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Suburb

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"Suburbs", "Suburbia", and "Suburban" redirect here. For other uses, see Suburbs (disambiguation), Suburbia (disambiguation), and Suburban (disambiguation).

A suburb (or suburban area or suburbia) is a commercial, mixed-use or residential area.[1][2] It can exist either as part of a city/urban area and can often have a large degree of employment.[3][4] In some metropolitan areas they exist as separate residential communities within commuting distance of a city. Suburbs might have their own political or legal jurisdiction, especially in the United States, but this is not always the case, especially in the United Kingdom where most suburbs are located within the administrative boundaries of cities.[5] In most English-speaking countries, suburban areas are defined in contrast to central or inner city areas, but in Australian English and South African English, suburb has become largely synonymous with what is called a "neighborhood" in other countries, and the term encompasses inner city areas.[citation needed]

Nassau County, Long Island (above), is emblematic of continuous sprawl in an inner suburb of New York City; contrasted with Monroe Township, New Jersey (below), characteristic of an outer suburb of New York City, with a lower population density.
A suburban neighborhood in the metropolitan area of Cologne, Germany
Männistö, a suburban neighborhood in Kuopio, Finland
RAJUK Uttara Apartment complex at Uttara, a suburb of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The Swedish suburbs of Husby/Kista/Akalla are built according to the typical city planning of the Million Programme.

In some areas, such as Australia, India, China, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, and parts of the United States, new suburbs are routinely annexed by adjacent cities due to urban sprawl. In others, such as Morocco, France, and much of the United States, many suburbs remain separate municipalities or are governed locally as part of a larger metropolitan area such as a county, district or borough. In the United States, regions beyond the suburbs are exurbs or "exurban areas", with less population density (but still more than rural areas) but linked to the metropolitan area economically, particularly by commuters.

Suburbs first emerged on a large scale in the 19th and 20th centuries as a result of improved rail and road transport, which led to an increase in commuting.[6] In general, they are less densely populated than inner city neighborhoods within the same metropolitan area, and most residents routinely commute to city centers or business districts via private vehicles or public transits; however, there are many exceptions, including industrial suburbs, planned communities and satellite cities. Suburbs tend to proliferate around cities that have an abundance of adjacent flat land.[7]

Etymology and usage

The English word is derived from the Old French subburbe, which is in turn derived from the Latin suburbium, formed from sub (meaning "under" or "below") and urbs ("city"). The first recorded usage of the term in English, was by John Wycliffe in 1380, when the form subarbis was used, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In Australia and New Zealand

 
Suburban housing in the regional city of Griffith, New South Wales

In Australia and also New Zealand, suburban areas (in the wider sense noted in the lead paragraph) have become formalised as geographic subdivisions of a city and are used by postal services in addressing. In rural areas in both countries, their equivalents are called localities (see suburbs and localities). The terms inner suburb and outer suburb are used to differentiate between the higher-density areas in proximity to the city centre (which would not be referred to as 'suburbs' in most other countries), and the lower-density suburbs on the outskirts of the urban area. The term 'middle suburbs' is also used. Inner suburbs, such as Te Aro in Wellington, Eden Terrace in Auckland, Prahran in Melbourne and Ultimo in Sydney, are usually characterised by higher density apartment housing and greater integration between commercial and residential areas.

In New Zealand, most suburbs are not legally defined, which can lead to confusion as to where they may begin and end.[8] A geospatial dataset defining suburbs for use by emergency services is developed and maintained by Fire and Emergency New Zealand and is published[9] under an open license.

In the United Kingdom and Ireland

 
Upper middle class suburban housing in Swords, Dublin, Ireland.

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the term suburb simply refers to a residential area outside the city centre, regardless of administrative boundaries.[6] Suburbs, in this sense, can range from areas that seem more like residential areas of a city proper to areas separated by open countryside from the city centre. In large cities such as London and Leeds, many suburbs are formerly separate towns and villages that have been absorbed during a city's expansion, such as Ealing, Bromley, and Guiseley. In Ireland, this can be seen in the Dublin suburban areas of Swords, Blanchardstown, and Tallaght.

In North America

In the United States and Canada, suburb can refer either to an outlying residential area of a city or town or to a separate municipality or unincorporated area outside a town or city.[citation needed]

Although a majority of Americans regard themselves as residents of suburban communities, the federal government of the United States has no formal definition for what constitutes a suburb in the United States leaving its precise meaning disputed.[10][11]

In Canada, the term may also be used in the British sense, especially as cities annex formerly outlying areas.[citation needed]

History

The history of suburbia is part of the study of urban history, which focuses on the origins, growth, diverse typologies, culture, and politics of suburbs, as well as on the gendered and family-oriented nature of suburban space.[12][13] Many people have assumed that early-20th-century suburbs were enclaves for middle-class whites, a concept that carries tremendous cultural influence yet is actually stereotypical. Some suburbs are based on a society of working-class and minority residents, many of whom want to own their own house. Meanwhile, other suburbs have instituted "explicitly racist" policies to deter people deemed as "other", a practice most common in the United States in contrast to other countries around the world.[14] Mary Corbin Sies argues that it is necessary to examine how "suburb" is defined as well as the distinction made between cities and suburbs, geography, economic circumstances, and the interaction of numerous factors that move research beyond acceptance of stereotyping and its influence on scholarly assumptions.[15]

Early history

The earliest appearance of suburbs coincided with the spread of the first urban settlements. Large walled towns tended to be the focus around which smaller villages grew up in a symbiotic relationship with the market town. The word suburbani was first employed by the Roman statesman Cicero in reference to the large villas and estates built by the wealthy patricians of Rome on the city's outskirts.

Towards the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty (until 190 AD, when Dong Zhuo razed the city) the capital, Luoyang, was mainly occupied by the emperor and important officials; the city's people mostly lived in small cities right outside Luoyang, which were suburbs in all but name.[16]

As populations grew during the Early Modern Period in Europe, towns swelled with a steady influx of people from the countryside. In some places, nearby settlements were swallowed up as the main city expanded. The peripheral areas on the outskirts of the city were generally inhabited by the very poorest.[17]

Origins of the modern suburb

Due to the rapid migration of the rural poor to the industrializing cities of England in the late 18th century, a trend in the opposite direction began to develop, whereby newly rich members of the middle classes began to purchase estates and villas on the outskirts of London. This trend accelerated through the 19th century, especially in cities like London and Birmingham that were growing rapidly, and the first suburban districts sprung up around the city centres to accommodate those who wanted to escape the squalid conditions of the industrial towns. Initially, such growth came along rail lines in the form of ribbon developments, as suburban residents could commute via train into the city centre for work. In Australia, where Melbourne would soon become the second-largest city in the British Empire,[18] the distinctively Australasian suburb, with its loosely aggregated quarter-acre sections, developed in the 1850s[19] and eventually became a component of the Australian Dream.

 
The cover of the Metro-Land guide published in 1921

Toward the end of the century, with the development of public transit systems such as the underground railways, trams and buses, it became possible for the majority of a city's population to reside outside the city and to commute into the center for work.[17]

By the mid-19th century, the first major suburban areas were springing up around London as the city (then the largest in the world) became more overcrowded and unsanitary. A major catalyst for suburban growth was the opening of the Metropolitan Railway in the 1860s. The line later joined the capital's financial heart in the City to what were to become the suburbs of Middlesex.[20] The line reached Harrow in 1880.

Unlike other railway companies, which were required to dispose of surplus land, London's Met was allowed to retain such land that it believed was necessary for future railway use.[note 1] Initially, the surplus land was managed by the Land Committee,[22] and, from the 1880s, the land was developed and sold to domestic buyers in places like Willesden Park Estate, Cecil Park, near Pinner and at Wembley Park.

In 1912 it was suggested[by whom?] that a specially formed company should take over from the Surplus Lands Committee and develop suburban estates near the railway.[23] However, World War I (1914–1918) delayed these plans until 1919, when, with the expectation of a postwar housing-boom,[24] Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Limited (MRCE) formed. MRCE went on to develop estates at Kingsbury Garden Village near Neasden, Wembley Park, Cecil Park and Grange Estate at Pinner and the Cedars Estate at Rickmansworth and to found places such as Harrow Garden Village.[24][25]

The Met's marketing department coined the term "Metro-land" in 1915 when the Guide to the Extension Line became the Metro-land guide, priced at 1d. This promoted the land served by the Met for the walker, visitor and later the house-hunter.[23] Published annually until 1932 (the last full year of independence for the Met), the guide extolled the benefits of "The good air of the Chilterns", using language such as "Each lover of Metroland may well have his own favourite wood beech and coppice — all tremulous green loveliness in Spring and russet and gold in October".[26] The dream as promoted involved a modern home in beautiful countryside with a fast railway-service to central London.[27] By 1915 people from across London had flocked to live the new suburban dream in large newly built areas across north-west London.[28]

Interwar suburban expansion in England

Suburbanisation in the interwar period was heavily influenced by the garden city movement of Ebenezer Howard and the creation of the first garden suburbs at the turn of the 20th century.[29] The first garden suburb was developed through the efforts of social reformer Henrietta Barnett and her husband; inspired by Ebenezer Howard and the model housing development movement (then exemplified by Letchworth garden city), as well as the desire to protect part of Hampstead Heath from development, they established trusts in 1904 which bought 243 acres of land along the newly opened Northern line extension to Golders Green and created the Hampstead Garden Suburb. The suburb attracted the talents of architects including Raymond Unwin and Sir Edwin Lutyens, and it ultimately grew to encompass over 800 acres.[30]

 
Mock Tudor semi-detached cottages, built c. 1870

During the First World War the Tudor Walters Committee was commissioned to make recommendations for the post war reconstruction and housebuilding. In part, this was a response to the shocking lack of fitness amongst many recruits during World War One, attributed to poor living conditions; a belief summed up in a housing poster of the period "you cannot expect to get an A1 population out of C3 homes" – referring to military fitness classifications of the period.

The committee's report of 1917 was taken up by the government, which passed the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919, also known as the Addison Act after Dr. Christopher Addison, the then Minister for Housing. The Act allowed for the building of large new housing estates in the suburbs after the First World War,[31] and marked the start of a long 20th century tradition of state-owned housing, which would later evolve into council estates.

The Report also legislated on the required, minimum standards necessary for further suburban construction; this included regulation on the maximum housing density and their arrangement and it even made recommendations on the ideal number of bedrooms and other rooms per house. Although the semi-detached house was first designed by the Shaws (a father and son architectural partnership) in the 19th century, it was during the suburban housing boom of the interwar period that the design first proliferated as a suburban icon, being preferred by middle-class home owners to the smaller terraced houses.[32] The design of many of these houses, highly characteristic of the era, was heavily influenced by the Art Deco movement, taking influence from Tudor Revival, chalet style, and even ship design.

Within just a decade suburbs dramatically increased in size. Harrow Weald went from just 1,500 to over 10,000 while Pinner jumped from 3,000 to over 20,000. During the 1930s, over 4 million new suburban houses were built, the 'suburban revolution' had made England the most heavily suburbanized country in the world, by a considerable margin.[6]


Bangladesh

Bangladesh has multiple suburbs, Uttara & Ashulia to name a few. However, most suburbs in Dhaka are different than the ones in Europe & Americas. Most suburbs in Bangladesh are filled with high rise buildings, paddy fields, and farms, and are designed more like rural villages.

North America

 
View of housing development in Richfield, Minnesota, in 1954
 
Suburban Santa Fe, New Mexico
 
Suburban Dallas, Texas, seen in the foreground

Boston and New York spawned the first major suburbs. The streetcar lines in Boston and the rail lines in Manhattan made daily commutes possible.[33] No metropolitan area in the world was as well served by railroad commuter lines at the turn of the twentieth century as New York, and it was the rail lines to Westchester from the Grand Central Terminal commuter hub that enabled its development. Westchester's true importance in the history of American suburbanization derives from the upper-middle class development of villages including Scarsdale, New Rochelle and Rye serving thousands of businessmen and executives from Manhattan.[34]

Post-war suburban expansion

The suburban population in North America exploded during the post-World War II economic expansion. Returning veterans wishing to start a settled life moved in masses to the suburbs. Levittown developed as a major prototype of mass-produced housing. Due to the influx of people in these suburban areas, the amount of shopping centers began to increase as suburban America took shape. These malls helped supply goods and services to the growing urban population. Shopping for different goods and services in one central location without having to travel to multiple locations, helped to keep shopping centers a component of these newly designed suburbs which were booming in population. The television helped contribute to the rise of shopping centers due to the increased advertisement on television in addition to a desire to have products shown in suburban life in various television programs. Another factor that led to the rise of these shopping centers was the building of many highways. The Highway Act of 1956 helped to fund the building of 64,000 kilometers across the nation by having $26 thousand-million to use, which helped to link many more to these shopping centers with ease.[35] These newly built shopping centers, which were often large buildings full of multiple stores, and services, were being used for more than shopping, but as a place of leisure and a meeting point for those who lived within suburban America at this time. These centers thrived offering goods and services to the growing populations in suburban America. In 1957, 940 Shopping centers were built and this number more than doubled by 1960 to keep up with the demand of these densely populated areas.[36]

Housing

 
Terraced houses in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, an inner-ring suburb of Philadelphia.
 
A suburban neighborhood of tract housing within the city of Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States; culs-de-sac are hallmarks of suburban planning.

Very little housing had been built during the Great Depression and World War II, except for emergency quarters near war industries. Overcrowded and inadequate apartments was the common condition. Some suburbs had developed around large cities where there was rail transportation to the jobs downtown. However, the real growth in suburbia depended on the availability of automobiles, highways, and inexpensive housing. The population had grown, and the stock of family savings had accumulated the money for down payments, automobiles and appliances. The product was a great housing boom. Whereas, an average of 316,000 new housing non-farm units should have been constructed 1930s through 1945, there were 1,450,000 annually from 1946 through 1955.[37] The G.I. Bill guaranteed low cost loans for veterans, with very low down payments, and low interest rates. With 16 million eligible veterans, the opportunity to buy a house was suddenly at hand. In 1947 alone, 540,000 veterans bought one; their average price was $7300. The construction industry kept prices low by standardization – for example standardizing sizes for kitchen cabinets, refrigerators and stoves, allowed for mass production of kitchen furnishings. Developers purchased empty land just outside the city, installed tract houses based on a handful of designs, and provided streets and utilities, or local public officials race to build schools.[38] The most famous development was Levittown, in Long Island just east of New York City. It offered a new house for $1000 down, and $70 a month; it featured three bedrooms, fireplace, gas range and gas furnace, and a landscaped lot of 75 by 100 feet, all for a total price of $10,000. Veterans could get one with a much lower down payment.[39]

At the same time, African Americans were rapidly moving north and west for better jobs and educational opportunities than were available to them in the segregated South. Their arrival in Northern and Western cities en masse, in addition to being followed by race riots in several large cities such as Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., further stimulated white suburban migration. The growth of the suburbs was facilitated by the development of zoning laws, redlining and numerous innovations in transport. The policy of redlining and other discriminatory measures built into federal housing policy furthered the racial segregation of postwar America for example by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods. The government's efforts were primarily designed to provide housing to white, middle-class or lower-middle-class families. African-Americans and other people of color largely remained concentrated within decaying cores of urban poverty.[40]

After World War II, availability of FHA loans stimulated a housing boom in American suburbs. In the older cities of the northeast U.S., streetcar 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", 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.

Economic growth in the United States encouraged the suburbanization of American cities that required massive investments for the new infrastructure and homes. Consumer patterns were also shifting at this time, as purchasing power was becoming stronger and more accessible to a wider range of families. Suburban houses also brought about needs for products that were not needed in urban neighborhoods, such as lawnmowers and automobiles. During this time commercial shopping malls were being developed near suburbs to satisfy consumers' needs and their car–dependent lifestyle.[41]

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 central city. For example, the lot size for a residence in Chicago is usually 125 feet (38 m) deep,[42] while the width can vary from 14 feet (4.3 m) wide for a row house to 45 feet (14 m) wide for a large stand–alone house.[citation needed] In the suburbs, where stand–alone houses are the rule, lots may be 85 feet (26 m) wide by 115 feet (35 m) deep, as in the Chicago suburb of Naperville.[citation needed] Manufacturing and commercial buildings were segregated in other areas of the city.

Alongside suburbanization, many companies began locating their offices and other facilities in the outer areas of the cities, which resulted in the increased density of older suburbs and 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.[43]

In the U.S., 1950 was the first year that more people lived in suburbs than elsewhere.[44] In the U.S, 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 center.

Australia and New Zealand

References

  1. ↑ "Strip Mall Plans".
  2. ↑ "Types of Zoning".
  3. ↑ "Why more people are commuting from cities to suburbs". Us.jll.com. 25 June 2018.
  4. ↑ "Suburbs (Continue to) Dominate Jobs and Job Growth". Newgeography.com. Retrieved 12 December 2021.
  5. ↑ Caves, R. W. (2004). Encyclopedia of the City. Routledge. p. 640. ISBN 9780415252256.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Hollow, Matthew (2011). "Suburban Ideals on England's Interwar Council Estates". Journal of the Garden History Society. Retrieved 29 December 2012.
  7. ↑ The Fractured Metropolis: Improving the New City, Restoring the Old City, Reshaping the Region by Jonathan Barnett, via Google Books.
  8. ↑ "Suburb boundaries – a Official Information Act request to Christchurch City Council". FYI. 30 March 2018. Archived from the original on 20 April 2018. Retrieved 20 April 2018.
  9. ↑ "Fire and Emergency NZ Localities - Fire and Emergency NZ | | GIS Data Map Mapping | LINZ Data Service". data.linz.govt.nz. Retrieved 21 September 2021.
  10. ↑ "How to Tell If You Live in the Suburbs".
  11. ↑ "According to the Federal Government, the Suburbs Don't Exist".
  12. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named cite crabgrass
  13. ↑ Ruth McManus, and Philip J. Ethington (2007). "Suburbs in transition: new approaches to suburban history". Urban History. 34 (2): 317–337. doi:10.1017/S096392680700466X. S2CID 146703204.
  14. ↑ Adams, L. J. (1 September 2006). "Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism". Journal of American History. 93 (2): 601–602. doi:10.2307/4486372. ISSN 0021-8723. JSTOR 4486372.
  15. ↑ Mary Corbin Sies (2001). "North American Suburbs, 1880–1950". Journal of Urban History. 27 (3): 313–46. doi:10.1177/009614420102700304. S2CID 144947126.
  16. ↑ "Luoyang and the Northern Army". Scholars of Shen Zhou.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 "History of Suburbs". Retrieved 17 December 2012.
  18. ↑ Goodman, Robin; Buxton, Michael; Moloney, Susie (2016). "The early development of Melbourne". Planning Melbourne: Lessons for a Sustainable City. CSIRO Publishing. ISBN 9780643104747. Retrieved 16 June 2019. By 1890, Melbourne was the second-largest city in the British Empire and one of the world's richest.
  19. ↑ Gilbert, Alan (25 July 1989). "The Roots of Australian Anti-Suburbanism". In Goldberg, Samuels Louis; Smith, Francis Barrymore (eds.). Australian Cultural History (reprint ed.). Cambridge: CUP Archive (published 1988). p. 36. ISBN 9780521356510. Retrieved 26 March 2021. [...] there has been surprising continuity since the infancy of Australian suburbia in the 1850s in the attitudes, values and motives underlying suburbanization.
  20. ↑ Edwards, Dennis; Pigram, Ron (1988). The Golden Years of the Metropolitan Railway and the Metro-land Dream. Bloomsbury. p. 32. ISBN 1-870630-11-4.
  21. ↑ Jackson 1986, p. 134.
  22. ↑ Jackson 1986, pp. 134, 137.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Jackson 1986, p. 240.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Green 1987, p. 43.
  25. ↑ Jackson 1986, pp. 241–242.
  26. ↑ Rowley 2006, pp. 206, 207.
  27. ↑ Green 2004, introduction.
  28. ↑ "History of London Metro-Land and London's Suburbs". History.co.uk. Archived from the original on 12 July 2013. Retrieved 2 January 2018.
  29. ↑ Clapson, Mark (2000). "The suburban aspiration in England since 1919". Contemporary British History. 14: 151–174. doi:10.1080/13619460008581576. S2CID 143590157.
  30. ↑ "The History of the Suburb". Hgstrust.org. Retrieved 2 January 2018.
  31. ↑ "Outcomes of the War: Britain". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2 January 2018.
  32. ↑ Lofthouse, Pamela (2012). "The Development of English Semi-detached Dwellings During the Nineteenth Century". Papers from the Institute of Archaeology. 22: 83–98. doi:10.5334/pia.404.
  33. ↑ Ward David (1964). "A Comparative Historical Geography of Streetcar Suburbs in Boston, Massachusetts and Leeds, England: 1850–1920". Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 54 (4): 477–489. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.1964.tb01779.x.
  34. ↑ Roger G. Panetta, Westchester: the American suburb (2006)
  35. ↑ "The Postwar Economy: 1945-1960 < Postwar America < History 1994 < American History From Revolution To Reconstruction and beyond". Let.rug.nl. Retrieved 12 December 2021.
  36. ↑ Cohen, Lizabeth (2003). A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. Vintage Books. pp. Chapter 6.
  37. ↑ U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (1976) series H-156
  38. ↑ Joseph Goulden, The Best Years, 1945–1950 (1976) pp 135–39.
  39. ↑ Barbara Mae Kelly, Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown (SUNY Press, 1993).
  40. ↑ Rothstein, Richard: The Color of Law. A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Liveright, 2017.
  41. ↑ Beauregard, Robert A. When America Became Suburban. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
  42. ↑ "Zoning Requirements for Standard Lot in RS3 District". 47th Ward Public Service website. Archived from the original on 14 August 2014. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  43. ↑ Garden Cities of To-Morrow. Library.cornell.edu. Retrieved on 22 November 2011.
  44. ↑ England, Robert E. and David R. Morgan. Managing Urban America, 1979.


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