Review: Pastoral Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes, by Louise A. Mozingo

Abstract

Louise A. Mozingo Pastoral Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011, 336 pp., 49 color and 45 b/w illus. $32.95, ISBN 100262015439 At the beginning of this carefully researched and illuminating study of suburban corporate headquarters, research centers, and office parks, author Louise Mozingo quotes a principal in the offices of well-known landscape architect Peter Walker. Responding to a comment from her about the scale of the landscape of a suburban office project in Texas designed by the firm, he said, “Well, you know, this is the American Versailles.” On this, Mozingo writes in Pastoral Capitalism : “The comment was professional puffery, to be sure, but this not-quite-offhand remark stuck with me.” Years later, the curiosity that was piqued by the encounter eventually resulted in this book. Amazingly enough, despite the way the landscapes she describes were among the most conspicuous products of postwar America and are fast becoming common elsewhere around the world, this is the first serious study of them. Fortunately, author and subject are ideally matched here. Mozingo, a professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, has produced an important book. Carefully researched, well written, beautifully illustrated, and nicely produced by the MIT Press, it is likely to be a standard work on this subject for many years to come. The core chapters focus on a series of corporate landscapes created during the decades immediately following the end of World War II. Although Mozingo sees prototypes earlier, for example General Electric’s Nela Park complex outside Cleveland in the 1920s, she believes that the real start of the story comes after the war, when American corporations perfected their brand of managerial capitalism and American cities were experiencing a massive shift of population and resources from city centers to the suburbs. Mozingo does a good job describing some of the motivations for companies to move out of cities. To some degree, the …