In her two most recent publications, Dolores Hayden looks long and hard at suburban development patterns, and comes up with not only a way of contextualizing the decentralized built environment many of us find ourselves in, but also proposes some ideas as to how to improve it.
In "Building Suburbia," Hayden analyzes the patterns of government-subsidized private development outside of America's major city centers. She proceeds in chronological order, beginning in 1820, and continues thorough the present and near future, assessing prevalent development trends, and assigning catchy - if derisive - nicknames to nine types of suburban development characteristic of specific historical eras: "borderlands" (beginning circa 1820’s) "picturesque enclaves" (1850’s) "streetcar buildouts" (1870’s) "mail order and self built suburbs" (1900’s) "sitcom suburbs" (1940’s) "edge nodes" (1960’s) and "rural fringes" (1980’s-present).
Hayden shows through careful research how each type of pattern emerged, and by the book’s end, it becomes clear that the majority of suburban development was the product of years of builders' and regulators' intensive efforts at maximizing private profit at public expense. It may seem obvious when so stated that home building, like any other american industry, seeks a maximum return on profit and a comfortable regulatory environment in which to operate. But parts of this book are fascinating in the details of just how that regulatory environment was created, and the how decades of profit maximization in the suburban home and commercial building industries has shaped the daily experience of most americans. With a clear post-modern perspective, Hayden notes the racial, class, gender and environmental problems caused or exaccerbated by suburban development. And ever so rarely, she points out admirable attempts at good suburban design. The book begins with an examination of the group dynamic present in the early nineteenth-century suburban push. Hayden examines the tendencies toward upper-class communal country living, and includes many diagrams and pictures. She continues with the advent of streetcar suburbs, and the bizarre phenomenon of mail-order suburbs. The truly fascinating sections begin in the chapter on "sitcom suburbs,” when it becomes clear that the suburbs are no longer places to escape urban capitalism. Hayden begins one paragraph: "developers liked to say that the aquisition of a single family house and the process of furnishing and expanding it made blue collar residents ‘middle-class.’" It was also said that people who owned a suburban home and car(s) had to keep so busy to pay for their posessions that they could be counted on not to turn “communist.” In this respect, Hayden points out how suburban development became the heart of american capitalism and lent credence to the ideal of an open-class society.
By the 1950's, "vast american suburbs of the post-WWII era were shaped by legislative processes reflecting the power of the real estate, banking, and construction sectors, and the relative weakness of the planning and design professions." Among other key 20th century legislative changes, Hayden notes the rewriting of the federal tax code to permit write-offs for home mortgage payments and accellerated depreciation of the taxable value of new commercial construction in "greenfield" (i.e., open) areas. These innovations encouraged larger, more expensive homes, and cheaply made, poorly maintained shopping malls. In addition, the automobile, gas and cement lobbies combined to undermine earlier attempts at more dense, transport-efficient "streetcar suburbs," like Brooklyn Heights, New York. Eventually, most suburban residents became dependent on automobiles for basic needs, and automobiles, in turn, blew up the scale of suburban development, such that every home needed a garage or two, and every civic location needed expansive asphalt fields of parking.
Thus, by the end of the 20th century, upwardly mobile people came to live in huge homes located in far-flung and virtually random agglomerations of other huge homes, big-box retail stores, fast-food restaurants, freeways and office parks. Hayden examines the problems created by this set-up: long distances and high costs of car and home ownership combining to oppress low-wage service workers and immigrant nannies; asphalt runoff, auto exhaust and overextended infrastructure polluting the air and water; and a pervasive sense of placelessness and isolation. However, she almost completely ignores the segment of the population that is perfectly happy living in the suburbs. In that respect, her thesis is not comprehensive. She either assumes what she set out to prove – that the greater good served by reforming current development trends is paramount – or she assumes that the people who enjoy the ‘burbs – if they exist – are such a small contingent that they are not worth discussing.After describing the ills of sprawl, Hayden goes in search of solutions. She intelligently discusses the plusses and minusses of green building, "new urbanism," Disney-esque theme park developments, and the ever-so-creepy "house_n," designed by M.I.T. students and funded by – among other corporations – Proctor & Gamble and International Paper. However, Hayden believes these types of design innovations will not solve the problem entirely. She advocates for regional solutions, including the rebuilding of older suburbs, keeping in mind which of the historic development patterns originally created a particular place.
Of course, to completely re-value older suburbs, the federal tax code would have to be revised. But in the mean time, Hayden points to instances of thoughtful suburban design in projects like H.U.D.'s Concord Village in Inianapolis, which took account of historical building patterns of older suburbs in the area, and built houses consistent in scale and design.Hayden summarizes suburbia as "the hinge, the connection between past and future, between old inequalities and new possibilities. In all kinds of existing suburbs, inequalities of gender, class and race have been embedded in material form. So have unwise environmental choices." She concludes, "to preserve, renovate, and infill the suburban neighborhoods of the past can make the suburban city more egalitarian and sustainable."
These are admirable goals, and Hayden makes a good case for how and why to work toward them. And, thankfully, she includes many interesting diagrams and pictures. The question remains: is this what actual suburban residents actually want? And do their views matter? A recent New York Times article suggests that dense, walkable suburban development only commands 10% of new housing market demand.
In the “Field Guide to Sprawl” Hayden goes a step further with her descriptions of suburban development patterns. She combines crisp aerial photography of specific features of suburban “sprawl” with brief explanations of the snappy names given to such features by smug journalists and distressed planners and architects. Even more so than in Building Suburbia, it is clear that Hayden harbors not only a fascination, but also a distaste with conventional suburban development. In addition to the better known terms like "strip mall," Hayden provides some other keenly descriptive terms, like "edge node," "alligator," "zoomburb,” "parsley around the pig" and "pig in the python."
As is clear from those examples, this is, at its core, a book of jargon. And, as is the nature of jargon, the terms themselves are meaningless without decent explanation. Hayden provides good explanations sometimes, and some terms like edge node are almost self-explanatory. But other times, one wonders whether it will in fact be possible to identify the more obscure suburban features in real life, especially from the window of a passing car. And even assuming one can identify one feature or another, will anybody in the car understand when you say “hey, look, an alligator”? Nevertheless, it's a quick read, and especially if one harbors Hayden’s same slightly repulsed curiosity with suburbia, one will find it a thoroughly enjoyable – if not entirely useful – reading experience.
For more on what actual suburbanites actually want, see Robert Johnson, "Why 'New Urbanism' Isn't for Everyone," N.Y. Times (Feb. 20, 2005).
