ABSTRACT

More than any other form of place marketing, the selling of the suburb touched the very soul of popular aspiration. Although the intent was almost completely mercenary, to achieve a sale, the suburban promotional message spoke of much more than a material or functional notion of house or neighbourhood. Woven into the mundane detail of prices, number of bedrooms and train services was an altogether more poetic vision of how a widening section of the population thought they wanted to live. At best, the words of the copywriter or the images of the advertising artist or designer expressed that vision with a far greater clarity than that which existed in the minds of the recipients. They charged the material dimension of selling houses with deep and powerful meanings that reached beyond the usual rational calculations of cost, convenience and value for money.