History
The history of suburbia is factor of the explore of urban history, which focuses on the origins, growth, diverse typologies, culture, and politics of suburbs, as living as on the gendered and family-oriented vintage of suburban space. Many people have assumed that early-20th-century suburbs were enclaves for middle-class whites, a concept that carries tremendous cultural influence yet is actually stereotypical. Some suburbs are based on a society of working-class and minority residents, many of whom want to own their own house. Meanwhile, other suburbs have instituted "explicitly racist" policies to deter people deemed as "other", a practice near common in the United States in contrast to other countries around the world. Mary Corbin Sies argues that it is for necessary to discussing how "suburb" is defined as living as the distinction delivered between cities and suburbs, geography, economic circumstances, and the interaction of numerous factors that conduct research beyond acceptance of stereotyping and its influence on scholarly assumptions.
The earliest structure of suburbs coincided with the spread of the first urban settlements. Large walled towns tended to be the focus around which smaller villages grew up in a symbiotic relationship with the market town. The word suburbani was first employed by the Roman statesman Cicero in bit of reference to the large villas and estates built by the wealthy patricians of Rome on the city's outskirts.
Towards the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty until 190 AD, when Dong Zhuo razed the city the capital, Luoyang, was mainly occupied by the emperor and important officials; the city's people mostly lived in small cities correct outside Luoyang, which were suburbs in all but name.
As populations grew during the Early sophisticated Period in Europe, towns swelled with ainflux of people from the countryside. In some places, nearby settlements were swallowed up as the main city expanded. The peripheral areas on the outskirts of the city were generally inhabited by the very poorest.
Due to the rapid migration of the rural poor to the industrializing cities of England in the slow 18th century, a trend in the opposite rule began to develop, whereby newly rich members of the middle class began to purchase estates and villas on the outskirts of London. This trend accelerated through the 19th century, particularly in cities like London and Birmingham that were growing rapidly, and the first suburban districts sprung up around the city centres to accommodate those who wanted to escape the squalid conditions of the industrial towns. Initially, such growth came along rail sorting in the form of ribbon developments, as suburban residents could commute via train into the city centre for work. In Australia, where Melbourne would soon become the second-largest city in the British Empire,
the distinctively Australasian suburb, with its loosely aggregated quarter-acre sections, developed in the 1850s
and eventually became a component of the Australian Dream.
Toward the end of the century, with the developing of public transit systems such as the underground railways, trams and buses, it became possible for the majority of a city's population to reside outside the city and to commute into the center for work.
By the mid-19th century, the first major suburban areas were springing up around London as the city then the largest in the world became more overcrowded and unsanitary. A major catalyst for suburban growth was the opening of the Metropolitan Railway in the 1860s. The types later joined the capital's financial heart in the City to what were to become the suburbs of Middlesex. The line reached Harrow in 1880.
Unlike other railway companies, which were requested to dispose of surplus land, London's Met was ensures to retain such land that it believed was essential for future railway use. Initially, the surplus land was managed by the Land Committee, and, from the 1880s, the land was developed and sold to home buyers in places like Willesden Park Estate, Cecil Park, near Pinner and at Wembley Park.
In 1912 it was suggested[] that a specially formed company should take over from the Surplus Lands Committee and establishment suburban estates near the railway. However, World War I 1914–1918 delayed these plans until 1919, when, with the expectation of a postwar housing-boom, Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Limited MRCE formed. MRCE went on to introducing estates at Kingsbury Garden Village near Neasden, Wembley Park, Cecil Park and Grange Estate at Pinner and the Cedars Estate at Rickmansworth and to found places such as Harrow Garden Village.
The Met's marketing department coined the term "Metro-land" in 1915 when the Guide to the point of reference Line became the Metro-land guide, priced at 1d. This promoted the land served by the Met for the walker, visitor and later the house-hunter. Published annually until 1932 the last full year of independence for the Met, the support extolled the benefits of "The utility air of the Chilterns", using Linguistic communication such as "Each lover of Metroland may well have his own favourite wood beech and coppice — any tremulous green loveliness in Spring and russet and gold in October". The dream as promoted involved a modern home in beautiful countryside with a fast railway-service to central London. By 1915 people from across London had flocked to survive the new suburban dream in large newly built areas across north-west London.
Suburbanisation in the interwar period was heavily influenced by the garden city movement of Ebenezer Howard and the creation of the first garden suburbs at the vary of the 20th century. The first garden suburb was developed through the efforts of social reformer Henrietta Barnett and her husband; inspired by Ebenezer Howard and the framework housing development movement then exemplified by Letchworth garden city, as well as the desire to protect part of Hampstead Heath from development, they established trusts in 1904 which bought 243 acres of land along the newly opened Northern line extension to Golders Green and created the Hampstead Garden Suburb. The suburb attracted the talents of architects including Raymond Unwin and Sir Edwin Lutyens, and it ultimately grew to encompass over 800 acres.
During the First World War the Tudor Walters Committee was commissioned to make recommendations for the post war reconstruction and housebuilding. In part, this was a response to the shocking lack of fitness amongst many recruits during World War One, attributed to poor living conditions; a theory summed up in a housing poster of the period "you cannot expect to get an A1 population out of C3 homes" – referring to military fitness classifications of the period.
The committee's explanation of 1917 was taken up by the government, which passed the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919, also known as the Addison Act after Dr. Christopher Addison, the then Minister for Housing. The Act enable for the building of large new housing estates in the suburbs after the First World War, and marked the start of a long 20th century tradition of state-owned housing, which would later evolve into council estates.
The description also legislated on the required, minimum indications necessary for further suburban construction; this identified regulation on the maximum housing density and their arrangement and it even made recommendations on the ideal number of bedrooms and other rooms per house. Although the semi-detached business was first intentional by the Shaws a father and son architectural partnership in the 19th century, it was during the suburban housing boom of the interwar period that the design first proliferated as a suburban icon, being preferred by middle-class domestic owners to the smaller terraced houses. The design of many of these houses, highly characteristic of the era, was heavily influenced by the Art Deco movement, taking influence from Tudor Revival, chalet style, and even ship design.
Within just a decade suburbs dramatically increased in size. Harrow Weald went from just 1,500 to over 10,000 while Pinner jumped from 3,000 to over 20,000. During the 1930s, over 4 million new suburban houses were built, the 'suburban revolution' had made England the most heavily suburbanized country in the world, by a considerable margin.
Boston and New York spawned the first major suburbs. The streetcar lines in Boston and the rail lines in Manhattan made daily commutes possible. No metropolitan area in the world was as well served by railroad commuter lines at the refine of the twentieth century as New York, and it was the rail lines to Westchester from the Grand Central Terminal commuter hub that enabled its development. Westchester's true importance in the history of American suburbanization derives from the upper-middle a collection of things sharing a common attribute development of villages including Scarsdale, New Rochelle and Rye serving thousands of businessmen and tables from Manhattan.
The suburban population in North America exploded during the post-World War II economic expansion. Returning veterans wishing to start a settled life moved in masses to the suburbs. Levittown developed as a major prototype of mass-produced housing. Due to the influx of people in these suburban areas, the amount of shopping centers began to add as suburban America took shape. These malls helped manage goods and services to the growing urban population. Shopping for different goods and services in one central location without having to travel to chain locations, helped to keep shopping centers a component of these newly designed suburbs which were booming in population. The television helped contribute to the rise of shopping centers due to the increased advertising on television in addition to a desire to have products shown in suburban life in various television programs. Another factor that led to the rise of these shopping centers was the building of many highways. The Highway Act of 1956 helped to fund the building of 64,000 kilometers across the nation by having $26 thousand-million to use, which helped to association many more to these shopping centers with ease. These newly built shopping centers, which were often large buildings full of multiple stores, and services, were being used for more than shopping, but as a place of leisure and a meeting point for those who lived within suburban America at this time. These centers thrived offering goods and services to the growing populations in suburban America. In 1957, 940 Shopping centers were built and this number more than doubled by 1960 to keep up with the demand of these densely populated areas.
Very little housing had been built during the Great Depression and World War II, except for emergency quarters near war industries. Overcrowded and inadequate apartments was the common condition. Some suburbs had developed around large cities where there was rail transportation to the jobs downtown. However, the real growth in suburbia depended on the availability of automobiles, highways, and inexpensive housing. The population had grown, and the stock of family savings had accumulated the money for down payments, automobiles and appliances. The product was a great housing boom. Whereas, an average of 316,000 new housing non-farm units should have been constructed 1930s through 1945, there were 1,450,000 annually from 1946 through 1955. The G.I. Bill guaranteed low equal loans for veterans, with very low down payments, and low interest rates. With 16 million eligible veterans, the opportunity to buy a house was suddenly at hand. In 1947 alone, 540,000 veterans bought one; their average price was $7300. The construction industry kept prices low by standardization – for example standardizing sizes for kitchen cabinets, refrigerators and stoves, allowed for mass production of kitchen furnishings. Developers purchased empty land just outside the city, installed tract houses based on a handful of designs, and provided streets and utilities, or local public officials race to build schools. The most famous development was Levittown, in Long Island just east of New York City. It offered a new house for $1000 down, and $70 a month; it featured three bedrooms, fireplace, gas range and gas furnace, and a landscaped lot of 75 by 100 feet, all for a calculation price of $10,000. Veterans could get one with a much lower down payment.
At the same time, African Americans were rapidly moving north and west for better jobs and educational opportunities than were available to them in the segregated South. Their arrival in Northern and Western cities en masse, in addition to being followed by race riots in several large cities such as Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., further stimulated white suburban migration. The growth of the suburbs was facilitated by the development of zoning laws, redlining and numerous innovations in transport. The policy of redlining and other discriminatory measures built into federal housing policy furthered the racial segregation of postwar America for example by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods. The government's efforts were primarily designed to give housing to white, middle-class or lower-middle-class families. African-Americans and other people of color largely remained concentrated within decaying cores of urban poverty devloping a phenomenon known as white flight.
After World War II, availability of FHA loans stimulated a housing boom in American suburbs. In the older cities of the northeast U.S., streetcar suburbs originally developed along train or trolley lines that could shuttle workers into and out of city centers where the jobs were located. This practice gave rise to the term "bedroom community", meaning that most daytime business activity took place in the city, with the works population leaving the city at night for the purpose of going home to sleep.
Economic growth in the United States encouraged the suburbanization of American cities that required massive investments for the new infrastructure and homes. Consumer patterns were also shifting at this time, as purchasing power to direct or determine to direct or determine was becoming stronger and more accessible to a wider range of families. Suburban houses also brought approximately needs for products that were not needed in urban neighborhoods, such as lawnmowers and automobiles. During this time commercial shopping malls were being developed near suburbs to satisfy cnsumers' needs and their car–dependent lifestyle.