HIST 3790 History of Suburbia in US

This course will examine the history of the development of suburbia in the United States. We will study the geographic, political, economic, and cultural ramifications of suburbanization and its relationship to the American dream, political ideologies, environmental and housing policies, and everyday life. Topics include (but are not limited to) the first commuter suburbs; the early twentieth-century streetcar and the post-World War II automobile suburbs; the growth of Edge Cities and sprawl in multi-nucleated metropolitan regions; the suburban ideal of the “bourgeois utopia”; and the evolving relationship of suburbs with rural and urban America. The course ends with an examination of the development of post-suburbia in the context of a new global spatial order.
Credits: 3.0