Suburban Frontier

Abstract

Suburbia conjures up many iconic images of the so-called American Dream. From the classic 1950s television show Leave It to Beaver to today’s risqué, smash-hit show Desperate Housewives, suburbs have been idealized in popular American culture. These suburban images depict a spacious house on a tree-lined street where white, middle-class Americans had a place to call home after World War II. Indeed, the pursuit of happiness in U.S. postwar history has been completely synonymous with the suburbs. A move to the suburbs symbolized many things in the American context. It was a move of social and economic mobility—a path that led away from the nation’s ailing central cities and to the emergent suburban frontier. The so-called American Dream was realized in the nation’s nascent suburbs (Baxandall and Ewen 2000; Downs 1973; Fishman 1987; Hayden 2003).