ABSTRACT
While suburbia denes great swathes of our contemporary landscape, its impact has been much more than physical and geographic. Suburbanization is a process that has shaped crucial historical developments in America. The rise of suburbia was inextricably linked to ideas about class, race, and gender, changes in American political culture and the role of the state, the evolution of success ideologies, opportunities for social mobility, and the construction of American culture itself. The suburbanization process also represented a focal point for social conict and competition, a spatial means through which people competed for the abundant resources of American society. Suburbia embodied the American Dream for many, a site of material plenty for building futures and moving up, a destination point for aspirations of wholesome family life, property ownership, and healthy community. Yet the perception of suburbia as the American Dream was often predicated on a restricted vision of belonging. Indeed, a major theme in this history has been the ongoing tension between inclusion and exclusion. For over a century, suburbia has acted as a potent arbiter of social distinctions. Yet at the same time,
suburbia’s history represents a rich, diverse story of many actors, some upholding these assumptions, others contesting them, others redening them altogether.
