ABSTRACT
Suburbanisation signifies a specific form of urban de-concentration. Kramer (1972) refers to it as a ubiquitous process that represents the formation of a new urban landscape in which the outward movement of people, amenities, industry and institutions from the urban core create an extended city. The suburbanisation process is not as selective as traditionally may have been assumed, as contemporary British suburbs are not homogenous in population composition or limited to the middle classes. The reality is that only 15 per cent of the UK population live in areas with a population density high enough to be classed as inner city. The average English person lives at a low density (20 people per hectare compared to 50 in the inner city) (Schoon 2001). From its mass uprising the suburb has never failed to incite controversy. The flight of middle- to high-income dwellers from the city to the suburbs has been regarded as a contributing factor to the acceleration of social polarisation and segregation. The ecological development of the suburb has been correlated with new behaviours pertaining to the suburban ‘way of life’, based upon social conformity, competition and upward social mobility (Fishman 1987). As once the rural idyll was upheld as a model form of living, in opposition to the corrupt and congested city, the diversity of the city and its cultural allure was favoured over mass-produced suburbia by its critics (Thorns 1972). These negative connotations have, by bringing to light the diversity and heterogeneity in the suburbs, been contested as the ‘suburban myth’ (Gans & Berger 1972). Indeed, as the economic and social bases of the suburbs have grown, over the past one hundred years, so has the diversity of the suburbanites.
