The American
Suburb
Professor Dolores Hayden,
Office: Room 315, 180 York St.(A and A), 432-4782
Office hours: TU 10-12 or by appointment
T.A. Julie Herbst 624-7155
Website address is http://www.yale.edu/amst401a
From the "borderlands" of the 1820s to the picturesque enclaves of
the 1840s, through the dense streetcar suburbs of the late
nineteenth century, the mail order house boom of the 1920s, the
mass-produced bedroom communities of the 1950s, and the sprawling
"edge cities" of the 1980s and 1990s, suburban development has
formed a major part of the American cultural landscape. The
seminar will explore the suburb as a built environment reflecting
complex ideals about architecture and land use, family and gender,
nature and culture, community and separation, private and public
life.
Throughout the class we will ask how the production of suburban
space is part of a larger economic process of urbanization, and we
will explore how this larger process has been influenced by
increasing Federal government intervention in the twentieth
century. We will look at how planners, architects, and landscape
architects today imagine design alternatives to suburban sprawl.
And we will speculate about how issues of race, global economic
development, and cyberspace may affect the suburbs of the 21st
century.
Aerial photographer Alex S. MacLean will participate in the class.
Students will be asked to write a brief essay (3-4 pages) on
MacLean’s aerial photographs of urban and suburban spaces
available on our class website. There will also be a mapping
exercise and a research paper of approximately 15 pages.
Required reader is available at TYCO; Jackson, Hayden, Young, and
Fulton readings (marked *) are recommended for purchase at Yale
COOP Bookstore. Many others are available for optional purchase.
Reserves of all readings can be found either at A and A Library or
Cross Campus Library.
Enrollment is limited to 15.
September 8
Introduction to the Class, Definitions and Debates,
For general background, please read, in this week:
Bibliographical essay, William Sharpe and Leonard Wallock, "Bold
New City or Built Up 'Burb? Redefining Contemporary Suburbia,"
American Quarterly 46 (March 1994):1-30, with responses by Robert
Bruegmann, Robert Fishman, Margaret Marsh, and June Manning
Thomas, 31-61.
Herbert Janick, "Connecticut: The Suburban State," Humanities
News, Connecticut Humanities Council Newsletter, Fall 1993, 1.
Kenneth Helphand and Cynthia Girling, Yard, Street, Park: The
Design of Suburban Open Space (New York: Wiley, 1994): 21-46.
Landscape architects take a look at land use.
September 15
Early and Mid-Nineteenth Century Suburbs: Spatial and
Social Models of the Borderland and the Picturesque
Enclave
*Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the
United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 3-11, 45-
102.
Henry C. Binford, "The Early Nineteenth Century Suburb: Creating a
Suburban Ethos in Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1820-
1860," in Daniel Schaffer, ed., Two Centuries of American
Planning, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 41-
60.
Margaret Marsh, Suburban Lives (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers
University Press, 1990), "The Suburban City Beautiful," (Palos
Verdes, CA), 165-181.
John Stilgoe, Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-
1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 21-25. Also scan
illustrations for entire book, which is on reserve.
September 22
Late Nineteenth Century and Early Twentieth Century
Suburbs: Elite Enclaves, Streetcar Suburbs, and Feminist
Alternatives
Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution (Cambridge Mass. :
The MIT Press, 1981), "Introduction," "Feminism in Model
Households" (on Catherine Beecher), "Housewives in Harvard
Square," 1-29, 54-89.
Sam Bass Warner, Jr., Streetcar Suburbs (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press, 1972), 1-14, 67-86 , 153-166.
Gwendolyn Wright, Moralism and the Model Home (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1980), "The Structure of the Suburbs," 79-104.
September 29
Bedroom Suburbs: 1890s to 1930s Mail Order Houses, 1940s
and 1950s, Model Houses for the Millions
Mary Anne O'Boyle, "Recollections" by the owner of a 1909 home, in
Katherine Cole Stevenson and H. Ward Jandl, Houses by Mail: A
Guide to Houses from Sears, Roebuck and Company (Washington, D.C.:
The Preservation Press, 1986), 8-9.
Alan Gowans, The Comfortable House: North American Suburban
Architecture, 1890-1930 (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1986), 16-67, 209-
215. Cannot be xeroxed--on reserve.
*Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier ,"Federal Subsidy and the
Suburban Dream," "The Baby Boom and the Age of the Subdivision,"
190-218, 231-245.
Optional--highly recommended:
A.C. Spectorsky, "What is an Exurbanite?" The Exurbanites
(Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1955), 1-13.
John Keats, The Crack in the Picture Window (satire) (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1957), 1-22.
Eric Hodgins, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (novel)(New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1946), "Possession," 226-233.
W.D. Wetherell, The Man Who Loved Levittown (title story in this
collection)(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985), 1-
17.
Richard Ford, Independence Day, (New York: Vintage, 1996): 57-88.
Gish Jen, Typical American, (novel) (New York: Plume, 1991), "The
New House," 156-163.
D.J. Waldie, Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1996). Account of Lakewood, California, where the author
grew up and is now a town official. In the 1950s this was the
largest suburb in the US. William Garnett's famous suburban aerial
photographs were taken here and a few illustrate this work.
October 6
1970-2000, Automobiles, Sprawl, and Edge Cities
Douglas Rae, working paper on automobiles, mobility, race.
Stephen Dunn, "The Sacred," (poem).
*Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, "The Drive-In Culture of
Contemporary America," 246-271.
Drummond Buckley, "A Garage in the House," in The Car and the
City, ed. Margaret Crawford and Martin Wachs, (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan, 1991), 124-140.
Margaret Crawford, "The World in a Shopping Mall," in Michael
Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park (New York: Hill and Wang/
The Noonday Press, 1992), 3-30.
Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (New York:
Doubleday Anchor, 1991), 1-15, 509-511.
Optional:
"Who is that 'Lady in a Car'?" New York Times, Dec. 8, 1994, B1.
"Town Sired by Autos Seeks Soul Downtown," New York Times Aug. 7,
1996, A8.
Colleen Sheehy, "Art in Your Own Front Yard," Public Art Review
(Spring/Summer 1994), 22ff.
Edward W. Soja, "Inside Exopolis: Scenes from Orange County," in
Sorkin, ed., 94-122.
October 13
Suburbanizing Rural Areas
Alex S. MacLean, aerial photographer, guest lecture,
"Aerial Photography and the American Suburb"
Elizabeth Humstone and Julie Campoli, planner and
landscape architect, "Vermont Land Patterns"
Alex S. MacLean, Look at the Land, and Taking Measures Across the
American Landscape, two books of aerial photographs, on reserve.
*Dwight Young, Alternatives to Sprawl (Cambridge: Lincoln
Institute of Land Policy, 1995).
October 20
Bettina Drew, guest speaker. "Researching Disney’s
Celebration."
Bettina Drew, "Celebration," The Yale Review, 86(Summer 1998):51-
70. Excerpt from Crossing the Expendable Landscape (St. Paul:
Graywolf, 1998).
Russ Rymer, "Back to the Future: Disney Reinvents the Company
Town," Harper's 293 (October 1996), 65-71ff.
October 27
Design Proposals for Ending Suburban Sprawl
Proposals for the improvement of suburban fabric by architects,
landscape architects, ecologists, and planners.
*Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of
Housing, Work, and Family Life (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984), 3-
59, 173-188.
Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, "The Second Coming of
the American Small Town," Historic Preservation Forum (Spring
1995), 30-45.
Alex Marshall, "Suburb in Disguise," Metropolis 16 (July-August
1996), 70-71, 100-103. (Kentlands, Md.)
*William Fulton, The New Urbanism: Hope or Hype for American
Communities? (Cambridge: Lincoln Institute, 1996). (A 32 page
report with and extended bibliography.)
Peter Calthorpe, with guidelines by Shirley Poticha, The Next
American Metropolis: Ecology, Community, and the American Dream,
(Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993). On reserve at A
and A Library (cannot be xeroxed). Be sure to read the
introductory material and the guidelines.
Optional:
Sara Stein, Noah's Garden: Restoring the Ecology of our Own
Backyards (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), 34-51.
Robert D. Yaro, Randall G. Arendt, Harry Dodson, and Elizabeth
Brabec, Dealing with Change in the Connecticut River Valley: A
Design Manual for Conservation and Development fifth printing
(Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 1993), 16-25.
November 3
Race, Class, and the Suburban/Inner City Split
Anthony Downs, Opening Up the Suburbs: An Urban Strategy for
America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 1-16.
Vicky Kemper, "Home Inequity," Common Cause Magazine, Summer 1994,
14-18.
David R. Goldfield, "The Future of the Metropolitan Region," in
Schaffer, 303-322.
David Rusk, "Reuniting City and Suburb: The Key to Inner City
Progress," In Poverty and Race (PRRAC Newsletter), 2 (May/June
1993),1ff., and responses (July/Aug. 1993), 7-12.
November 10
Suburbs in the 21st Century?: Potential Impacts of Global
Economic Systems and Cyberspace
Stephen Doheny-Farina, “Immersive Virtualists and Wired
Communitarians," The Wired Neighborhood (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1996), 19-37.
Peter O. Muller, "The Suburban Transformation of the Globalizing
American City," Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science 551 (May 1997): 44-58.
Optional:
William J. Mitchell, City of Bits (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995).
November 10,17
Discussion of Student Papers in Progress
November 24
No class. Thanksgiving vacation has started for Yale College.
December 1
Concluding Session--Wrap-up. Seminar discussion of all
students' final papers, class evaluation.
First Assignment
The class will be working with Alex MacLean's aerial photographs
of suburban landscapes and buildings in Connecticut available on
our class website, coordinated by Julie Herbst.
This is a short essay, 2-4 pages. Pick a contemporary photograph
by Alex MacLean that shows dwellings, yards, and a block pattern
in suburban terrain. Analyze the patterns of building, yard, and
block as they appear in the image--Borderland, Picturesque
Enclave, Streetcar Suburb, Bedroom Suburb, or Edge City? What is
the approximate date of construction? How has this place changed
over time? Use the historical context photos and class readings to
help identify patterns and changes.
Second Assignment
Mapping a suburb. Each of you will develop a spatial question
related to your term paper topic. Julie Herbst will be available
to guide you in locating appropriate data bases and graphic
programs.
Optional reading:
David Shenk, Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut New York:
Harper Collins, 1997), 19-33. (Located at end of course packet)
Term Paper (Possible case study town--Guilford, CT)
This longer paper should run about 15 pages, including
bibliography, footnotes. Choose your own topic dealing with some
aspect of the history and design of American suburban space. The
readings in the course give us a common ground for discussion and
analysis. Whatever your specific research topic, the paper should
draw on the required class readings as well as on a wider
bibliography, which may include some of the optional readings.
For this longer essay, the topic needs to be focused and
developed. What historical or contemporary question will your
paper address? What source materials will help you answer it?
Review the course packet and reserve books. Consider what time
period interests you the most. Is there an important aspect of
social history you wish to examine in spatial terms? Is there a
spatial history that needs some social explanation? In addition to
the aerial photographs available on the website, what other
sources might be helpful? Consider map research, plans for towns
or tracts, architectural drawings, Census data, builders' pattern
books, historic photographs. (Ask what kinds of sources are used
by some of the historians, planners, and landscape architects
whose work we are reading.)
Office hours: Tu. 10-12, sign up on door or call for appointment,
432-4782. Come to see me as soon as you formulate a possible
topic for your term paper. (No extensions except emergencies.)
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