In this seminar course, we examine the most popular residential environment in America - a single-family house in suburbia. This housing form embodies the locus of attaining the American Dream, or does it? In order to understand the contemporary phenomenon of suburban sprawl, one must investigate its roots. The history of suburbia's set of protagonists includes 18th century English Evangelicals and the 19th century American pastoralists who emulated them. It includes socialistic material feminists whose proposals were drowned out by the big business interests of automobile and appliance manufacturers. And it includes the pioneering Levittowners and the Federal Housing Authority who supported them with (discriminatory) mortgage subsidy programs.
These groups and others created and transformed the suburban paradigm: from romantic 19th century elite enclaves to early 20th century model developments, some of which experimented with feminist innovations such as cooperative kitchens; through the post World War II boom in single-family tract housing connected by a network of federal highways; to the social turmoil of the 60's and the suburban architecture of fear and ennui as manifested by white flight, gated subdivisions, and sprawling shopping malls. Traced parallel to this history of transformation is an examination of the changing ideals of domesticity and the single-family house, as well as the role of women as traditional guardians and/or prisoners of this realm.
After this historical investigation, the course moves to a critical inquiry into the suburban conditions of today. Central to the current debate are the anti-sprawl principles of the Congress for the New Urbanism and the projects designed and built by its members. Additional possible threats to the continued growth of the suburban landscape are advances in telecommunications technologies as well as looming ecological disaster. Will suburbia succumb or assimilate?
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