(Ms) Reading the Suburbs
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2732225 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Margaret Marsh (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 40 |
| Publication date | 1994-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2713352 |
| OpenAlex | W2064314964 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 1 |
LEONARD WALLOCK AND WILLIAM SHARPE ARGUE THAT SUBURBS HAVE not changed very much since the days of Father Knows Best and Leave It Beaver. First, they argue, in spite of the spread of corporate headquarters and high-tech industries, arts centers and shopping malls, in the things that really ought matter-racial and economic diversity, gender equality, and a rejection of rampant consumerism-suburbanites (in contrast urbanites, they imply) have clung outmoded notions of social exclusivity, female domesticity, and a lust for things. And second, the authors aver, recent scholarship has failed criticize these developments; worse, scholars who have studied suburbia have become apologists for the suburban way of life. By insisting that suburbanization has undergone a functional but not cultural change, Sharpe and Wallock minimize the economic and spatial transformations that have occurred in U.S. suburbs since the 1960s; they emphasize instead what they see as the tenacity of suburbia's historical dedication to preserv[ing] social homogeneity and masculine authority. In their justifiable outrage about Americans' abandonment of our large cities-hopelessly underfunded, their infrastructures crumbling, cities appear lurch from financial catastrophe leadership crisis-the authors make a curious leap of judgement: that this nearly complete lack of interest among much of the citizenry in the serious issues that confront our cities is
Art · Political science · Reading (process · Sociology · History · Law · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies · Urbanization and City Planning
| Citations per year | 0.13 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1995 - 1999 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |