Paradoxical Promise of the Suburbs

¶ … Paradoxical Promise of the Suburbs -- from Levittown to today's gated communities

To understand the power of the suburban ideal upon the modern American consciousness it is necessary to go far back in American history, even before the ideal of "Leave it to Beaver" became the benchmark of wholesomeness in the American cultural mindset. The photographs of Jacob Riis of tenement life during the turn of the 20th century are a powerful testimony to the cramped, dehumanized conditions of individuals living in urban locations, the result of rapid urbanization and a rapid rise in immigration. Even in the 19th century, as America was only beginning to industrialize, the ideal of the suburban homesteader proclaimed that finding one's own patch of land, rather than renting and dwelling in close proximity to other people in a rented space was the only true, right way to live. America is a democratic nation, founded upon ideals of meritocracy -- but also the Jeffersonian ideal of the gentleman farmer. Is there any wonder that most Americans wish, in their own lives, to embody this Jeffersonian ideal and to become owners of their own plot of land?

The American dream of home ownership only became a reality for many returning GIs and their families in the 1950s, with the advent of Levittown, or small, suburban planned communities where all of the houses looked fairly similar, but individuals were still able to have some sense of personal space, away from their extended families and nearby neighbors. "The basic orientation of the house was a combination of historical precedent, social engineering, and sheer financial pragmatism...The Levitt model was, finally, a compromise between extreme economy and the promise of an appropriate living space for an American family. Small at first, it could expand with time -- upward, first, then outward. Though the views Levitt's organization promoted showed a two-story structure, in fact only the downstairs was finished: a tiny, two-bedroom detached dwelling on a concrete slab, with stairs to an unfinished 'expansion attic' which could, Levitt's salespeople promised, be converted with ease into a third and perhaps even a fourth bedroom, under the eaves" (Clark 2007).

The houses were tiny and affordable, some priced at only $8,000. Early Levitt designs still harked back, according to architecture historian Peter Bacon Hales, to earlier concepts of urban 'neighborhoods,' such as the fact that the kitchen looked out into the street so that mothers could keep an eye on their children playing, rather than onto the backyard, which was later to become the focus of suburban childhood. But the houses proved appealing because, above all, built within the ideal of economy with the potential for expansion was the concept that every American family was entitled to his or her own home, and that home could be customized and expanded upon as the family presumably financially prospered and enjoyed the American dream. The success of the family would be proclaimed by the beautification and the changes written upon the face of the evolving modular structure.

The goal" of Levittown "wasn't simply to link house to community and family to neighborhood," in fact, it was to escape the grime and enforced ethnicity or closed nature of many urban communities (the first Levitt buyers were often from New York City or Long Island) (Hales, 2007). Levitttowns, and the suburban communities that were later modeled upon these ideas were designed "to make more possible, more efficient, this good life of postwar prosperity" (Clark, 2007). Ownership, space, the right to shape one's environment through material consumption -- all of these ideals resonated powerfully in the American mindset. With no ties to particular plots of land based upon family or ethnicity that were deeply and powerfully rooted in history, as in Europe, America was a socially as well as economically mobile society. Americans were ready to move and to buy homes to formulate their own environments. Within the suburbs there was still the promise of community, exemplified by the home's creation of a common area (the central living room in most suburban homes featured a television, of course) but the community was of the family, not the wider environment.

This ideal of privacy and creating one's own unique living space that is different and personalized, yet somehow still in keeping with the ideals of one's neighbors is seen in today's do-it-yourself movement, where Home Depo looms large on almost every suburban highway. The store is filled with promises of creating the ideal living space for one's home and family, so long as one can afford its prices. The Disney Corporation's planned community of Celebration U.S.A. where "everything within the town's confines was intended to be soothing to the eye and comforting to the soul" from its litter-free streets on a grid-like pattern to its homogeneity of style struck many cultural critics as noxious, but it may simply be an extension of an America where people are outraged if a neighbor does not cut his or her lawn, or paints his or her home purple -- or comes from a different racial background (Franz & Collins, 1999). Private yet utterly standardized -- much like planned communities all over America.