Suburbs: the next slum? Explorations into the contested terrain of social construction and political discourse

Abstract

Suburbanization and suburbia have not only represented a substantial component of urbanization for decades, but have also been subject to social construction and political contestation. This usually unfolds in highly critical assessments of suburban landscape by research, policy and planning. Thus, suburbs are discursively framed as dystopia, and as the demise of the urban as such. In light of most recent developments on real estate and energy markets, and taking into account an at least perceived ‘renaissance’ of inner cities in metropolitan regions, the image of suburbs has changed again. It now represents despair and decline, even the next slum. Such discursive representations are based on an urban view rather than on a solid exploration of suburbs, and are ideologically constructed. In this context, this paper builds on the discursive shift in urban views and aims at reconstructing the way suburbs have been perceived and discursively framed in the past. By focusing on German developments and a comparative (North American) perspective, it argues that discursive practice confirms the long-standing professional neglect of suburbs; however, this has not resulted in a paradigm shift in ‘material’ urban development as yet. The main contention is that the suburbs are neither heaven nor hell, neither paradise nor slum. They just represent an ordinary, legitimate part of the urban, a hybrid that still lacks precise denomination regarding terminology, meaning and identity.