The American metropolis has been transformed over the past quarter century. Cities have turned inside out, with rapidly growing suburbs evolving into edge cities and technoburbs. But not all suburbs are alike. In Shaping Suburbia, Paul Lewis argues that a fundamental political logic underlies the patterns of suburban growth and argues that the key to understanding suburbia is to understand the local governments that control it - their number, functions, and power. Using innovative models and data analyses, Lewis shows that the relative political fragmentation of a metropolitan area plays a key part in shaping its suburbs.

The American metropolis has been transformed over the past quarter century. Cities have turned inside out, with rapidly growing suburbs evolving into edge cities and technoburbs. But not all suburbs are alike. In Shaping Suburbia, Paul Lewis argues that a fundamental political logic underlies the patterns of suburban growth and argues that the key to understanding suburbia is to understand the local governments that control it - their number, functions, and power. Using innovative models and data analyses, Lewis shows that the relative political fragmentation of a metropolitan area plays a key part in shaping its suburbs.

The American metropolis has been transformed over the past quarter century. Cities have turned inside out, with rapidly growing suburbs evolving into edge cities and technoburbs. But not all suburbs are alike. In Shaping Suburbia, Paul Lewis argues that a fundamental political logic underlies the patterns of suburban growth and argues that the key to understanding suburbia is to understand the local governments that control it - their number, functions, and power. Using innovative models and data analyses, Lewis shows that the relative political fragmentation of a metropolitan area plays a key part in shaping its suburbs.

Infinite Suburbia is the culmination of the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism's yearlong study of the future of suburban development. Extensive research, an exhibition, and a conference at MIT's Media Lab, this groundbreaking collection presents fifty-two essays by seventy-four authors from twenty different fields, including, but not limited to, design, architecture, landscape, planning, history, demographics, social justice, familial trends, policy, energy, mobility, health, environment, economics, and applied and future technologies. This exhaustive compilation is richly illustrated with a wealth of photography, aerial drone shots, drawings, plans, diagrams, charts, maps, and archival materials, making it the definitive statement on suburbia at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

In recent decades, American suburbs have undergone a so-called renaissance as multiple forces have transformed them into denser urban landscapes. Yet at the same time, suburban racial diversity, immigration, and poverty rates have surged. The Right to Suburbia investigates how marginalized communities in the suburbs of Washington, DC--one of the most intensely gentrifying metropolitan regions in the United States--have battled the uneven costs and benefits of redevelopment. Willow Lung-Amam narrates the efforts of activists, community groups, and political leaders fighting for communities' "right to suburbia"--that is, their right to stay put and benefit from new neighborhood investments. Revealing the far-reaching impacts of state-led redevelopment, The Right to Suburbia shows how patterns of unequal, racialized development and displacement are being produced and reproduced in suburbs--and how communities are fighting back.

This book describes how consumer demands are changing, strategies for overcoming NIMBYism, and the latest trends related to open space, infill and mixed housing development, increasing density, transportation, and street design.

It is now impossible to understand major North American cities without considering the seemingly never-ending and ever-growing sprawl of their surrounding suburbs. In The Shape of the Suburbs, activist, urban affairs columnist, and former Toronto mayor John Sewell examines the relationship between the development of suburbs, water and sewage systems, highways, and the decision-making of Toronto-area governments to show how the suburbs spread, and how they have in turn shaped the city. Using his wealth of knowledge of the city of Toronto and new information gathered from municipal archives, Sewell describes the major movements and forces that allowed for rapid development of the suburbs, while considering the options that were available to planners at the time. Discussing proposals to curb suburban sprawl from the 1960s to the recently adopted plan for the Greater Toronto area, Sewell combines insightful and accessible commentary with rigorous research on the debate between urban and suburban. Concerned not only with sprawl, The Shape of the Suburbs also demonstrates the ways in which suburban political, economic, and cultural influences have impacted the older, central city, culminating in the forced Megacity amalgamation of 1998. Rich in detail and full of useful visual illustrations, The Shape of the Suburbs is a lively look at the construction of the suburban era.

The topic of streets and street design is of compelling interest today as public officials, developers, and community activists seek to reshape urban patterns to achieve more sustainable forms of growth and development. Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities traces ideas about street design and layout back to the early industrial era in London suburbs and then on through their institutionalization in housing and transportation planning in the United States. It critiques the situation we are in and suggests some ways out that are less rigidly controlled, more flexible, and responsive to local conditions. Originally published in 1997, this edition includes a new introduction that addresses topics of current interest including revised standards from the Institute of Transportation Engineers; changes in city plans and development standards following New Urbanist, Smart Growth, and sustainability principles; traffic calming; and ecologically oriented street design.

Suburbanization is often blamed for a loss of civic engagement in contemporary America. How justified is this claim? Just what is a suburb? How do social environments shape civic life? Looking beyond popular stereotypes, Democracy in Suburbia answers these questions by examining how suburbs influence citizen participation in community and public affairs. Eric Oliver offers a rich, engaging account of what suburbia means for American democracy and, in doing so, speaks to the heart of widespread debate on the health of our civil society. Applying an innovative, unusually rigorous mode of statistical analysis to a wealth of unique survey and census data, Oliver argues that suburbs, by institutionalizing class and racial differences with municipal boundaries, transform social conflicts between citizens into ones between political institutions. In reducing the incentives for individual political participation, suburbanization has negated the benefits of ''small town'' government and deprived metropolitan areas of valuable civic capacity. This ultimately increases prospects of serious social conflict. Oliver concludes that we must reconfigure suburban governments to allow seemingly intractable issues of common metropolitan concern to surface in local politics rather than be ignored as cross-jurisdictional. And he believes this is possible without sacrifice of local government's advantages. Scholars and students of political science, sociology, and urban affairs will prize this book for its striking findings, its revealing scrutiny of the commonplace, and its insights into how the pursuit of the American dream may be imperiling American democracy.