AtlanticCities: "A Brief History of Suburbia's Rise and Fall"

"The suburb has a claim to being one of the most successful and least loved inventions of the modern era.

"Many intellectuals, being city people at heart, find the suburb a hard place to love."

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"So writes city historian Graeme Davison of Monash University, in Australia, in a recent issue of the Journal of Urban History. Davison goes on to chronicle a brief though rather complete rise and fall of the suburban lifestyle. Concentrating on England, but drawing support from the United States and Australia, Davison tracks suburbia from its ideological roots in the Victorian era, to its harsh detractors in the present.

" 'Like a hardy hybrid, the suburban idea has flourished even in environments remote from its origins, and outlived most of the criticisms hurled against it,' he writes."