ancient cities

produced streetcar suburbs in the United States and
tram and trolleybus counterparts in other technologically
advanced countries around the world. The rise
of the railway networks during the late nineteenth
century were also major engines of suburban growth,
creating railway suburbs around most major towns
and cities. Intrametropolitan overground and underground
railway systems—the metros or subways—
dramatically increased the suburban sprawl of such
major cities as London, Chicago, New York, Berlin,
and Paris. Electrification after 1900 further expedited
this process. In the European city, however, urban
growth was more contained and regulated. In the
Anglophone world, by contrast, suburbs proliferated
in a more disorderly fashion. Despite this, some residential
areas were carefully planned and beautifully
landscaped, as in the romantic suburbs of the United
States and the garden suburbs of Britain and Australia.
The planned suburb was mostly a middle-class phenomenon,
although a number of factory villages and
suburbs for working-class households were built in
many countries by philanthropic employers between
1870 and 1914.
Transport technology continued to accelerate
and expand suburbanization during the twentieth
century. The rise of motorization brought
about suburban spread on a massive scale. The
interwar years in Britain saw the development of
motor car suburbs, while in the United States,
the phenomenal popularity of the motor car created
the automobile suburbs of the 1920s.
Radburn, in New Jersey, completed in 1929,
became an influential experiment in planning
suburban residential housing environments
around the car. During the postwar years, road
building was inextricably intertwined with suburban
dispersal in developed countries. Most new
suburban developments in the postwar years were
designed to facilitate motorization, and many
became dependent on the car.
Increasing motor-car ownership was indicative
of growing affluence and consumerism among
larger sections of the population. Across the developed
world, the postwar affluent society was an
increasingly mobile society, in which the majority
were inclined to enjoy larger houses where possible,
and detached homes if they were affordable. It
is here that a powerful social cause of suburbanization
can be identified, which may be termed the
suburban aspiration.
Suburbanization
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Pioneered by the middle classes but increasingly
pursued by lower-income groups, the suburban
aspiration was and remains a threefold wish list. It
is comprised of antiurbanism, a rejection of highdensity
city center living. It is also a desire for a
house within a semirural or garden setting: Sizes
and values of houses and properties varied according
to income, but from the upscale suburb to the
modest housing development, the affection for a
house with a garden remained of paramount cultural
significance. Traditional styles of domestic
architecture as opposed to modern designs appear
to have been favored by the majority of suburbanites,
whether two-story houses or single-story bungalows.
The third aspect of the suburban aspiration
was the suburb itself, a residential environment
that privileged quietness, comfort, and safety when
compared to downtown. The social composition
of the suburb was preferred to be homogenous,
populated by people of similar incomes, ethnicity,
and status. Suburban exclusivity could lead, however,
to snobbery at the very least and to racial
hostility at the very most.
Urban and social policies in developed countries
also stimulated suburbanization, as two examples
will demonstrate. In Britain, the Housing and
Town Planning Act of 1919 and subsequent legislation
provided subsidies from central government
to local authorities (councils) to build houses for
rent from the council. This was public housing,
criticized by many conservative interests as creeping
socialism. By contrast, the National Housing
Act of 1949 in the United States began the process
of insuring the mortgages of millions of Americans
who wanted to pursue the American dream of
homeownership in a suburban context. Other
countries followed different models of state-led
suburbanization. In Europe, apartment blocks for
workers were built on a massive scale, a different
suburban form to the lower-rise, lower-density
Anglo-American pattern.
Consequences of Suburbanization
The vast majority of people in the developed world
are much better housed than a century ago, and
suburbanization has been at the heart of this
demographic elevation. In Australia, Canada,
England, and the United States, notably, a majority
of the population now lives in suburbs. Despite