ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out a conceptual framework for a more inclusive and comparative suburban planning history. Suburbs and suburbanization have long been a major concern of planning history. Planning emerged during a period of explosive urban-industrial growth during the second half of the 19th century. The management of urban-industrial growth through town extension plans and the regulation of Greenfield land development was from the start a core goal of planning advocates. The chapter suggests a comparative approach to the study of suburban planning histories that focuses on fundamental issues that are shared across many cases, and that is able to include the Global South. The chapter briefly sketches an analysis of the first successful attempts to create suburban planning regulations in four cases: the United Kingdom, United States, Japan and India. These four planning systems demonstrate fundamentally different approaches to—and outcomes of—suburban planning and land development regulation.
