Sequel to Suburbia, Glimpses of America's Post-Suburban Future

How the decentralized, automobile-oriented, and fuel-consuming model of American suburban development might change.In the years after World War II, a distinctly American model for suburban development emerged. The expansive rings of outer suburbs that formed around major cities were decentralized and automobile oriented, an embodiment of America's postwar mass-production, mass-consumption economy. But alternate models for suburbia, including "transit-oriented development," "smart growth," and "New Urbanism," have inspired critiques of suburbanization and experiments in post-suburban ways of living. In Sequel to Suburbia, Nicholas Phelps considers the possible post-suburban future, offering historical and theoretical context as well as case studies of transforming communities.Phelps first locates these outer suburban rings within wider metropolitan spaces, describes the suburbs as a "spatial fix" for the postwar capitalist economy, and examines the...