Dear Crit-Geog colleagues,
Apologies for any x-posting.
Please find below a CfP for a special session on the suburbs - From Dreamscape to Nightmare? The Life, Death and Resurrection of Suburbia in the 20th and 21st Century – for next year’s AAG meeting in Los Angeles.
If you are interested in taking part in this proposed special session please send your abstract (250 words max) to us by no later than Friday 12th October, 2012. As per the call for papers abstract below we are seeking a diverse mix of papers – theoretical, methodological, empirical and ideological – analysing various facets of suburbia and suburbanites.
Regards
Paul Maginn and Chris Niedt
Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers, 2013, Los Angeles, 9-13 April
From Dreamscape to Nightmare? The Life, Death and Resurrection of Suburbia in the 20th and 21st Century
From a British perspective, the stereotypical leafy green, spacious, and salubrious suburb has its roots in the ideas of the garden city movement and Ebenezer Howard’s famous Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1902). This suburban vision was presented as a utopian landscape where a man (and his family) could enjoy the benefits of both town and country, with relatively easy access to the city for his employment. From an American and Australian perspective, mass suburbanisation accelerated in the post-war years, by a combination of factors including economic growth, pro-suburban government policies, and the rise of the automobile. Post-war suburbia in the US, was portrayed as offering tranquillity and safety, manicured lawns and white picket fences, success and social mobility, homogenous neighbours, low tax-high service local government, and domestic havens for women. This was a representation of a (mainly) middle-class idyll. In reality, of course, US suburbs were diverse spaces in class and ethnic terms. The Australian suburban trajectory was somewhat different: suburbs were seen as the preserve of the ‘middle-classes’, as well as the ‘working classes’ who either purchased their homes or rented them from Public Housing Commissions and Departments. Ultimately, since the mid-20th century the suburbs have been socially constructed and promoted by developers and government as ‘dreamscapes’.
Whilst this dreamscape image of suburbia essentially endures today, the suburbs, especially outer-metropolitan based ones, have been increasingly perceived as ‘blandscapes’ on account of their homogenous built form, McMansion-esque housing, over-dependency on the automobile and lack of services and social infrastructure. Moreover, the on-going economic downturn since 2008, spurred to a large extent by the sub-prime crisis in the US, has given rise to a suburban nightmare. Suburbs confront the spectre of vulnerability to energy shocks and swings in the housing market – exemplified by large-scale housing foreclosures in the US and the emergence of ‘ghost estates’ in cities such as Dublin (Ireland) and outer suburban communities in Australian cities (and other sprawling cities elsewhere). New Urbanists have advocated planning principles that would densify residential areas within transit-oriented developments in new outer-suburban sub-divisions and retro-fit inner suburbs as a means of enhancing sustainability and reinvigorating a sense of local community.
Suburbia then finds itself at an interesting crossroads in the second decade of the 21st century. On the one hand it remains the space/place that most of our city populations reside and still aspire to move to. On the other hand, however, the suburbs appear to be losing some of their glossy veneer and appeal. This special session seeks contributions from a diverse range of theoretical, sub-disciplinary, methodological and ideological perspectives that unpack the meanings, significance, role, function, experiences, attitudes, and destiny of suburbia and suburbanites. We welcome papers that speak to, but are by no means limited to, the following broad topics/questions:
o Suburbia and economic crisis
o Abandonment and ‘ghost suburbs’
o Ethnic homogenisation/diversification within suburbia
o Attitudes, experiences, and aspirations of suburbanites
o Politics and suburbanites/suburbia
o Cultural representations of the suburbs and suburbanites in popular culture
o Environmental and ecological limits to/opportunities within suburbia
o House prices, foreclosures, negative equity, and ontological (in)security
o Visions for new, sustainable suburbs
o Structural changes in suburban preferences
o Local suburban government, austerity, and discontent
o New social and political movements in the suburbs
If you are interested in taking part in this special session please send your abstract (250 words max) to [log in to unmask] (Hofstra University) and [log in to unmask] (University of Western Australia)
Paul J. Maginn PhD MPIA
Assoc Professor (Urban and Regional Planning) &
Deputy Director UWA_AHURI Research Centre
T: +61 (0)8 6488 2711
M: +61 (0)421 545190
Skype pjmaginn
