Urban / Rural Hybrids: The Urbanisation of Former Suburbs (Urfsurbs)

Olaf Kühne

doi:10.1515/quageo-2016-0032

Abstract

AbstractIn pace with changing social developments, cities undergo regular processes of transformation. Thus, following a temporary preference for suburban living, the inner city has for some years now been enjoying a residential renaissance. A further, as yet little noticed, trend is the urbanisation of former suburbs. Encompassing urbanisation and gentrification processes found in the inner-ring suburbs, this entails a breaking of established dichotomies and the development of hybrid phenomena that can be encapsulated in the acronym URFSURBS: ‘urbanisation of former suburbs’. Focusing on examples from Southern California and Greater Paris, this article places these developments in context and outlines their implications for future research.

Highlights

In pace with changing social developments, cities have always undergone regular changes in settlement structures and socio-spatial relationships, and too in their material and structural requirements
This is not universal: examples from the USA, France and eastern Europe (Kühne 2016; Kühne et al 2017) indicate counter-processes of urbanisation, gentrification and hybridisation that create a new type of urban area in suburbia: the urbanised former suburbs we call URFSURBS
Suburbanisation was for a while a predominant theme in both US and European urban research

Summary

Introduction

In pace with changing social developments, cities have always undergone regular changes in settlement structures and socio-spatial relationships, and too in their material and structural requirements Both in the USA and in Europe, processes of this kind have accelerated since the end of the Second World War, becoming increasingly clear in the later 20th and early 21st centuries. Atkinson, Bridge 2004; Blasius 2008; Helbrecht 1996; Helbrecht, Dirksmeier 2011; Hesse 2008, 2010; Palen 1984) This is not universal: examples from the USA, France and eastern Europe (Kühne 2016; Kühne et al 2017) indicate counter-processes of urbanisation, gentrification and hybridisation that create a new type of urban area in suburbia: the urbanised former suburbs we call URFSURBS.

Development trends and research areas

URFSURBS in San Diego

URFSURBS in Greater Paris