ABSTRACT
In theory we might expect that the social and morphological diversity of early twentieth-century suburbs was linked to variations in the manner in which suburbs were developed. In practice, however, the links between pattern and process remain unclear. Those contemporaries who recognized the diversity of early twentiethcentury suburbs emphasized their social and economic characteristics. They usually defined diversity in terms of social composition (class, ethnicity, and race) and by the ratio of residents to jobs (Douglass, 1925; Ogburn, 1937; Harris, 1943; Schnore, 1957). On the former criterion they distinguished the élite from the middle-or
working-class suburb; using the latter they separated the residential suburb from the industrial. They paid little attention to the forces, and economic agents, that shaped these suburbs. At any rate, they did not think to define suburban types in terms of underlying process. More recently, historical scholars have begun to examine the forces at work in the land market, and especially those who were involved in land subdivision (Doucet and Weaver, 1991; Hise, 1993, 1997; Weiss, 1987). Some have begun to show how subdividers created different types of subdivisions, and hence different types of suburbs, by modulating the constraints that they imposed on builders and buyers, notably through deed restrictions (Burgess, 1994; Keating, 1988). A pair of case studies in Hamilton, Ontario, for example, has shown how a working-class district grew up in the city’s east end through a process of unregulated owner-building, while deed restrictions imposed by a land syndicate shaped the development by commercial builders of a middleclass area in the city’s west end (Harris and Sendbuehler, 1994; Weaver, 1978). Clearly, different types of suburbs were made in different ways. The implication is that they may be distinguished not only by their form and social character but also by their manner of development. Drawing upon both contemporary writings and also the recent work of urban historians, in this chapter I reconstruct the process and pattern of suburban development in the United States in the first half of this century. My argument is that process and pattern were closely related, and together defined three main suburban types.
