Author: Paula Hamilton
Publisher: UTS ePRESS
ISBN: 1863654321
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
The identity of suburbia, so far as it can be ascribed one, is shifting and insecure, a borderline and liminal space. Dominant stereotypes have listed it as ‘on the margins’ beyond edges of cultural sophistication and tradition’ and the areas that make up ‘sprawl’. But in the twenty-first century this static view has to be modified. As is evident from this collection, suburban dwellers themselves have redefined themselves. This collection explores the range and complexity of twenty-first century responses to city suburbs, predominantly in Sydney. It draws on a range of approaches – from history to creative non-fiction and multi-media.
Author: Ashley Hales
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 083087397X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 198
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Book Description
Suburban life—including tract homes, strip malls, commuter culture—shapes our desires. More than half of Americans live in the suburbs. Ashley Hales writes that for many Christians, however: "The suburbs are ignored ('Your place doesn't matter, we're all going to heaven anyway'), denigrated and demeaned ('You're selfish if you live in a suburb; you only care about your own safety and advancement'), or seen as a cop-out from a faithful Christian life ('If you really loved God, you'd move to Africa or work in an impoverished area'). In everything from books to Hollywood jokes, the suburbs aren't supposed to be good for our souls." What does it look like to live a full Christian life in the suburbs? Suburbs reflect our good, God-given desire for a place to call home. And suburbs also reflect our own brokenness. This book is an invitation to look deeply into your soul as a suburbanite and discover what it means to live holy there.
Author: Ernest McGowen III
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700624171
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Despite decades of progress, African Americans living in largely white affluent suburbs still often find themselves caught between the two worlds of race and class. High economic status has afforded them considerable employment opportunities and political resources—but not necessarily neighbors, coworkers, or local candidates or office holders who share or even understand their concerns. How does such an environment affect the political behavior of African Americans who have strong racial identifications and policy preferences? This is the question Ernest B. McGowen III asks in African Americans in White Suburbia. With Philadelphia as his primary case, McGowen uses a combination of surveys to understand the attitudes of affluent suburban African Americans, compare these attitudes to those of their white neighbors, and to African Americans in the city and so-called “black ring” suburbs. This detailed study—which ranges from participation in black churches and other institutions to attitudes towards government and affirmative action—reveals that suburban African Americans feel their minority status acutely. As a result, they tend to seek out more agreeable networks that reinforce their racial identity, such as churches, fraternal organizations, and charities in black neighborhoods they've left behind. Though Philadelphia is McGowen's focus, broader surveys suggest that his findings reflect a nation-wide pattern. Arriving at a moment of great controversy over racial disparities and division, his timely study offers invaluable insight into the complex nexus of race and class in America.
Author: Roger Webster
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800735146
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
During the last few decades suburbia has grown enormously and become a phenomenon attracting the attention of scholars as well as practitioners by whom it is seen as an increasingly significant and complex area of modern life. The essays in this volume consider a range of representations of suburban life from the late nineteenth century to the present day, including fiction, film, and popular music, drawn from America and Australia as well as Britain. They explore and challenge traditional views of suburbia so that, rather than a location of conformity and stereotypicality, it can be viewed as a site of social conflict, division, and ambiguity as well as a source of significant creativity across a range of cultural texts. The volume takes a thematic approach, considering the rise of suburbia, imagined and real suburbias, alternative suburbias: all of the essays have a strong historical dimension and the overall approach is characterized by interdisciplinarity.
Author: Rupa Huq
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1780932596
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
We all know what suburbia is, indeed the majority of us live in it. Yet, despite this ubituity, with no formal definition of the contept, the suburbs have developed in our collective imagination through representations in popular culture, from Terry and June to Desparate Housewives. Rupa Huq examines how suburbia has been depicted in novels, cinema, popular music and on television, charting changing trends both in the suburbs and popular media consumption and production. She looks at the differences in defining suburbia in the US and UK and how characteristics associated with it have shifted in meaning and form.
Author: Nicholas A. Phelps
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262029839
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
How the decentralized, automobile-oriented, and fuel-consuming model of American suburban development might change. In the years after World War II, a distinctly American model for suburban development emerged. The expansive rings of outer suburbs that formed around major cities were decentralized and automobile oriented, an embodiment of America's postwar mass-production, mass-consumption economy. But alternate models for suburbia, including “transit-oriented development,” “smart growth,” and “New Urbanism,” have inspired critiques of suburbanization and experiments in post-suburban ways of living. In Sequel to Suburbia, Nicholas Phelps considers the possible post-suburban future, offering historical and theoretical context as well as case studies of transforming communities. Phelps first locates these outer suburban rings within wider metropolitan spaces, describes the suburbs as a “spatial fix” for the postwar capitalist economy, and examines the political and governmental obstacles to reworking suburban space. He then presents three glimpses of post-suburban America, looking at Kendall-Dadeland (in Miami-Dade County, Florida), Tysons Corner (in Fairfax County, Virginia), and Schaumburg, Illinois (near Chicago). He shows Kendall-Dadeland to be an isolated New Urbanism success; describes the re-planning of Tysons Corner to include a retrofitted central downtown area; and examines Schaumburg's position as a regional capital for Chicago's northwest suburbs. As these cases show, the reworking of suburban space and the accompanying political process will not be left to a small group of architects, planners, and politicians. Post-suburban politics will have to command the approval of the residents of suburbia.
Author: Dolores Hayden
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307515265
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
A lively and provocative history of the contested landscapes where the majority of Americans now live. From rustic cottages reached by steamboat to big box stores at the exit ramps of eight-lane highways, Dolores Hayden defines seven eras of suburban development since 1820. An urban historian and architect, she portrays housewives and politicians as well as designers and builders making the decisions that have generated America’s diverse suburbs. Residents have sought home, nature, and community in suburbia. Developers have cherished different dreams, seeking profit from economies of scale and increased suburban densities, while lobbying local and federal government to reduce the risk of real estate speculation. Encompassing environmental controversies as well as the complexities of race, gender, and class, Hayden’s fascinating account will forever alter how we think about the communities we build and inhabit.
Author: Leigh Gallagher
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1591846978
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
Originally published in hardcover in 2013.
Author: MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1616896701
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 782
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Book Description
Infinite Suburbia is the culmination of the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism's yearlong study of the future of suburban development. Extensive research, an exhibition, and a conference at MIT's Media Lab, this groundbreaking collection presents fifty-two essays by seventy-four authors from twenty different fields, including, but not limited to, design, architecture, landscape, planning, history, demographics, social justice, familial trends, policy, energy, mobility, health, environment, economics, and applied and future technologies. This exhaustive compilation is richly illustrated with a wealth of photography, aerial drone shots, drawings, plans, diagrams, charts, maps, and archival materials, making it the definitive statement on suburbia at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Author: Melanie Smicek
Publisher: Anchor Academic Publishing (aap_verlag)
ISBN: 3954893215
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 72
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Book Description
The suburban landscape is inseparable from American culture. Suburbia does not only relate to the geographical concept, but also describes a cultural space incorporating people’s hopes for a safe and prosperous life. Suburbia marks a dynamic ideological space constantly influenced and recreated by both the events of everyday life and artistic discourse. Fictional texts do not merely represent suburbia, but also have a decisive role in the shaping of suburban spaces. The widely held idealized image of suburbia evolved in the 1950s. Today, reality deviates from the concept of suburbs projected back then, due to e.g. high divorce rates and an increase of crime. Nevertheless, the nostalgic view of the suburbs as the “Promised Land" has survived. Postwar critics object to this perception, considering the suburbs rather as depressing landscapes of mass-consumption, conformity and alienation. This book exemplifies the dualistic representation of suburbs in contemporary American cinema by analyzing Pleasantville, The Truman Show and American Beauty. It examines how utopian concepts of suburbia are created culturally and psychologically in the films, and how the underlying anxieties of the suburban experience, visualized by the dystopian narratives, challenge this ideal.
