Suburban Development and Governance

Abstract

The suburb is the dominant development in contemporary urban affairs. This article charts the metes and bounds of the phenomenon, and categorizes and summarizes thinking and empirical research about suburbs. Suburban literature has been marked by a good deal of myth making until relatively recently, so that good comparative or empirical studies are rare. The fact that suburbia is vast and confusing, comprising some 5,000 villages, towns, and cities, and some 78 million citizens, makes analysis difficult, if not virtually impossible, except on a gross aggregate basis. Consequently, suburbia has been largely treated as a residual category of Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs), where it is rather common to first identify the central city, and then refer to the balance as the suburban ring, lumping inner ring older suburbs with exurbia and much rural area. These stereotypes and overgeneralizations continue to plague studies.