archetypal suburbia
a compendium of sad beige problems
The beige house sat at the end of the cul-de-sac. On each side of it were four equally beige counterparts — they were obviously different in form, but one had the feeling that as soon as you looked away, the ability to articulate these differences was lost. The lawns all had telltale signs of being inconsistently manicured by suburban dads. Curtains (all in shades of grey) were drawn, as it was 4:37 in the afternoon, just before the commuter brigades began to make their way home. The driveways were —
Alright, we’ll stop, don’t leave.
If you can perfectly visualize this type of place, you’re not the only one. The archetypal American suburb has become a recognizable feature in the landscape of almost any town with more than 50,000 people. Naturally, it has bled into Canada, another country with vastly varied population density and enough space to theoretically build full houses for every nuclear family, blended family, and set of grandparents in the nation. For kids who grow up in a place like that, it can feel sheltered and boring, fulfilling every item on their parents’ checklist (good schools, lots of parks, low crime) but offering nothing to inspire or excite anyone under the age of 30. These kids grow up, get their driver’s licenses and drive as far away as possible for whole days, go to college in a new and interesting town, move around for work, and then often settle in the exact same kind of place where they grew up to raise their own kids — the cycle is well-documented.
As someone who grew up in exactly such a place, I sometimes catch myself in the throes of an internal argument: I could MAYBE move back home, but only after ten years away versus I will never subject my kids to the horror of beige.
Since we the authors met in an urban planning class, this topic is high-stakes for us. We’ve had to reign in our innate desire to explore every rabbithole of the topic even more than usual (which is saying something). But it’s difficult to overstate how strongly we believe that while the phenomenon of archetypal suburbia has an immediate and obvious aesthetic effect on any viewer, there are much deeper motivations and implications in the realms of such important topics as politics, culture, and even the American psyche.
First, we should try to overcome our own biases and admit that suburban living is clearly attractive to many North Americans, as they continue to leave both rural towns and large cities to “settle down.” Many see suburbs as providing a better quality of life, allowing the upper-middle class to afford large detached residences in areas with little perceived crime and excellent schools while remaining close to large urban centers with strong economies. While it’s difficult to deny that these advantages are easier to come by in suburbia than in other types of communities, they often come at the expense of strong social ties, community trust, and individuality.
The history of suburban settlement is fundamentally tied to fears of crime — the initial wave of post-WWII suburbanization consisted largely of “white flight” (enabled by the then-recent spread of the automobile) from inner cities to more distant communities that were considered safer, particularly for children. Even though most suburbs live up to their reputation for low crime rates, the concentration of residents concerned about the issue has given much of suburbia a perception that crime is a rampant issue outside of their own safe haven — a perception compounded by the twenty-four hour news cycles’ obsessive coverage of FloridaMan-esque shenanigans. The result of this seems to be a certain “fortress mentality,” exemplified by expensive private security systems and devices like Ring doorbells. Aside from the privacy implications of essentially streaming entire neighborhoods over CCTV to private companies with questionable security protocols, constantly anxious suburbanites have produced communities where the slightest unusual observation is considered a potential transgression, leading at best to private shaming on NextDoor groups and at worst to potentially violent encounters with law enforcement. It’s often the case that behaviors exhibited by people in extreme poverty are viewed by suburbanites as intentional and sinister; sleeping in one’s car is a good example. This paranoia is well-captured in two phenomena linked almost exclusively to suburbs: HOAs and NIMBY.
If these acronyms are foreign to you, count yourself lucky. An HOA is a homeowners’ association: if you believe the subreddit r/fuckHOA, this neighborhood organization is comprised solely of middle-class tyrants living a life of tedium who foam at the mouth at any opportunity to tell you that your fence is eggshell white instead of WonderBread white and fine you $200 for every week it’s not resolved. While they are also the ones who uphold standards like not keeping trash on your front lawn or not parking a dilapidated old RV (and potential meth lab) in your driveway for all time, they can transform easily into rigid and trigger-happy rulekeepers who punish infractions unequally and enforce complete homogeneity within a neighborhood.
NIMBY is a mentality, a mindset, a lifestyle: Not In My BackYard. It explains the hypocrisy of a suburbanite saying “Of course we should give those homeless people a place to live! But can’t we do it somewhere else? What if my kid gets attacked by a heroin needle-wielding vagabond?” Based on what we know about the exponential power of paranoia, this thought process is understandable to an extent, but becomes impractical when thoughtfully considered and verges on income-based discrimination.
The suburbs also allow for the unnatural convergence of political identities. When your entire street is flying Confederate flags alongside their red, white, and blue, standing out can be unwise. You can try to make a statement with a donkey-clad lawn sign or a Black Lives Matter flag, but you might risk putting a target on your back. So people, reasonably so, either keep quiet about their political beliefs and try to ignore the racist grandpa across the street at the community barbeque, or marginalize themselves: the former reinforces the perceived political homogeneity, and the latter can make neighbors hateful, which is not a good environment to live in. To be absolutely clear, this is also true when you reverse the political beliefs, though it’s arguably much rarer.
Whichever direction it happens in, this political convergence is only one example of the broader trend of suburban homogeneity: rigidity and monotony manifest themselves not only in architecture, but begin to permeate the community’s social fabric. Individuality becomes a flaw rather than a virtue, singling one out as a poor fit for the “perfect community” — a disturbing reminder of suburbia’s origins as a post-WWII white racial project to maintain islands of segregation away from increasingly wealthy and educated people of color.
No discussion of suburbia would be complete without mentioning the much-maligned “McMansion.” The archetypical homes are mass-produced with the goal of providing the American upper-middle class with the largest possible house at the lowest possible price, build quality and sustainability be damned. Famously lampooned by Kate Wagner’s blog McMansion Hell, these houses are often some of the ugliest in existence, with Scottish-castle-esque dark conglomerate stone and medieval-fantasy-novel turrets. The McMansion appeals not to the desire for tasteful architecture or carpentry that will last a lifetime, but to raw consumerism: what’s important is having enough room to store the endlessly accumulating kitchen appliances, backyard and boating accessories, and weekend “toys,” which themselves seem to require a legion of sold-separately accessories. How many of the items currently collecting dust in your garage can you remember buying, or even name? The plentiful space in suburban homes begs to be filled, continuing the cycle of consumerism that led to buying such an oversized house in the first place. Ratty sleeping bags, too-small winter coats, and discarded ice cream makers received at a bridal shower — they are never thrown away or garage-sold until cabinets are too full to properly close.
One of the contributing factors to this aggrandizing cycle is the so-called “American dream”; we’ve all heard it. White picket fence, big grassy backyard, a dog, and 2.5 kids. The imagery that has become a shorthand for middle-class prosperity was the product of the Colonial Revival design movement in the late 1800s. Then, after the Cold War, the popularity of the structure faded as its symbolism remained: a reminder of the “good old days” when people still talked to their (white) neighbors and barricaded children and pets away from (not-white) dangers. The larger phenomenon of homeownership culture carries the same implication: owning your home means that you have “made it,” that your hard work has paid off and your bootstraps are solid. It’s what you show off to friends and family, an implicit message about your status and wealth. People don’t buy McMansions for aesthetics, but to loudly whisper over a glass of wine how ever so much they paid for it (without mentioning the terrible interest rate and monumental loans).
Ah, suburbia. It can be a love-hate relationship — I definitely experience the whiplash from time to time. The appeal of large, affordable homes in supposedly idyllic neighborhoods is easy to understand, and so too is the whole concept fueled by a history of otherism and consumerism that continues to color our perceptions today. There isn’t a clean or easy answer, but we believe it’s possible to preserve many of the benefits of suburbia while distancing from its problematic roots. Suburban homogeneity shouldn’t be about everyone looking the same, working the same kind of jobs, and believing the same things; it should unite those who just want to look out their window and see a peaceful, uniform neighborhood that goes dark at 9:30 PM.