Abstract
If queried about the essential characteristics of the postwar suburban landscape in the United States, most responses would mention curvilinear residential streets lined with tract houses, shopping centers marooned in the middle of massive surface parking lots, and interstate highways. These elements are assuredly character defining, yet they are also all part of the exterior landscape of suburbia. In contrast, Andrea Vesentini’s new study Indoor America: The Interior Landscape of Postwar Suburbia presents the less examined interior landscape of suburbia constructed during the quarter century following World War II as equally influential. He writes: “The focus on ‘spreading out’ as the only guideline of decentralization has led many historians to forget that ‘turning inward’ was as compelling a precept . . . Suburbia is so often described through metaphors of fragmentation because what might at first look like an uninterrupted sprawl is in fact a collection of insular interiors: little boxes and big boxes held together by moving boxes” (5).
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