Production of houses, and the rise of automobiles helped great an alternative to urban living. His class is about an hour. Today we are talking about the suburbs. How many of you grew up in the suburbs . Almost all of you. What kind of activities would you use to describe the suburbs . Proud. Proud okay. Perhaps an unusual choice. Like being from nowhere. Friss good. Other descriptions, characterizations . Safe. A utopia. Friss a utopia. Family oriented. Friss family oriented. Nicholas were you gonna Say Something . I love this. Good. Some people utopia. Maybe this is different generation. I thought people were going to say lame and boring, which is why i picked this very lame typeface. I thought we would start with an image of contemporary suburbia. This is an engagement shoot. A young couple, taken to the suburban street for their engagement. People get married, they take engagement photos. This went around the internet for a while and lots of people, including myself, laughed at it. What is so weird about that . Why does this image what is the disconnect . You would think it should be a scenic place like the woods, not a neighborhood. Scenic or natural. Usually has a romantic feel, not random cars everywhere. Romantic. People might take it as them to nature, the city where it seems exciting, young couples, we do not usually associate with suburbia. But, what we think about suburbia has changed over time. Today we will spend the class thinking about how the notion of a suburb, and it is a notion, what we think about suburbs have changed over time. It depends where we are talking about and who we are asking. We will think about suburbs as a historical construct and what they mean. But i think sboboy, maybe nicolas, said it is kind of nowhere. But by definition, it is relative. Suburbs only exist, the word suburb is beneath the city. It is related to the city. It is seen as a nowhere land between the city and and rural. I was thinking about this the other day. We think about culture as maybe being urban or rural. Jazz music, hiphop. Those are historically very urban forms of art. And maybe Country Music or folk art, we think of Rural America as having a culture that is very obvious to us, when we would recognize. Having a culture thats very obvious twice. When we would recognize. It is suburban music . Suburban art . Suburban culture. These kinds of things it can be hard to identify. And people that are from the suburbs maybe not drew who grew up there, people are often from suburbs. I say this because at the beginning of the semester i ask people where they are from, and somebody will say baltimore. And someone will say baltimore. And then ill say oh i know baltimore would neighborhood . And it turns out there come from some town at 25 miles outside of baltimore. Theyre 8 Million People who live in new york city, but probably 30 or 40 Million People if you ask where they live will say new york. No one wants to admit they are from new jersey i guess. They do occupy this strange space. So we are going to go back all the way in time, were going to focus on the 20th century, and the mid20th century in particular. We will do some early pretty history to think about how suburbs came to be. And much of even though the word existed in the 14th idea the concept of suburb really began in the 19th century. Particularly in the second half of the 19th century. It has to do with cities cities become associated with chaos, disorder and poor health. As a consequence people are seeking the tonics of nature, as a kind of prescription to better health. People are wanting to escape the city. And one of the ways you are able to do that before they both suburbs, are with urban parks. Here is an example from central part. Construction begins just before the civil war. And the idea was if you cant live outside the city, at least you can get a taste of the country. They may live in these kind of 30 crowded city, but they could have the benefit of fresh air, scenery, flora and fauna mulch most of which is important. And very natural. And wealthy folks could enjoy the curved paths that stood in stark contrast to the grid like streets of manhattan as the 19th century continues and cities become larger and more industrialized, the notion that cities or diseased, filth ridden perverted places to live, only grows. In fact, some doctors begin to coin medical conditions. One is new york ideas, that affects people live in new york, we come more bid and disturbed. And disturbed by virtue of just living in the crowded city, the kickoff any and the noise, and all the crowded people. Late in the 19th century, there are a lot of remedies for this new parks, people fleeing the city, maybe farther than central park. And maybe other parks or natural landmarks. A lot of people are writing bicycles. As a way to escape the city. And have some sense of nature outside. So the suburban kind of style takes off after the civil war. People began to emphasize having a detached home, a cottage style house, having fresh air, accessible space, a yard, a garden. And some of you mention this notion of suburbs being safe and family oriented. That idea begins to take off in popularity as well. We talked about earlier in the class harriet, the famous author. Her sister becomes one of the leading proponents of suburb in terms of thinking about the spaces as ideals for family. To raise a family, and to encourage a kind of domestic feminism. And the suburban ecstatic is seen a number of ways. Well see one example here in new bergh new york. This house was designed by calibrate vox, who is one of the two people that design central park. Theres a lot of overlapping themes here. Is a big house, 5000 square feet, one bathroom. And the idea thats epitomized here, and it also in a lot of suburban architecture was to emphasize nature, and the relationship to nature. So they built this house for mr. Warren who was the treasury of some railroad company. The treasurer of some railroad company. They built it purposefully right on the hudson river. To take advantage of this beautiful view, the natural splendor. And situated the house in a way that it was opening up to the river view. The big parlor rooms they could see the water, theres a big porch on the back where they assumed that the residents would spend their summer enjoying the breeze, and taking in the breathtaking view. You can also see of course, there is a garden, a yard emphasizing the space that could be had in the suburbs. A much bigger house than most people were living in the city, and one that would blend in with nature. He was very concerned about not having the house stick out so much, even though it was large. Youll notice the front of the house has these gables that make the house appear very tall. In the rear the gables are not here but instead theres a hipped roof to de emphasize the vertical itty. Theres also a lot of ornamentation. The idea is these house could express the emotions of the owners. These window hoods on the first floor windows. The elaborate trim along out, ay to have these ornamental flourishes. It was going to be part of this suburban style architecture. Which was very much intended for wealthier folks, who could escape the suburbs. This is just kind of interesting to see what the house looks like today. This was a couple of years ago. Nice looking house. He was on the market for 285,000 dollars. Pretty cheap. But it a kind of signal of this earlier impressive eraer but while some people like vox were built in the suburban cottage style houses, others were thinking about creating the first suburban plan communities. A couple of examples, one, Llewellyn Park in new jersey which sat just about 12 miles outside of new york city. And the other riverside in illinois. Which was pretty close, maybe nine miles from chicago. The idea here was not to create these nice cottage style homes, with their own yard and garden, but to create an entire community, where similar kinds of folk could come and develop these suburban developments. E these planned communities you can see in both the plans here, again they are emphasizing nature, the roads are all curved, they bring in lots of laura and fauna. In Llewellyn Park, the lot sizes are quite large. They do not allow fences. The idea that there was going to be this shared open space, where any individual owner kid roam in this big public nature ground. And, they are kind of interesting examples for several reasons. One of which you will notice in the Llewellyn Park theres a gatehouse. Which they used to promote the idea of privacy, security. Hes kind of fundamental features of suburban life that we think of today. But also of course to suggest exclusivity. And these were in fact Country Homes for very wealthy city people. Later in the 19th century we have the origins of street suburbs, that have houses that are often a little less elaborate. But interesting nonetheless. Streetcars become popularized in the late 19th century, because they become electrified and are able to travel much faster. This is an image of pittsburgh, you could see all of the bridges between pittsburgh, crossing the rivers around it. These bridges are not carrying automobiles, but pedestrians, railroads. Primarily streetcars. All around pittsburgh, new suburban street car suburbs as they call them our developing. Some suburbs like tony hill where businessmen could live, more in these bullet places but could get to the city very easily. We think of problem suburbs primarily of course as residential. They are also industrial suburbs. And homestead pennsylvania, which was about seven miles outside of pittsburgh is an example of one of these industrial suburbs. And a streetcar suburbs, that is connected to pittsburgh via this bridge that was directed in 1895. This is not a zoomed in look here, well when you find striking about this particular suburb, how does it maybe look unusual. Greg . Unlike the other ones the streets are straight and theres no attempt to incorporate nature. Good. Theres a wrecked a linear or linear street pattern, if you notice, they often follow the railroad tracks. Or streetcars tracks, where development is following transportation. Theres factories close to the suburbs too. Theres a great deal of industry here, this is the homestead steel which was purchased by Andrew Carney guy, becomes infamous for a labor strike. This is a center of industry. It kind of becomes a company town, where more than half of the People Living here eventually work for the steele company. We are not gonna spend so much time thinking about these kind of suburbs, its important to remember that manufacturing often does move to the fringes of the cities, it is all kinds of different suburbs. I want to talk about some of the things that precipitate, the modern suburban movement in the late 19 fifties. Some of that stems from the new deal policies that we talked about earlier, and in particular, the creation of the homeowners loan corporation. A new deal, byproduct that was trying to help people afford homes. As we discussed a couple of weeks back, the Great Depression of course produced tremendous homelessness foreclosures, etc. Part of the new deal wanted to do was to create a boom in the Construction Industry and provide homes for people who needed them. So this was an effort to provide mortgages for people. In the 19th century, most buyers either built their house, or they paid cash for. And mortgages were justome a th, but theyre often very short term. You have to refinance, so they promoted a longer term mortgage, with their for a lower monthly payment. One of the interesting things about the age olc is, they did not want to give out loans that werent going to be paid back. So they had a very intricate process of assessing neighborhoods. Values, they dont want to give loans to neighborhoods that they thought would be in decline. So they created a very detailed system where individual assessors would go to a neighborhood, they would look at the kind of housing. They would look at how old the housing is, whether its in good shape. To try and determine if it was a really good neighborhood that would hold its value, or a neighborhood that was on decline. They made these maps with colors and letters, to the no a where the best neighborhoods, be c andy but as we see from this map from richmond, virginia, the most salient feature in the assessors reports had to do with race. And in this case, white neighborhoods tended to be shaded in green or blue, which was the highest ratings. And if a neighborhood was populated heavily by africanamericans, it was almost always received a d, or red rating. That was certainly the case in this neighborhood we we will look at in a minute. Which today is randolph. It had an effect on neighboring neighborhoods. You can see just to the side of this neighborhood is a yellow grouping, that is currently bird park in richmond. The reports for this neighborhood said it would have been higher, would have gotten a blue rating, a b rating, but was downgraded because it is next to an africanamerican neighborhood. And there is a park on this side of the see for neighborhood. So, africanamericans are walking through this neighborhood. Thereby, supposedly, devaluing. When the assessors wrote reports like this, in other neighborhoods they included all sorts of detailed information. Maybe you cannot see, but under inhabitants, it would often say salaried workers, managerial class, to define the kind of people that worked there, as a way to understand how much money they made, as a way to understand if this neighborhood would become prosperous or maintain itself. But in neighborhoods dominated by africanamericans, the assessor usually just listed negro and that was enough to designate a red designation. And then there was the term redlining, discriminating against groups by withholding government services, etc. There is been some debate about how much of these ratings mattered in terms of lending practices. But there is no doubt there is certainly a sign of how new deal benefits were being meted out disproportionately. It is perhaps not also a surprise there is a correlation between these maps and poverty rates today. This is an overlay, a map of the original holc map from 1937. The areas shaded in red underneath it show a 20 or more poverty rate. Perhaps the gomenvem was good at predicting the future and hes neighborhoods were really in decline. Or more likely, the government helped cement the fate of these neighborhoods. So what does it have to do with suburbanization . You notice the areas in red in richmond are at the center, the core of the city. That was often the case. This is a map of chicago. Another from cleveland. And finally, in oakland. All of se 1940, or 1937. You notice the red is that the city center, the core of the city. And so the government started to promote by giving loans and on incentivizing in other ways, development at the fringes of the city. Which happened at the expense of the city center. It also began the process of associating inner cities, city centers, as the neighborhoods of decline. And similarly, that those neighborhoods of decline where the neighborhoods in which africanamericans disproportionately lived. And these ideas would be become linked in a way that was would be hard to untangle for a very long time. Following up on the homeownershome ownersloan corporation, a bigger and more important new deal association, the fha, becomes a huge part of the postwar suburban boom that incentivizes suburban building by making home loans much more affordable. And goes even further than the holc in ensuring private loans that will provide very longterm loans, with very little down payments. Often less than 10 was needed. This similarly operated in a way the promoted discrimination. The fha was more likely to ensure new Housing Development rather than reconstructing or rehabilitating old development, which meant new housing was likely to be built outside the cities. They were more likely to insure mortgages for singlefamily houses, the kino would be very popular in suburbs. And appallingly, many that they subsidize, they promoted the idea of restricted covenant. Agreements that the suburbanites then moved into these neighborhoods would be held to, that made sure they would never sell their house to somebody that was not white. Excluding very explicitly africanamericans. These covenants would eventually be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1948 in shelley versus kramer. But discrimination managed to continue in a variety of other ways. These programs are in place before the war. But once the war begins to die down, soldiers are returning home, the g. I. Bill is enabling economic growth. We have postwar, suburban boom of that follows world war ii. During the war, towards the end of the war in 1944, there were about 144,000 new houses built in a single year. By 1950, there would be roughly 2 million houses built in that exact year. By 1950, the rate of suburban growth was more than 10 times that the rate of the city center. These new suburbs were often much less dense. Often the houses looked very similar, and so did the people. The most famous and largest example of the postwar suburbs was in levittown in long island, 25 miles east of new york city. Where Abraham Levitt and it is his two sons by 2000 acres a potato farm in 1946. And eventually build 70,000 houses. 17,000 houses. And do so in a way that is reminiscent of mass production. As you can see here. Nonunionized workers would go from house to house and do the same task,oftentimes times very minute, over and over again. They really helped revolutionize the building process. As you can see from this aerial image, they had precut mber that came from the levitt farms. They made these call cry creek concrete slabs and dump the material out and they would quickly build a house. They were able to build a house at a rate exceeding 150 over. A week the result is that the houses were very affordable because they were built so quickly. The earliest model sold for 7,900. It is hard to do economic comparisons to today. But it would probably be Something Like 85, 000, 90,000 in todays money. It became very affordable for people in the middle class. People start moving in in 1947 to houses that look like this. This is one that is still standing, but the original cape cod style and floor plan. What do you make of this particular house, compared to other suburban houses . What is interesting . Good, it is one floor. It is very basic, it is simple, compact. Good. These cape codstyle houses were only 750 square feet. They only had one bathroom, they were two bedrooms. These seem pretty small to us and our suburbs today. But at the time, it seemed pretty spacious. And roomy. And had a lot of exciting features for people. Most notably, it was your own house. It was detached, it was separate, you had a yard. The house conveyed a sense of family. There were very few private spaces. Instead of formal dining rooms, there was a public, much more open kitchen, that was designed so mothers working in the kitchen could look out the front window and watch their children playing in the front lawn. There is no porch, which is often seen as the kind of connection to the public, the what makes the link between the public street and the private house. People hanging out on their porch, a sense of community, things suburbs would be ridiculed as lacking later on. There were no stereotypically male spaces. There is no dan, no libraries, billiard rooms. In fact, these suburban houses reflect a new male domesticity were men were expected to spend time with their family instead of just hanging out with other male friends. Speaking of the community, there are of course, no bars or solutions, saloons. At first there were no swimming pools, parks, or playgrounds. This was really all about the house. Eventually those things are built, but it comes much later. This is only one of the house types. Eventually they develop a ranch style. But there are only two kinds of houses, they all look very similar. Some people would say it helped create a lack of diversity in terms of the architecture. Numb suburban architecture tends to look similar, whether it is in long island or somewhere else. Perhaps the more important critique is that the People Living in levittown all looked fairly similar, as well. At least in terms of them all being white. By 1960, when 82,000 people are living in this very popular suburban community of levittown there is not one africanamerican included, and they are purposely and explicitly excluded. So, this issue of diversity is one of the critiques of suburbia. But there were many others, even at the time back in the 1940s. As their starting out and the 1950s and 1960s as they are exploding in popularity. Ashley . New you said something about red linings and restrictive covenants. When was blockbusting introduced . I know a lot of white families were selling their homes at that time. Good. Although restrictive covenants are ruled unconstitutional in 1948, they put a waiting period on it so new communities could actually create them and they do not negate existing ones. Then what happens of course after those are put in place, there are a variety of ways, mostly real estate agents, working to make sure that africanamericans do not purchase any particular neighborhood. Because the fear was that Property Values would go down. There are all sorts of ways of doing this, not Just Real Estate agents steering people in a particular direction, but how you present the community. Think about here in virginia. Some of you may see suburbs, neighborhoods called the jones plantation. What does that signal to a particular group . I do not know if any of you go pumpkin picking . Anybody go pick pumpkins . Yes. Well, if you go in town there diane is a nice place to pick pumpkins that i take my family to every year. But you have to drive through this little suburban development called battlefield state. As states. You drive on confederacy lane. These are names that signal something to certain people. But eventually would happens, which we will talk about too much today of course, is that the city population declines as there is an impetus for people to move to the suburbs. And families are beginning its a socalled white flight. Its an where a neighborhood goes from white to black. And people are trying to socalled defend their neighborhoods so that they make sure they stay white. They do that in all sorts of ways and thats when we have block busting and neighborhoods rapidly changing, which is predominantly in the fifties when you start to see that as happening much more so. But good question. Other critiques, while people are boosting suburban, real estate agents, developers, banks, mortgage insurers, construction companies, are boosting the notion of suburban while Popular Television shows are romanticizing a kind of inaccessible suburban ideal. Plenty of people are beginning to question whether or not these are utopias. And great places to live. Part of that critique, is of course about sameness. There is a mass culture that is developing where people are replicating one another. And there is a concern the houses all look the same, the pieces all look the same. We are going to have a very boring, stayed culture. That is antithetical to what we want. Especially in terms of culture. There is some unique problems in terms of women. And the notion of a suburban housewife. And what that does in terms of isolation, and female oppression. And women across the country, whether in cities, suburbs or rural areas, of course are facing challenges all their own. To get to this idea of a housewife, and suburban housewife, i thought i would show a brief clip from a newsreel of the 1951, miss amererica pageant. Mrs. America pageant. Pay attention to what the house wife, wet miss america is expected to do. I hes got a cook as well as look. 32 married lovelys show they know potatoes have to be peeled. Bed making comes next. Into the beds go to test theirs. The best beds by miss new york city. Feels comfortable. But it is the body beautiful thats the criteria of the wellrounded mrs. America. The winner is mrs. New york city. Mrs. Maynard duncan. Yes white can be beautiful. We see so mrs. America, we the married women, are being rated on how well they could peel potatoes, how well they make beds. The men come in as the test i dont know what they are testing for. But they are testing the bed. And then of course, they have to look good in a swimsuit to boot. On top of it all. So women in suburb are facing this prevailing image of what a suburban housewife should be, and has to do. Their lives are quite challenging. This is one example of a woman, marjory from the late 1940s who lives in a suburb about 20 miles outside of new york city. She is talking about how difficult, or how busy her life is. She doesnt have a job in the typical sense of the word, but her schedule, she wakes up at 6 30 in the morning. She has three kids a fouryearold two year old a baby. She wakes up at 6 30, two dresses the two boys, makes breakfast husband goes to work, washes dishes cleans downstairs. Kids are out playing. Nurses the baby, makes lunch, makes lunch for the kids. Husband comes home, kids take a nap. She washes the dishes, nurses the baby wakes up the kids, gardens. Mens clothes, fix the snack. Dinner for the kids. Gives them bath, then she dresses for dinner with her husband. As a cocktail with her husband, makes dinner for the husband, washes dishes, nourish the baby, kids go to bed at 11 00 she goes to bed. She talks about how they wake up in the middle of the night to, i its a neverending cycle. This is a lot of work for someone who is not working. Surely some of you, grew up in households where one of your parents stayed home, and probably underappreciated how much they did. My wife stays home with our two boys. Her schedule looksSomething Like this. Although she does not dress up for dinner with me. Gonna have to ask her about that. These people are working very hard. We dont think of them as working. But of course they have tremendous economic value. If they are working outside the home, someone would have to be doing these tasks. Today, of course daycare is more common. There is real value here. This photograph, is symbolizing one weeks worth of her work. She makes in a given week 35 beds. She washes 750 items of glass and china. She washes 400 pieces of silverware. She prepares 175 pounds of food, she has 250 pieces of laundry. In a given week. And the article accompanying this photograph, she talks about her many roles. Shes a driver, a seamstress, a maid, a cook, a nurse, and her husbands glamour girl. And she has all of these modern appliances, and people think by time we get to the forties in more so the fifties and sixties, a washing machine in the dishwasher makes life easy. In fact, women even by the mid sixties, are spending just as much time on housework as they were 50 years early. But for marjory, part of the extra burden, its she is living in the suburbs. And its isolating. Heres a driver family around all over the place, her aunts and cousins her parents are in laws dont live with them. Her neighbors are more distant. She doesnt see people, walking in and out of the building. It can feel and does feel for her very isolating. That is another kind of critique. Yet another is the idea of consumption. That suburb is driving american consumption, to even greater levels. We have talked about over and over again in this class, how markers of class, and status arent based on someones income, but rather based on what they buy. What they consume. What they wear, what they drive. Nothing becomes more important, then in terms of class, then ones home. And in terms of achieving the socalled american dream, by being a property owner. That idea is portrayed, in this magazine cover from the late 19 fifties. Which i young couple is imagining their future, imagining a ranch home, imagining all the stuff stuck inside of it. All the appliances. By the 19 fifties, americans buy Something Like three quarters of all the appliances, and the entire world. One of the more lasting critiques of some urbanization, is in terms of its effect on the environment. Theres a kind of irony here, or people moving through these suburbs, to get close to nature. But in the process of course are helping to destroy it, what might have been more natural landscape,e,re being bulldozed topsoil is being replaced with houses and lance. Air pollution, gasoline consumption. Energy consumption, trash, all of these things. Are creating great wastes. And of course is suburban nature, really nature. If you think back to those levitation houses, in many of the suburbs you gru gr up in, people have little pieces of rectangular grass. Whats up with that . And they water it in the summer. They fertilize it with chemicals, they mow it all the time. What would the grass look like if it was kept. More natural. And the kinds of grass that were growing were not even native to the area. Its kind of strange, people are pruning their trees, and hedging their lawns to make these perfectly rectangular angles, people have bushes. Just today on my way to campus, i walked by a house i never noticed it before. It had a bush in the shape of a dog. A little dog. Like wolf. Its a bush. I was about to take a picture and included, but people saw me standing in front of their house. I didnt want to be creepy. Its wei weird. Everyones proving their trees, this time of the year everyones raking their leaves, and putting it in plastic bags. And putting it on a truck. Is that natural . Where the guys outside our building here with their machines blowing all the leaves everywhere. Its kind of weird. If you think of it. This natural element, and of course a lot of the environmental critiques, they have to do with automobiles. And one of the developments, in terms of suburban architecture, is of course in terms of the garage. You may have noticed the levitation buildings in the 1940s, did not have garages. We talked about automobiles earlier in the class, they are very rare until the 19 twenties. People are parking them in stables, by thirties and forties we can begin to have driveways. Its not until the fifties and sixties, that garages become integrated in the house. You can see by this floor plan of house in 1963. The garage is enormous. It takes up 25 of the entire Square Footage of the whole house. You can fit two cars, and a whole bunch of junk inside. This becomes a staple of suburban architecture. This dominant garages. Maybe you remember the first image we showed in class, the most striking architectural feature of those suburban houses, where these protruding garages. They are called snout houses. The big noses, they have big garages. People are critical of them, they elevate the car but the distance the house from the public. Its often hard to see the front door, and the connection to the people. Garages are weird. They are an entire house toto sphere house or car rather. Its a little house for the garage. Alluding to ashleys question earlier, about what is happening in the cities, a lot of people are becoming autocentric, and desiring having a car. Which is propelling people to move to the suburbs, and some cities cognizant of this, are trying to promote auto mobility within the city. And create garages. This is one famous example of a residential skyscraper in 1964 called marina city. Its a little are to tell. At the bottom of this giant building is this many story tall 9 space valet garage. More people could park their cars. This was done in a way to stem white flight, and encourage people in chicago do not move to the suburbs where you have young garage. You can have it here in the city to. You can see this is what it looks like today. Theyre all back then by valleys, not allowed to drive yourself. Its very striking building. But certainly elevating the idea of course, of the car. We have talked about in our last class, the highway act that creates all these roads in the mid 19 fifties. In terms of their effect on the urban and suburban landscape, we should not forget about that. Just think about the tsais, the gravity, the size of these highways. This is from los angeles, the iten and 1 10. It shows the immense nature of these highways that are helping to funnel people out of cities, into the suburbs. But still allowing them access. Where these highways were built, inside the city, or on the periphery was often determined by the political will of a certain community. How well often affluent a community was, and oftentimes the racial makeup, where highways often cut through neighborhoods filled with people of color. That happened here down the street and Harrison Bergh. Theres a photograph of east gay street down in downtown Harrison Bergh in 1957. A neighborhood known as newtown, filled with many african americans. Harrison burton, not a huge city but still a city, begins to think about suburban icing the city. Making it more car friendly. Widening the roads, creating Retail Shopping centers. You can see the giant hole here is what used to be that neighborhood. If you want to know how beautiful this place looks today, its this wonderful parking lot, and shopping center. That no one goes to. Its kind of ugly. There is the sub urbanization elements that creep into the city. Remnants of it are fell today. Every time the city considers some new project, people always go to city council to voice their concern but loss of parking. And theres a great concern about how much parking there is. One of the things that these highways do, is enable sprawl. Which is unplanned scattered, bits of the city that are spread across. Los angeles is probably one of the most famous examples. You can see in the distance is downtown, l. A. And all of this low density housing and commercial districts, leading towards los angeles. In reality l. A. Is more dense than other places. You still get the idea. Perhaps even more striking example from nevada, a subdivision created in the middle of the desert. Where do these people go Grocery Shopping . Where do they work . Where do they play . They have to drive everywhere. Its completely separate. And to think about the environmental consequences of this is obvious. There were a number by the time we get to the sixties, a lot of these critiques of suburb we had blossomed enough, that a number of innovators were trying to do something different. And they created a series of new towns, like virginia, or vine california and columbia in maryland. Which was started by a guy named james rouse was particularly concerned about sprawl between baltimore and washington. He created the city of columbia, in between the two cities. He was afraid the current housing in these dots represented essentially where people were living, and sprawling from the city. These dots would eventually swallow columbia. Everything in between baltimore and washington would be an ugly sprawling, unplanned mess. He took this opportunity to buy 14,000 acres of land, which was then pretty rural from farmers, and small tracks. Milking cows in picnic lunches. He decides hes going to section off this place to create a new kind of suburb. One thatlicitly deals with the limitations, the problems of existinghe secretly buys all, and eventually comes to the public, that hes gonna create this new city. A lot of people were happy to hear that because there was a rumors being spread that someone was buying all the line to create a garbage dump for all of baltimore and washingtons trash. People thought this was a better idea. So this guy, is idea was wasto create a new city from scratch. And the symbol of this new city is this tree, of people tree. He had this corny phrase that he wanted to create a garden to grow people. What are the ingredients of the soil, what do you need to create the best kind of community to create the best kind of people. His solution, was to break down the city into smaller bits. You can see that on this plan here. The idea was that midtown center, some kind of downtown, but have a series of nine villages, the people felt more comfortable in small town america. And this suburb could be a hybrid of small town america, with the villages and their own little main street shopping center, but also have a bustling downtown, with industry and commerce, with an urban pulse. And hes thinking about, existing problems with suburbs. In a bedroom communities where people live, he wants to capture that with industry and commerce. Hes thinking about suburbs that are all white, and he goes to Great Lengths to create a much more diverse community. Many many other kinds of examples, that we will see in a moment. Each of these villages, the blue dots represented a town center. Where the community could supposedly come together. So the first village in this was a rendering of what it might look like, was known as wildly. And you could see a number of trademark elements here, one there was a lake and the idea that this suburb was going to respect nature, instead of run over it. It was also broken down into several smaller neighborhoods, each of which had its own elementary school. Understanding was school was at the center of community, each of these neighborhoods would coalesce around a particular school. This set of buildings here says churches, in reality they created what they called instead inter faith centers, where they forbade churches, synagogues and mosques from being created. Instead at these interface centers where Christians Jews muslims and others, would worship under the same roof to promote a sense of community, and understanding. Along the same lines and each of these villages, there was a community pool. But people werent able to have their own pool. Now be forced to go swim with other people. They couldnt have fences. No one had their own mailbox, instead there was community mailboxes. You have to go out into the street and see your neighbors, and think about this sense of community. In a very real way. Some interesting smaller details. You could see they named the communities in the streets after american poets and writers, in a way to instill creativity and foster a sense of intellectualism. Columbia of course was created in this time of cars, but there was also the hope that it wouldnt be as autocentric. His plan, all these shaded lines, our bike paths telling the schools to the people, and community to community that he imagined would foster another way of moving around this kind of new city. An antithesis to the existing suburbs, and all of this would combine with the kind of Downtown Center that would really provide the center of activity, the center of culture and the excitement. Instead of building a traditional downtown with a series of intersecting streets and restaurants and public kind of facilities, in downtown columbia which was a new concept at the time, the downtown became essentially amal. Built in 1971, the Columbia Mall was the 16th mall in the country. They call it a galleria at the time. It became emblematic of whats new suburbs were going to look like. Where commerce was going to be insulated in these kind of strange structures. The mall, which of course on the one hand is autocentric. You can see the mall surrounded by almost a parking spaces. This makes it inaccessible for people who dont have cars, and helps control the kind of people who shop their. The malls are kind of like suburbs themselves. They are supposed to be this mix of urban, you could see here the space frame geometry of the roof of the mall signals this urban, geometric rid. There are brick pavers that make it feel like an outdoor plaza, there are shadows coming in, there are little vendors. The kiosk and stuff where people sell you monogrammed sweatshirts or whatever, or cell phone plans. Street lights, its supposed to make it look outside or inside. Theres always birds in these places. I dove they put them there, or they get in. You can feel like you are outside. But they are not really like a city, because they imported in this case ficus trees from florida, and of course everything is controlled. There is natural elements like a waterfall, and the trees but everything is planned. And controlled. This private security, theres no homeless people, theres no graffiti, theres no bars, theres no pornography shops. These are not really urban spaces, but a very purified notion of wooden urban space might be. We are going to talk more about mulls, as the center of urban culture in the 19 eventually. The mall becomes of course the downtown of columbia. At the expense of everything else. What happens in columbia after this in the seventies and eighties, and being mimicked in many other places. It remains much more racially inclusive than many other suburbs, but had become many of its progressive elements, the things that are trying to be less suburban like, have gradually moved to becoming more suburban like. People are building their own pools, instead of going to the community pool. Erecting fences, the bike path that i showed you earlier, the person on the bicycle was my mom. Who lives there and i was standing on the bike pack wind to take a photograph of someone walking or riding their bike, but no one cam live a mile or h halmimile from the shopping center. Everyone drives. So i asked my mom to stage the photograph. She kindly did. But people are in the sense of community, it hasnt panned out so much. The inter faith centers, some of the churches, communities move to the fringes of the city. One of the largest if not the largest synagogue in town, decided it didnt want to share spaces with other religions anymore, and built their own very nice synagogue outside of time, cannibalizing the demand for these inter faith centers. People are private. Even my parents who lived there were great, friendly nice people, their blinds are always draw on. Even in the front of the house they have these drapes that are permanent. You cant see out and people cant see in. I was dying to one neighbor recently, who lived there foe fo 30 years who only knew the name of one person on his enentiee block. Some of these things didnt pan out quite the way that ross had hoped, as colombia has created and become more private and corporatized, and had some more sprawl. We dont have time to discuss the development of the last couple of decades, then of the suburban vote, the rise of make mansions, gating private communities. And all this kind of change that has been happening in suburban development. We could return back to our engagement photo at the half developed culdesac here, to think maybe we decry suburbs as mediocre or a lame or boring. But we still very much live in a suburban nation. More than half of americans describe themselves as suburban. Suburbs are changing. Malls, strip malls, big box retailers are beginning to suffer with the rise of ecommerce. Maybe we will have selfdriving cars, who knows. Suburbs will change as they have before. But they remain remn interesting places to study. So adios. Weeknights this month we feature American History tv programs tonight we look at the American Revolution, with historian John Buchanan and his book the road to charleston. The book examines Major General greens military strategy in the Southern Campaign which produced a series of losses and ultimately left to the defeat of the british in south carolina. Watch beginning at 8 pm eastern, and enjoy American History tv every weekend on cspan 3. Nathanael greene and the American Revolution describes how general greene reversed a series of losses and eventually defeated the british in the Southern Theater of the war for independence. Next, author and historian John Buchanan discusses his new book at the American Revolution institute of the society of the cincinnati in washington, d. C
vimarsana.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.