Suburbs

"This article presents the research results from a study conducted in New South Wales,
Australia about primary school children’s independent mobility (CIM), their concerns, and the
concerns of their parents. These results are compared with a similar study conducted in 1992. Data
were collected using written questionnaires, one for children and one for their parents, distributed via
three primary schools. The key findings indicate that school travel has not substantially changed over
the past 18 years, although there has been a slight mode shift from walking to school bus travel.
Children would like to engage in active transport and have more freedom to do other activities on their
own; however, parents restricted CIM based on age, and concerns about traffic and strangers.
Although there were localised differences in the survey results, it is hard to determine what influence
these factors had on CIM."

Pier Paolo Pasolini convirtió el hábitat del subproletariado romano de los años 50 y 60 en un argumento central de su obra. Su variada y amplia producción –no solo sus películas y guiones o sus novelas y poemas, sino también sus entrevistas y artículos– merece ser considerada parte de una historia de Roma interdisciplinar, abierta y articulada (como la propia dinámica pasoliniana). De acuerdo con ello, el presente trabajo aborda un análisis del Viaggio per Roma e dintorni (1958), un artículo que Pasolini escribió para la revista Vie Nuove, repetidamente relegado a segundo plano a pesar de ser uno de los escritos más claros y descriptivos del autor acerca de esa otra Roma marginal que conocía de primera mano. El trabajo concluye con una serie de composiciones cartográficas en las que texto, cine y forma urbana se imbrican para visualizar aquella ciudad “desconocida para el turista, ignorada por el biempensante, inexistente en los planos”.

Pier Paolo Pasolini turned the habitat of the Roman lumpenproletariat of the 50s and 60s into a central argument of his work. His varied and extensive production –not only his films and scripts, or his novels and poems, but also his interviews and articles– deserves to be considered part of an interdisciplinary, open, and articulated history of Rome (like the Pasolinian dynamics itself). Accordingly, this paper tackles an analysis of Viaggio per Roma e dintorni (1958), an article that Pasolini wrote for the magazine Vie Nuove, repeatedly overshadowed despite being one of the clearest and most descriptive writings of the author about the marginal Rome that he knew firsthand. This paper concludes with a series of cartographic compositions in which text, cinema, and urban form are intertwined to visualize that city “unknown to the tourist, ignored by the right-thinking, non-existent on maps”.

http://placesjournal.org/article/swingsites-for-singles/  The singles apartment complex originated in Southern California in the late ’50s and by the ’70s had spread nationwide, attracting attention with magazine stories illustrated with images of wet young flesh. Today they can seem a tawdry relic of a vanished era, yet the “swingsites” were a creative form of housing — and even a force for social progress.

Way and beyond ideological mandates that have at any moment in time distinguished legal differences between the area falling within or without the city walls, history shows that ever since it was founded, Cordoba has surpassed the strict limits imposed by its walls to make up a functional unit in which it is impossible to understand the city sensu stricto without its extra moenia area, its suburbia: an ever changing reality whose first sign of transition centers on the network of roads. This in turn becomes a guarantee for access to a second outlying strip (lacking in urban functions but easily accessible and the area favoured by its inhabitants for their daily activities), and finally to the land on which the city’s economy, political power and prestige depended. The suburbs served as a mirror for the city.

This paper aims at analysing a very well-known Italian neighbourhood, which is located in Palermo and called Zen. This neighbourhood has often been described as a clear example of the worst and most disgraced urban landscapes in Italy, as mass media and local stakeholders shaped its image for their own uses. Through a series of interviews, on-the-spot inspections and the use of other qualitative methodologies, the final goal of this paper is to subvert traditional representations of this place and enforce a plural way of describing it, using research techniques that might position the researcher and his or her own description inside a larger framework. Would geographers, social scientists and urban scholars agree on the subjectivity of their own descriptions, they could craft new strategies of storytelling to represent modern and changing urban realities.

Herbert Gans' classic book, The Levittowners, has inspired generations of urban sociologists studying American suburbs, but it has also confined the field's focus to studies of the local community. At the same time, however, outside the discipline of American urban sociology, an interdisciplinary field of global suburban studies has flourished. Global suburban studies address a wider range of topics that extends to infrastructural provision, governance, and popular resistance. By introducing the key debates in global suburban studies, this essay argues that it is time for American urban sociologists to broaden their analytical focus beyond community institutions and power relations, and that much can be gained by adopting an international and comparative perspective to learn about urban peripheries elsewhere in the world. A comparative vantage point can help U.S. sociologists better situate socio-spatial transformations in American suburbs among a world of cities (and suburbs), and mine new insights on topics involving poverty, segregation, and community life that have been at the center of suburban research in American sociology.

Australia is the most suburbanised country on earth. The ' Australian Dream' of a house in the suburbs has long reflected the sense of entitlement that urban Australians have to the financial security, private space and amenity that the Dream promises. Since around the turn of the century, governments at every level have been attempting to arrest suburban sprawl for its negative social, environmental and economic impacts. However, neoliberal economic and planning environments have exacerbated regulatory failure, so attempts to create compact cities have done little to provide genuine alternatives to suburban life or address low-quality sprawl in newly built outer suburbs. Unrestrained house price inflation, assisted by an investor-friendly taxation regime, has led to a situation where the housing outcome, the Dream, enjoyed by previous generations is becoming impossible. Overlaying this is an ideological environment that pits the suburbs against the inner city as a battle in the 'culture wars' and serves to obliterate any nuance, diversity or possibility for progressive change into the public debate. Fig. 1: New outer suburban development under construction in Springfield Queensland.

This article explores the potential significance of the suburbs as a liminal space in both ancient Greek and Roman literature, focusing on literature from the imperial period. It will be demonstrated that in these texts the suburbs recur as a setting of preternatural stories, such as those found in The Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus, in Lucian's Philopseudes, and in Petronius's Satyricon, as well as in many other loci. In all of them, the "demonic" in various forms operates on the outskirts of town. Such a setting is no coincidence. The suburbs comprise a specific area that both literally and figuratively constitutes the limen of the city, and demons are commonly regarded as liminal beings; hence, by virtue of this symbolic connection, the urban periphery appears as an ideal location for the demonic.

What happens when
the music’s over?
What happens when
the lights turn off?
What happens when
the lights turn elsewhere?
This is the story of what
you do not want to see.
This is the story of what
you do not want to watch.
This is the story of what
you do not want to know.
This is the story of the hidden,
this is the story of the forbidden.
This is the story of the unspoken,
the inscrutable, the unsearchable,
the unfathomable, the impenetrable.
This is the story of empty, void,
vacant, shallow, vacuous, frothy,
null, insignificant, pointless,
vain, invalid, disabled, bereaved,
bereft, destitute, blank, emptiness,
gap, rifle, dump, deplete.
This is the story of a city,
this is also the story
of all cities.
This is the story
of the Dark Side
of All of Us.

Dalla nascita delle città-stato nel corso dell’VIII secolo a.C., con uno sguardo alle diverse aree del Mediterraneo, il volume segue lo sviluppo delle città cercando di sottolineare tratti comuni e differenze, continuità, rotture e contaminazioni, mentre sullo sfondo si muovono vicende contingenti e processi storici di lunga durata. Attraverso quasi millecinquecento anni si tratteggiano così i volti dei centri urbani fino alla costituzione dei regni romano-barbarici tra V e VI secolo d.C., alle soglie del Medioevo.
La pianificazione della città e del territorio, la loro difesa, l’organizzazione degli spazi pubblici e privati e la gestione delle risorse sono analizzate nei loro elementi costitutivi, con una particolare attenzione alle relazioni topografiche e funzionali che legano tra loro le varie parti, con l’obiettivo di ricomporre la complessità dei paesaggi antichi.

The last two decades have been an exciting and richly productive period for debate and academic research on the city. The SAGE Handbook of New Urban Studies offers comprehensive coverage of this modern re-thinking of urban theory, both gathering together the best of what has been achieved so far, and signalling the way to future theoretical insights and empirically grounded research. Featuring many of the top international names in the field, the handbook is divided into nine key sections:

SECTION 1: THE GLOBALIZED CITY
SECTION 2: URBAN ENTREPRENEURIALISM, BRANDING, GOVERNANCE
SECTION 3: MARGINALITY, RISK AND RESILIENCE
SECTION 4: SUBURBS AND SUBURBANIZATION: STRATIFICATION, SPRAWL, SUSTAINABILITY
SECTION 5: DISTINCTIVE AND VISIBLE CITIES
SECTION 6: CREATIVE CITIES
SECTION 7: URBANIZATION, URBANITY AND URBAN LIFESTYLES
SECTION 8: NEW DIRECTIONS IN URBAN THEORY
SECTION 9: URBAN FUTURES

This is a central resource for researchers and students of Sociology, Cultural Geography, and Urban Studies.

From the review by Katherine Nesse (2018):

As a course text, it is appropriate for advanced students
already well acquainted with urban theory and in courses
where the readings can be paired with readings from other
sources to give the issues more context. It is a welcome addition
to the urban studies curriculum and appropriate reading
for advanced undergraduates and graduate students who
want to think deeply about wicked problems. The depth of
the readings and the number of them make it unlikely that a
class would discuss the entire book in one term. However, it
is an essential addition to a library’s urban studies collection.
It expands the conversation about cities, draws in new ideas
and perspectives, and is a valuable reference for elaborating
new directions in urban studies.

Cities and suburbs are on the brink of a new era. Decades-long suburbanisation of the affluent and the socially mobile has almost ceased as we knew it. In its place there is now city gentrification and suburban diversification, upsetting linear understandings of mobilities on the metropolitan level. In his dissertation Yannis Tzaninis addresses the puzzle of contemporary production of (sub)urban space by investigating the former suburban new town Almere, a space and place caught in a vortex of global change. Through the analysis of municipal statistics, and by conducting a survey and interviews with current and former residents of Almere, he analyses people’s mobilities, experiences and aspirations. He finds that placemaking processes are fluid and adapt to wider social changes, while households are pushed and pulled depending on material resources, aspirations and city branding. In conclusion he uncovers the character and future of suburbia, advancing our understanding of urban growth, placemaking and mobility.

Early 20th century birthed a radical phenomenon across several cultures and nations- the demarcating of certain public space for primarily leisure purposes. From India to the United States, urban parks became a symbol of democracy, openness, and freedom as they emerged from a protracted struggle to shift from the hands of the State or imperial power to that of the masses. There was much euphoria about their unregulated and public character, reflecting a new age of modernization and civilization. Yet, over time, it has been revealed how contentious the process of shaping, regulating, and sustaining of public parks can be as well as its pluralistic and transcultural nature. Interestingly, the 21st century is celebrating the birth of another leisure space that shares this rhetoric of being open, free, universal, non-utilitarian, and democratic: social network sites. As the Net shifted from the hands of the State to that of the user, its leisure spaces have been looked upon as sites where regardless of gender, age, and/or culture, people can commune, browse aimlessly, socialize and share their views openly. Yet, important concerns are emerging on what constitutes as openness, universality and democratic as governments to corporations are finding ways to architect and manage these virtual geographies and, users are harnessing these sites for a range of activities.

Thereby, by drawing parallels between urban parks and social network sites, this project aims to highlight the historical aspect of leisure spaces and provide a much needed rootedness in this highly speculative media discourse. The historical and comparative investigation to parks is innovative, as it will debunk much of the hype surrounding social network sites as a novel and unprecedented space for communication. Given that social network sites have a short and primarily Western-centric history of usage, the development and evolution of parks across nations allows for a fresh and transcultural perspective to this topic. Methodologically, using this real/virtual comparative strategy has become an essential means to understand online spaces. In fact, it is impossible to not evoke physical spaces to conceptualize virtual spaces. So we find ourselves on the information highway, at the electronic frontier, chatrooms, home pages, to MUD lobbies. In fact, this project builds on the popularly accepted parallel of the Net as the digital city, propositioning thereby, that its common public leisure areas are its virtual parks.

While the project strives to critique the public, democratic and free for all notions of contemporary leisure spaces, online and offline, for feasibility purposes, it focuses specifically on 3 areas of timely importance: (a) open and closed systems (b) private and public domains, and (c) work versus play dimension to leisure sites, emphasizing notions of corporatization, commercialization and the privatization of leisure spaces. Also, the diversity of parks such as industrial parks, theme parks to community parks will emphasize the pluralistic aspect of social network sites. Further, this project brings together disciplines of media studies and history of technology through an original avenue of urban planning, emphasizing the spatial aspects of technology and media practice. Given that most studies on new media spaces are artifact oriented, ahistorical and Western-centric, this project will provide a unique lens through its historical and transcultural approach.

The undertaking of this project is deeply relevant given that as leisure becomes central to the 21st century economy, corporations to the State are greatly vested in the understanding of these spaces. The dominant idea of its unprecedented novelty can be misleading and have damaging consequences on shaping policy and practice. Overall, the goal of this project is to leverage on real-virtual comparisons to develop a more integrated understanding of contemporary leisure, a prime space of digital residence in the 21st century.

In Europe the historic city is the result of a seamless integration between the physical dimension and the content of identity: the system of public spaces is the fulcrum of the entire urban structure, authentic stage of the meeting community, where beauty is intended to be a significant value, able to fascinate and to seduce, a mean to make people feel part of the urban whole. The suburb is rationally organized for specialized and functional parts, linked and connected by a strong hierarchical system of mobility: while movements of people and things take place in a systematic way, a new desire for public life takes place through episodes and experiences related to everyday existence. Thus, public happiness is no longer the result of the emotional impact of a widespread beauty, but the discover of new meanings and values of the city as a unique urban whole, both historic and suburban, together with not predictable social forms of interaction between people.

This paper looks at how the suburban ideals that were articulated and promoted by interwar politicians and the popular press were interpreted and played out on England’s council estates. Focusing upon the domestic garden, it looks at how tenants tried to overcome material and cultural obstacles in their efforts to live up to these standards. Evidence is taken from a range of written, visual, and oral sources related to life on the Wythenshawe Estate, Manchester, and the Downham Estate, South-East London. Ultimately, this paper shows that, despite their best efforts, the residents of England’s interwar council estates were unable to achieve the much-publicised ‘suburban ideal.’

Written sources, valued above all in recent years by various scholars, leave no doubt that in the fifth century the Western Emperors wanted to repropose the role of Rome as capital. The imperial presence in the city is evident in the promotion of ambitious urban projects and in monumental works both in the spaces inside the walls and in the suburbs, where great porticoes lead to apostolic sanctuaries. In the south-eastern suburban area, where a large imperial property had existed since the Severian age, a prestigious imperial district can be identified, which included the villas of the Quintili and Sette Bassi. Here some episodes remembered from the Late Antique sources – some
ceremonial events and probably the killing of Valentinian III – can be set.

The slaughter of animals is a fundamental aspect of the economic, social and spiritual life of many people in South Africa. Under apartheid, these events generally occurred in rural areas or urban townships designated for black people. Since the transition to democracy in the 1990s, increased suburban mixing has exposed established middle class residents, notably white people, to cattle slaughter. The article explores the resulting public discourses on these events, such as condemnations, liberal appeals for tolerance, and Africanist claims to citizenship and space. In addition the article examines anxieties that some white people express in relation to the materiality of the slaughter of animals in residential areas. The article offers a multi-layered analysis of reactions to animal slaughter in relation to race, identity, difference, space and the place of animals and meat production in cities.

Le paysage de Senlis, ville de 17 000 habitants de l'Oise (Hauts-de-France) est composé depuis le Ier s. de notre ère, comme partout, d'un milieu urbain entouré d'un milieu rural. Entre les deux, il existe une marge, un espace de « frontière » au sens anglo-saxon du terme, c'est à dire une zone que l'on bâtit pendant les périodes prospères et que l'on déserte pendant les périodes plus difficiles. C'est cet espace particulier que nous présentons ici La ville de Senlis a été enserrée pendant de nombreuses années dans un corset de remparts destinés à la protéger. Ce sont d'abord les murailles enserrant le castrum (la Cité) à partir du III e s. puis les remparts médiévaux, plus vastes. L'édification de ces derniers commence au début du XIII e s. (Philippe Auguste n'y est probablement pour rien), et dès 1288 le faubourg Viétel ou Saint-Vincent (vicus vietelli) est englobé dans les fortifications. Ces ouvrages bloquèrent considérablement la croissance urbaine de Senlis jusqu'à leur destruction quasi complète au XIX e s. Cependant, le développement de l'économie et la pression démographique ont conduit les Senlisiens à adopter deux solutions pour étendre l'urbanisation. La première a été la création, plus ou moins spontanée, de faubourgs construits le long des principales routes d'accès, juste au-delà des cinq portes qui perçaient les remparts au XVIII e siècle (portes Bellon, de Meaux, de Paris, de Creil et Saint-Rieul). La proximité des remparts permettait un repli rapide en cas de crise grave. Certains de ces faubourgs ont même été élevés au statut de paroisse. La deuxième solution a été d'habiter des écarts, des hameaux, des fermes, des moulins, plus éloignés de la cité, mais proche des ressources agricoles, hydrauliques ou autres. Après la destruction des remparts médiévaux, décidée par une ordonnance royale de 1827, la ville de Senlis a pu s'étendre sans contrainte. C'est ainsi que sont nés des quartiers périphériques comme les quartiers Carnot-Foch et de la gare (XIX e siècle) et les « cités » planifiées, construites en fonction des besoins en logements d'une population nouvelle, attirée à Senlis après guerre et après la création d'un échangeur sur l'autoroute du Nord. Faubourgs, hameaux, quartiers ou cités, tous ont leur histoire et leur géographie propres et tous sont constitutifs de l'identité de Senlis, à l'égal de la ville ancienne.

L’archeologia può essere uno strumento per cambiare i destini di un territorio? In questo testo le autrici ripercorrono la storia recente di un ampia area del suburbio est di Roma, dove fino a pochi decenni fa vi era l’ex aeroporto militare di Centocelle. Qui ebbe luogo il primo volo d’Italia, effettuato da Wilbur Wright nel 1909. Qui fino agli anni ’80 si intendeva costruire un nuovo polo urbano, tra quartieri già densamente popolati. Le numerose scoperte archeologiche effettuate negli anni’90 hanno oggi cambiato la destinazione di questa area, dove sta sorgendo, se pure tra molte difficoltà e problemi, un grande parco archeologico urbano.

Suburbs have long been associated with assumptions and imposed meanings that do not fit the everyday reality of city life. Very little research has looked at the ways in which suburbs are experienced, represented and imagined as ‘real’ places. This represents the core focus of this thesis. I am concerned with the extent to which the cultural consumption of the city has come to shape suburban residents’ relationship with the city. This question is addressed through the lens of suburban festivals. My aim is to reassess the role of suburban communities in shaping the cultural life of the city. In this light, this research seeks to (1) to assess the role of the suburbs as more central in defining the practice of everyday life than might be assumed, (2) show why culture matters for places where people live and co-exist day to day; and (3) to bring suburbs, in all of their cultural complexity, to the fore in discussions around improved connections to place and more so-called ‘sustainable’ urban futures and ways of life. The research draws on fieldwork carried out in suburban communities in Manchester, focusing on three suburban festivals as case studies. It is based on data collected through cultural mapping workshops and semi-structured interviews with festival organisers, festival participants and policymakers. The findings suggest that suburbia is a multi-dimensional concept. As such, the spatial experience of suburban place and the micro-geographies of the ‘intimate’ play a constitutive role in forming and shaping place identity. Accordingly, the thesis provides a more nuanced approach to the process of place-making in the suburbs. In doing so, it challenges the orthodoxy of a culturally inert suburbia on the fringes of the city, arguing that the suburbs provide a powerful conduit through which the contemporary urban condition can be better understood.

The industrial city and memories of ancient heritage: archeological discoveries at building sites along the urban stretch of the via Ostiense
Until the middle of the 19th century the area between the basilica of San Paolo and the gate in the city walls which also carries the name of Saint Paul appeared on maps as an agricultural area criss-crossed by pathways and country lanes and peppered with ancient ruins, farmhouses and country churches. After the proclamation of Rome as the capital city of the new Italian nation, a campaign of urban development began which definitively transformed this territory into what became Industrial Zone I of Rome, as declared by the General Regulatory Plan of Rome approved in 1883. In the following decades, the ambitious works for the creation of new infrastructures and industrial complexes were to profoundly alter the character of the area, almost completely destroying all trace of the ancient world. And yet this urban development, while causing an irreversible loss of precious remains of ancient structures, has at the same time given rise to fortuitous archeological discoveries, often very important ones. Through the study of archival documents recording the work carried out during this period along the via Ostiense, it is possible to reconstruct a rich archeological heritage which would otherwise be lost, and contribute to an improved picture of the ancient topography of the area.

L'avvio di un processo d'industrializzazione nel suburbio romano da un lato provocò una totale alterazione del paesaggio agricolo, dando l'avvio all'urbanizzazione, dall'altro costituì l'occasione per importanti rinvenimenti archeologici. Lo spoglio dei documenti d’archivio relativi ai lavori effettuati fra la fine dell'ottocento e i primi decenni del secolo successivo lungo il primo tratto della via Ostiense restituisce la memoria, altrimenti perduta, di un ricco patrimonio archeologico e contribuisce ad una migliore definizione della topografia antica dell’area.

Questa  ricerca ha come obiettivo lo studio delle trasformazioni del territorio romano oggi occupato dai quartieri Ostiense, Garbatella e Valco San Paolo tra le epoche arcaica, repubblicana e imperiale, articolato in fasi cronologiche e con particolare riferimento al condizionamento ambientale sull'organizzazione  della viabilità e degli insediamenti. Attraverso il vaglio sistematico di diverse fonti (strettamente archeologiche, ma anche storico-cartografiche e geo-morfologiche), nella prima fase del lavoro sono stati raccolti i dati antropici e naturali di un paesaggio oggi irriconoscibile perché completamente urbanizzato. Le informazioni ottenute, numerose ed eterogenee, sono state poi inserite in un Geographic Information System (GIS) appositamente predisposto e funzionale alla gestione integrata dei dati: le interrogazioni incrociate del  database e le sovrapposizioni di layers tematici hanno consentito di indentificare siti sinora poco noti e di comprendere resti altrimenti difficilmente correlabili, sia l'uno all'altro che rispetto all'ambiente originario circostante. Al termine della ricerca emerge l'immagine di un'area anticamente caratterizzata da una multiforme e talvolta inaspettata vitalità, lontana dall'idea di un suburbio desolato o confinato alla sola funzione funeraria.

The origins of this essay arise from an interest in the 18th century pleasure gardens of Dublin, in
particular Ranelagh Gardens, and follow a general study of the history of the suburb of Ranelagh
from its origins in the early 18th century to the present day.
It has been assumed that the Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens took their name after the renowned
Ranelagh Gardens in Chelsea, London. 1 Exploring this relationship further, the essay considers the
two concurrently – the similarities and differences between them and the degree to which one
influenced the other. Within a broader context, the idea of Dublin as a 'suburb' of London is also
briefly considered.
Returning to the scale of the individual gardens, a broad comparison between Dublin's Ranelagh
and London's Ranelagh is attempted. Taken into account are differences in the 'social concept' of a
pleasure garden, reasons for their rise and eventual decline, and their respective relationships with
neighbouring pleasure gardens. An attempt has been made to discuss this chronologically, and as
such investigate a certain 'time lag' that might exist between the two cities on a cultural level.
Fundamental to these investigations is a broad discussion on the events, audience, and perception of
pleasure gardens in both cities.

The Literature of Suburban Change (Edinburgh University Press, in press) examines the diverse body of cultural material produced since 1960 that responds to the defining habitat of twentieth-century USA: the suburbs. Martin Dines explores how writers have innovated across a range of forms and genres – including novel sequences, memoirs, plays, comics and short story cycles – in order to make sense of the complexity of suburbia. Drawing on insights from recent historiography and cultural geography, Dines offers a new perspective on the literary history of the US suburbs, and argues that by giving time back to these apparently timeless places, writers help reactivate the suburbs, presenting them not as fixed, finished and familiar but rather as living, multifaceted environments that are still in production and under exploration. 

Contents:
Acknowledgements                                            
List of Illustrations
Introduction: The Time of the Suburb         
1. The Everyman and his Car: Metropolitan Memory and the Novel Sequence     
2. Suburban Gothic and Banal Unhomeliness          
3. Some Shared Story: Suburban Memoir                  
4. Houses, Comics, Fish: Graphic Narrative Ecologies of the Suburban Home 
5. Devolved Authorship, Suburban Literacies and the Short Story Cycle        
Conclusion: Built to Last?: Staging Suburban Historicity in the Teardown Era
Notes
Index