Suburbia: A Bourgeois Utopia

According to what we learned in class suburbia was a result of industrialization and the transportation theory. The middle class had the funds and now the technological ability to commute from outside the city. According to Robert Fishman “suburbia was, rather, the collective creation of the Anglo-American middle class: the bourgeois utopia”. He bases his theory on suburbia’s creation around 18th century London. Suburbia is not a modern construction; Fishman shows that it evolved from 18^th century views on the degrading conditions of the city.

They were rapidly becoming extremely overcrowded and the cities were not capable of handling this influx of people. During the Evangelical movement the city was portrayed as a place of sin and degradation that was not suitable for a bourgeois family to inhabit. This new negative portrayal of the city made the bourgeois rethink their insistence upon living in it, they slowing began to leave the city and turn to the countryside to raise their families. This is when the real birth of suburbia was, it was a cultural movement rather than a conscious decision. This shift has left a permanent imprint upon society and our cities are still structured around this model.

Basically Fishman gives the same reasons for suburbanization but in a different time period. We learned it from the Western or American perspective, showing its emergence in the 1950 and 60's. Both cited overcrowding of the city and lesser liver conditions. As well as discussing an easy commute, that made the move seem logical. It gave the middle class a place to lead the luxurious lifestyle that they craved without being surrounded by the poor. Essentially they isolated themselves from the city they created. This leads me to believe that suburbia happens wherever there is a city over time. Eventually the middle class flee the city and give it up to commerce and the poor. It even happens in modern times, in this blog the suburbanization of the waterfront in NYC is an issue. That is a modern day suburbanization, proving that it has been going on and will continue to go on.

http://www.streetsblog.org/2006/08/28/the-suburbanization-of-nycs-waterfront/

Hoboken....The Edgecity

I recently visited Hoboken, which is a small city in New Jersey right on the outskirts of Manhattan. In fact to get into New York City all you have to do is hop on The Path and it’s a ten minute subway ride and you will find yourself in Penn Station. Hoboken is all of one square mile but it is a bustling city all on its own. It is filled with young adults, usually fresh out of college, who are trying to make it on their own for the first time. It is now considered a hip and fresh place for college grads to go and the atmosphere shows this. Bars are on every street and 27 year olds rule the city, walking around causing mayhem of all sorts. Each apartment has a “backyard” or a small piece of a courtyard to spruce up any way the owners want. Every set of apartments has a courtyard in the back of it that the different apartment buildings share and it forms a fun sense of community. One can see into everyone elses backyard yet it is not too intrusive that there is no privacy.

Once returning to Fairleigh I shared my Hoboken experience with my suitemates and told them that I thought it seemed like a great place for us to continue our style of living once we graduate college. I explained to them that it was almost like a suburb outside the city that still gave its occupants a city life feeling. After class on Tuesday I found a name for Hoboken, an Expolis. This means that the Central Business District has exploded like a zit as Haskaj would say. It has become too overcrowded for the one small area to handle and has spread out all around the CBD. This causes many multi-pole cities and cities on the edge. Hoboken would be one of these cities on the edge, and edgecity (tough terminology right?). While discussing these different types of city expansion Hoboken popped right into my head. I had been wondering what it would be considered because it is not really a suburb even though it is a town on the outskirts of the city. It has too many components of an actual city and fits perfectly into the Edgecity definition.

Hoboken in general is a very fun place and if you are looking to find out more about the city check out this blog.

http://thehobokenjournal.blogspot.com/2009/03/peter-cammarano-denounces-state.html

It discusses all sorts of political, social, and economic issues that face the residents of Hoboken today.

Deindustrialization

Up until the 1960’s the cities flourished, they were very populated and continued to grow. However once the 1960s hit all that changed and the big question was WHY?

Well there are multiple reasons for this sudden economic restructuring of the cities. Prior to the 60’s the US was a highly industrialized country. Every city was filled with factories and high levels of production. The ways in which items were produced is completely different then today. Than they had a “beginning to end” mentality, industries controlled every aspect of what was put into the product. They did not have to outsource in order to come up with a completed product. During the 60’s is when the shift in production occurred. Companies began to outsource and no longer needed as much factory strength and therefore began to close up their factories. Production became differentiated and dispersed.

With this change low-skilled labor was no longer in such high demand. Blue collar workers were not as necessary and white collar workers became much more in demand. Managerial staff and overseers were the jobs that were needed. This deindustrialization had a great affect upon the cities. Most white collar workers already lived on the outskirts of the cities but even more began to migrate to the suburbs leaving the poor and unemployed behind in the inner cities. This made the inner cities even less attractive and there was no pull factor for other people. No one wanted to move into the cities.

Not only were white collar workers moving to the suburbs but the companies were moving as well. They were taking their industries to the outskirts as well and this led to a complete shift in the US economy. The deindustrialization of the cities along with the automobile and the highway system helped to reinforce the decentralization of the cities and the increasing density of the suburbs.

The Automobile

The past few classes have been centered on the decentralization of the cities and the migration to the suburbs. There was also the development of a new type of city, the MMR or multi-centered metro region. This means that the city no longer has one central business district but instead has multiple centers and central areas. The development of the MMR would not be possible if it had not been for the automobile. The automobile is a major cause of the decentralization because it made commuting possible. People were now able to commute to and from work in the cities and they no longer had to live there. This made it possible for the upper classes to move out of the cities and form new communities in the outer areas of the city. For example when the automobile was invented it made it possible for the people who lived in New York City to move out to Long Island or up to West Chester, even as far as the Poconos and still make their living in the city.

When the NDSH Act of 1956 was passed it created millions of highways and parkways so that the automobile could actually get people around. This was also a big cause of the decentralization of the cities. Highways were going all over the place and made commuting even easier which just increased the MMR. Today automobiles are still a major part of life, I live on Long Island and see hundreds of people commuting to the city on a daily basis.

Sidewalks and their Many Purposes

Growing up I always remember my mom telling me to stay on the sidewalk, stepping off the sidewalk was considered a huge offense. When I was just starting to learn how to ride a bike it was on the sidewalk, walking to and from school was done on the sidewalk, even walking two houses down to my best friend’s house was on the sidewalk. I was always told that this was because I had to be careful and avoid the fast dangerous cars on the big bad street. According to Jane Jacobs that is one of the purposes of a sidewalk, to keep people at a safe distance from the cars, but there are two other underlying effects.

Contact and assimilating children to their environments are other reasons for the existence on the sidewalk. Sidewalks help to bring the people of the city together in intimate settings that force them to come into contact with one another. It is the sort of contact that city people could appreciate; one is able to come into contact with other people without allowing them into their private life. The people around them are comfortable because they are not too involved. This is good for city dwellers because their privacy is one of the most valuable aspects of city life.

Sidewalks also play an important role in the life of city children. Jane Jacobs argues that parks and underused sidewalks are areas that children are supposedly “safe” but in actuality are not. The parks are actually dangerous for children because there is less adult supervision, in some cases non at all. This gives children leeway to bully other children and to wreak havoc in general. Jacobs gives one example where she observes a park where two boys beat up on a little girl. A few blocks down there is a group of 28 children playing on a sidewalk without any squabbles. She accredits this to the fact that the sidewalk also contains a bustle of adults going about their daily lives, they help to keep order amongst the children. This sidewalk would be classified a lively sidewalk and this is a safe area for children to play because there are many people around, however underused sidewalks can be just as dangerous as the parks. The sidewalk was also able to support the large gaggle of children because it was sufficiently wide enough, narrow sidewalks and streets are what keep students in the parks and streets and keeps them in danger. This is due to poor city planning, Jacobs argues that the ways the cities are constructed lead to crime and deviant behavior but that’s for a whole other post.

Check out further discussions of Jane Jacobs arguments in “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” at this fellow blog.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/260