In the Third World, such slum areas are often irregularly
built or managed, with individualistic, unregulated building and other
forms of social or legal disorder. It has been said that this would be
sometimes a case of spontaneous or psychological apartheid. In some cases
inhabitants just live off the waste materials produced by the city
(like, increasingly, around new African towns) and usually in such
situations suburbs and houses are roughly built, often not even in the
traditional building materials, as seen for example in the bidonvilles. Often nomads settle their camps in
suburbs. The occupiers of more industrialised or longer-lasting homes
may refer to such suburbs as "shanty towns". The favelas of Rio de Janeiro may also be
considered an example of this type of suburb.
In the illustrative case of Rome, Italy, in the 1920s and 1930s, suburbs were intentionally
created ex novo in order to give lower classes a
destination, in consideration of the actual and foreseen massive
arrival of poor people from other areas of the country. Many critics
have seen in this development pattern (that was circularly distributed
in every direction) also a quick solution to a problem of public order (keeping the
unwelcome poorest classes - together with criminals, in this way better
controlled - comfortably remote from the elegant "official" town). On
the other hand, the expected huge expansion of the town soon
effectively covered the distance from the central town, and now those
suburbs are completely engulfed by the main territory of the town, and
other newer suburbs were created at a further distance from them.
Suburbs in pop culture
Suburbs on TV
Neighbours has been
on television in Australia since 1985 and the United Kingdom from the
following year. It is set in Ramsay Street in suburban Erinsborough.
Knots Landing was
a long-running show depicting suburban life. It was set in the
fictional town of Knots Landing, California, and followed the lives of
several families who lived on the suburban cul-de-sac Seaview Circle.
The Australian show Kath & Kim
pillories the nouveau white trash of subdivisions with exaggerated
provincial accents and below-average intelligence.
Suburban life through the eyes of stay-at-home
wives and mothers is portrayed in the ABC
television series Desperate Housewives.
Many U.S. sit-coms are set in the
suburbs, including the animated Family Guy and The Simpsons.
Suburbs in pop songs
References
- Rybczynski, Witold (Nov. 7, 2005). "Suburban
Despair". Slate.
- Smith, Albert C. & Schank, Kendra
(1999). "A Grotesque Measure for Marietta". Journal of Urban
Design 4 (3).
"Suburbia" Matthew Good Band
See also
External links and references