ABSTRACT
Stereotypes can be positive or negative; some are useful, but seriously inaccurate stereotypes become misleading and potentially harmful. In different places and times, suburbs have been stereotyped in various ways: positively by those moving from the city and also by rural-urban migrants, negatively by outsiders, particularly intellectuals, with “urban” values. Both the positive and especially the negative stereotypes have evolved over time. Early criticisms emphasized physical homogeneity, social conformity, and cultural deficiency. More recently, as suburbanization has been associated with urban sprawl, a clichéd argument now associates suburbs with negative effects on the natural environment and on public health. But some societies do not have a single name, still less a stereotype, of the sorts of places that North Americans call suburbs.
No suburban stereotype has ever been wholly accurate and, partly through inertia and partly because of active promotion, some have persisted long after they corresponded at all with reality. They arise because positive ones embody the values and aspirations of people at particular times while those that are negative often reflect the desire of critics to set themselves above and apart. They have been articulated and reproduced in various ways: by the media, and by private agents, including land developers, whose purposes they serve. We cannot do without stereotypes, but we should always view them skeptically.
