ABSTRACT
Suburbs are defined both spatially and symbolically. The rise of nineteenth-century garden-cemeteries and parks served as a precursor to suburbia. Frederick Law Olmsted, prominently remembered today for the design of New York's Central Park, in the mid-nineteenth century developed large urban parks as well as the first planned suburb in the United States. The suburbs have been characterized as “bourgeois utopias” (Fishman 1987) for their emphasis on this locale as the setting for middle-class family life; with the men's world of work centered in the city and the women's world centered in the suburban home. The suburban growth machine emphasized that the suburbs would be designed almost exclusively for the white middle class. The city was seen as the place for the poor and ethnic and racial minorities. As a consequence suburbanization dispersed and divided people in metropolitan areas, especially along class and racial lines. The development of suburbs has been closely tied to race and to the deterioration of central cities. Processes of gentrification are seen as being a major factor in what many have called the “urban renaissance.” This has led to the displacement of poor people and people of color who no longer could afford their neighborhoods that are being gentrified. The result has been their movement to inner-ring suburbs such as those in Los Angeles and in Ferguson, Missouri. In the case of the L.A. suburbs they too are feeling the forces of gentrification. Thus, gentrification not only has consequences for communities located in cities, it influences the life of residents in many inner-ring suburbs as well.
