suburb

 

a community in an outlying section of a city or, more commonly, a nearby, politically separate municipality with social and economic ties to the central city. In the 20th cent., particularly in the United States, population growth in urban areas has spilled increasingly outside the city limits and concentrated there, resulting in large metropolitan areas where the populations of the suburbs taken together exceed that of the central city.

History of Suburbs

Suburbs have existed in various forms since antiquity, when cities typically were walled and the villages outside them were inferior in size and status. However, the modern notion of the quiet, unspoiled outskirts as a retreat for the wealthy urbanite is in evidence as early as the 6th cent. B.C. in Babylon. In ancient Greece, the economic interdependence between the city and the agricultural communities surrounding it was given political definition by the formation of the city-state. Cicero in the 1st cent. B.C. refers to suburbani, large country estates just outside Rome.

Throughout Europe, the distinction between the city and outlying districts tended to remain sharp through the Middle Ages and Renaissance; to accommodate a large influx of newcomers, city walls were expanded, or, as with London, densely populated towns adjacent to the overcrowded city were gradually annexed to it. Generally considered a less desirable location, the urban periphery was inhabited largely by the poor.

In England, the rich who owned weekend villas outside London gradually transferred their main residences there, and the middle class soon followed. By the middle of the 19th cent., the distribution of population in metropolitan London and Manchester confirmed that popular preference for suburban living had become marked. Migration from the central city to the suburbs was encouraged by a succession of technological advances in transportation throughout the 19th and well into the 20th cent. The steamboat ferry, horse-drawn stagecoaches and railways, and the electric streetcar or trolley, all enabled urban dwellers to commute longer distances than had previously been practical.

Suburbs in Twentieth-Century America and Beyond

The mass production of the automobile gave new impetus to suburbanization in the early decades of the 20th cent., allowing commuters to live yet further from their place of employment. The automobile virtually eliminated restrictions on travel, and the subsequent demise of much public transportation left millions dependent on the automobile. State and local governments responded with massive road-building projects, and the federal government with a major expansion of the interstate highway system in the 1950s.

Congestion in the central city and a consequent deterioration of living conditions there provided additional incentive for people to move to the suburbs. In some cases, such migration diminished the city's tax base to the point that it could not afford to provide adequate services, inciting further suburban flight of business as well as population; some older U.S. cities, such as Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Detroit, have been especially affected by this trend, which became apparent soon after World War II.

The rise of modern suburbia has also been encouraged by the appeal of the suburban lifestyle, often characterized by an image of urbane society living graciously in an idyllic setting, where neighborhoods of single-family houses on large, private lots are combined with convenient proximity to the city's business and employment opportunities and cultural attractions. However, the traditional attractions of the central city are increasingly themselves located in the suburban ring. Most suburban communities in the United States grew spontaneously, although a few were carefully preplanned by architects and real-estate developers. These include, at the beginning of the 20th cent., Shaker Heights, a wealthy suburb of Cleveland, and, in the 1940s and 50s, Levittown, N.Y., a middle-class suburb of New York City, which was the model for two more Levittowns near Philadelphia.

Most conspicuously shaped by suburban sprawl are the metropolitan areas of the Sun Belt that have boomed since World War II. The Los Angeles area, often held up as an exemplar of the suburban metropolis, spans c.34,000 sq mi (c.88,000 sq km). With a population of more than 14.5 million, although ranking second in the nation, it has a relatively low population density of about 430 people per square mile, less than one fifth that of metropolitan New York. Many newer U.S. metropolises are distinctly suburban in character even within the corporate limits of the central city.

The largest suburbs in the United States have the population of a middle-sized city; Mesa, Ariz. (1990 pop. 288,091), a suburb of Phoenix, is more populous than Newark, N.J. (1990 pop. 275,221). Many suburbs remain racially as well as economically exclusive; efforts at integration often result in racially segregated neighborhoods within the larger suburban municipality. The shift of population out of the central city has had the effect of attracting industry and commerce to the suburbs. The rise of suburban industrial parks (areas zoned primarily for office space) and shopping centers has led to the further decline of the central city. Suburbs have been particularly successful in attracting newer, often high-technology, industries.

Since 1980, huge new concentrations of economic activities have developed in the most accessible suburban locations. These suburban downtowns in the 1990s reached a scale and diversity reminiscent of the central city downtown. Some notable examples are Tysons Corner, Va., near Washington, D.C., Stamford, Conn., and Costa Mesa, Calif. In densely populated regions, the suburban expanses of large urban areas may coalesce, creating a megalopolis. The Atlantic seaboard from Washington, D.C., north to Boston includes the metropolitan areas of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York and is sometimes considered a single economic and social unit; in recent decades, the Pacific coast from San Diego to the San Francisco Bay area has witnessed a similar development, as have heavily populated regions in England, Germany, and Japan. By 1990 the majority of U.S. citizens lived in suburbs, and during the next decade that majority increased.

Suburban growth slowed and urban growth increased somewhat in the 1990s, as density in the first tier of suburbs neared and sometimes reached urban levels. During this period a significant difference became apparent in suburban development in the West and the South. In the West, where land and resources precluded growth, suburbs became increasingly dense. Population increases were particularly high around Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Phoenix, Sacramento, Seattle, and Portland. In the South, with fewer natural barriers to growth, the density of first-tier suburbs was lower, suburban growth spread further afield, the creation of suburbs far from cities was more prevalent, and converging bands of suburbs began to rival the great metropolitan corridors of the Northeast and industrial Midwest. Suburban development in the Northeast and Midwest during this period fell somewhere between these extremes.

For years many critics, themselves largely urban, have criticized suburbs as cultural deserts where neighbors are strangers, women are virtually imprisoned, and environmental concerns are scorned. While many concerns relating to suburbia continue, by the beginning of the 21st cent. many stereotypical views were fading with the proliferation of suburban colleges and museums, the increase of local employment opportunities, the enrichment of surburban women's lives, and the realization by academics that in today's suburbia there is often a positive sense of community as well as a complex social structure.

Bibliography

See H. L. Gans, The Levittowners (1965); P. O. Muller, Contemporary Suburban America (1981); K. T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier (1985); M. Baldassare, Trouble in Paradise (1986); R. Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias (1987); C. Perin, Belonging in America (1988); M. S. Marsh, Suburban Lives (1990); T. M. Stanback, The New Suburbanization (1991); J. Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (1991); B. Kelly, Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown (1993); R. Baxandall and E. Ewen, Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (2000).

The references in this article would be clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting, or external linking.

It has been suggested that Suburbanization be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

Suburbs are commonly defined as residential areas on the outskirts of a city or large town.^[1] Most modern suburbs are commuter towns with many single-family homes. Many suburbs have some degree of political autonomy and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods. Mechanical transport, including automobiles, enabled the 20th century growth of suburbs, which tend to proliferate near cities with an abundance of adjacent flat land.^[2]

Etymology

Definitions

The word is derived from the Old French "subb urbe" and ultimately from the Latin "suburbium", formed from "sub", meaning "under", and "urbs", meaning "city", therefore suburbis would mean under the city. Important people tended to live on hills near centers of commercial and political activity, while the lower classes often lived in marginal areas. "Under" in later usage sometimes referred variously to lesser wealth, political power, population, or population density. The first recorded usage, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, comes from Wycliffe in 1380, where the form "subarbis" is used.

In the United States, Canada and most of Western Europe the word "suburb" usually refers to a separate municipality, borough or unincorporated area outside a central town or city. This definition is evident, for example, in the title of David Rusk's book Cities Without Suburbs (ISBN 0-943875-73-0 ), which promotes metropolitan government; in the UK, much of this pattern dates to Margaret Thatcher's reforms of 1985. US colloquial usage sometimes shortens the term to "'burb" (with or without the apostrophe), and "The Burbs" first appeared as a term for the suburbs of Chicago.

This division is not as prevalent in Ireland and the United Kingdom, where "suburb" refers to residential neighbourhoods outside of the city centre. In Australia and New Zealand, the term "suburb" is also used by the postal service to mean an address subdivision. In Australia, the terms inner suburb and outer suburb are used to differentiate between the higher-density suburbs with close proximity to the city center, and the lower-density suburbs on the outskirts of the urban area. Inner suburbs, such as Te Aro in Wellington, Prahran in Melbourne and Ultimo in Sydney, are usually characterised by higher density apartment housing and greater integration between commercial and residential areas.

Suburbia

The term suburbia is frequently used to encapsulate the concept of suburbs as slices of tract-home nuclear family.

After the rise of "Levittowns" across the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, many American teens born during those decades began to describe the inherently sanitized and disspiriting nature of American suburbs.

The popular TV show The Wonder Years, which was set in the late 1960s and early 1970s, took place in an undisclosed suburb. In the very first episode, the show's narrator comments on the seeming sameness of suburbia, in the ending narration noting that despite the rows of identical houses and carports, within each one are people with unique stories and individual lives.

The concept of "suburbia" came to envelop this and other, sometimes endearing, idiosyncrasies of suburban life — for example, backyard barbecues on Independence Day.

Popular culture largely recognized this concept during the 1980s and early 1990s. In Britain, television series such as The Good Life, Butterflies and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin depicted suburbia as well-manicured but relentlessly boring, and its residents as either conforming their behaviour to this situation or going stir crazy through its regimented blandness. In America, similar but more violent themes could be found in the works of David Lynch, most notably Blue Velvet, which establishes a view of idealistic suburbia and then showcases a dark, depraved underworld. A distinctive depiction of American suburbs is Joe Dante's comedy film The 'Burbs from 1989, starring Tom Hanks and Carrie Fisher, in which the people living in the suburbs are portrayed as paranoiacs looking for adventure, which ends up in the explosion of one of their neighbors' houses in which they presume a huge number of dead bodies. The Oscar winning 1999 film American Beauty centers the life of two suburban families and their eventual downfalls. The recent film Little Children (Directed by Todd Field) portrays the suburbs as a place full of paranoid and sometimes hypocritcal and judgemental security moms and dads, and bored and unhappy wives and husbands driven to adultery.

In 1994, playwright Eric Bogosian wrote and directed the play subUrbia, which focused on suburban twentysomethings with no real life goals or direction reacting to the return of a high school friend who had become famous. The play was made into a low-budget, independent film in 1997, with Richard Linklater at the directorial helm and featured up-and-coming actors Steve Zahn, Parker Posey, Ajay Naidu, and Giovanni Ribisi in lead roles.

Etymology: According to dialogue in the 1984 movie Suburbia (no relation to the Bogosian version) [2], "subtopia" is a neologism made by combining suburb and utopia.

Components

Suburban development can be classified into 5 simple components, each separated from one another and homogenous in nature.^{[citation needed]}

• Housing subdivisions, also known as clusters or pods. Subdivisions are sometimes referred to as villages or towns, although this term is misleading as a village provides a full spectrum of environments while a subdivision provides only dwellings. They usually consist of single family homes placed on small plots of land, or large compounds of apartment buildings with residual parking lots in between them. Many subdivisions are surrounded by walls on all sides, creating barriers from other subdivisions and from retail or offices. Some are gated communities with their own security forces and gatehouses to prevent non-residents from entering. Most subdivisions are surrounded on all sides by large volume, high-speed collector roads, to handle to concentration of traffic due to the lack of through streets inside the subdivision itself.

• Strip malls, shopping centers, Big-box stores, retail parks, and power centres. These areas are exclusively for retail space and automobile parking. They usually consist of clusters of boxy, unadorned buildings of various sizes behind a parking lot. Where setbacks are wide, signs that identify the stores in the strip are usually large, illuminated, and nearer to the road than to the store.

• Office parks, also known as business parks or corporate campuses. Derived from the modernist architectural vision of the building standing free in a parklike setting, these areas usually contain 4-12-story buildings surrounded by parking lots or parking structures. They differ from many traditional-style office spaces in containing only offices or factories and no retail space or residences. Most have no cafeteria facilities. Lunch hour requires either a packed lunch or a trip in the car. Office parks are usually located near off ramps of major freeways.

• Civic institutions. These are the public buildings where citizens gather for civic functions: town halls, churches, schools, etc. In suburban areas, these buildings generally look very similar to strip centers: large, undecorated boxes sitting in the center (or sitting behind) of very large parking lots. This is in stark contrast to traditional towns, where civic buildings are placed in prominent, central locations and are highly decorated, serving as neighborhood focal points. They are typically very large in size and serve very large geographical areas, beyond the reach of most pedestrians.

• Roadways. Miles of pavement connect of the aforementioned components together. Since a single piece of suburbia only serves one type of activity, roadways are very important, as they are the only way of getting to the various things a person needs in a given day. Suburban roadways are typically much wider than in towns, with multiple lanes and few, if any, sidewalks. Roads in this type of environment are usually designed to serve only automobiles, not pedestrians or cyclists.

History

The growth of suburbs was facilitated by the development of zoning laws, redlining and various innovations in transport. After World War II availability of FHA loans stimulated a housing boom in American suburbs. In the older cities of the northeast U.S., streetcar suburbs originally developed along train or trolley lines that could shuttle workers into and out of city centers where the jobs were located. This practice gave rise to the term bedroom community or dormitory, meaning that most daytime business activity took place in the city, with the working population leaving the city at night for the purpose of going home to sleep.

The growth in the use of trains, and later automobiles and highways, increased the ease with which workers could have a job in the city while commuting in from the suburbs. In the United Kingdom, railways stimulated the first mass exodus to the suburbs. The Metropolitan Railway, for example, was active in building and promoting its own housing estates in the north-west of London, consisting mostly of detached houses on large plots, which it then marketed as "Metro-land".^[3] As car ownership rose and wider roads were built, the commuting trend accelerated as in North America. This trend towards living away from towns and cities has been termed the urban exodus.

Zoning laws also contributed to the location of residential areas outside of the city centre by creating wide areas or "zones" where only residential buildings were permitted. These suburban residences are built on larger lots of land than in the urban city. For example, the lot size for a residence in Chicago is usually 125 feet (38 m) deep, while the width can vary from 14 feet (4 m) wide for a row house to 45 feet (14 m) wide for a large standalone house.^{[citation needed]} In the suburbs, where standalone houses are the rule, lots may be 85 feet (26 m) wide by 115 feet (35 m) deep, as in the Chicago suburb of Naperville.^{[citation needed]} Manufacturing and commercial buildings were segregated in other areas of the city.

Increasingly, more people moved out to the suburbs, known as suburbanisation. Moving along with the population, many companies also located their offices and other facilities in the outer areas of the cities. This has resulted in increased density in older suburbs and, often, the growth of lower density suburbs even further from city centers. An alternative strategy is the deliberate design of "new towns" and the protection of green belts around cities. Some social reformers attempted to combine the best of both concepts in the Garden city movement.^[4]

In the United States, urban areas have often grown faster than city boundaries since the 18th century. Until the 1900s, new neighborhoods usually sought or accepted annexation to the central city to obtain city services. In the 20th century, however, many suburban areas began to see independence from the central city as an asset. In some cases, African Canadian suburbanites saw self-government as a means to keep out people they considered undesirable, such as immigrants and African Americans. Federal subsidies for suburban development accelerated this process as did the practice of redlining by banks and other lending institutions.^[5] Cleveland, Ohio is typical of many American central cities; its municipal borders have changed little since 1922, even though the Cleveland urbanized area has grown many times over.^{[citation needed]} Several layers of suburban municipalities now surround cities like Cleveland, Chicago and Philadelphia.

While suburbs had originated far earlier, the suburban population in North America exploded after World War II. Returning veterans wishing to start a settled life moved en masse to the suburbs. Between 1950 and 1956 the resident population of all US suburbs increased by 46%.^{[citation needed]} Levittown developed as a major prototype of mass-produced housing. During the same period of time, African-Americans were rapidly moving north for better jobs and educational opportunities than they could get in the segregated South, and their arrival in Northern cities en masse further stimulated white suburban migration, a phenomenon known as white flight.^{[citation needed]}

In the U.S., 1950 was the first year that more people lived in suburbs than elsewhere. (1) In the U.S, the development of the skyscraper and the sharp inflation of downtown real estate prices also led to downtowns being more fully dedicated to businesses, thus pushing residents outside the city centre. By 1980 this was often perceived as undesirable, extending travel times and adding to people's sense of isolation and fear in central areas outside trading hours. (before roughly 7AM and after roughly 6PM.)^{[citation needed]}

Suburbia worldwide

In Canada

Urban development in Canada has largely paralleled development in the United States. After World War II, large bedroom communities of single-family homes and shopping centers sprouted on the outskirts of Canadian cities.

However, Canada has far fewer suburban municipalities than the U.S. does. Many large cities, such as Winnipeg, Calgary and Ottawa, extend all the way to, and even include the countryside. However, the fact that literal boundaries of suburbs are not present in Canada does not in any way eliminate suburbs per se. The boundaries of Canadian cities are under the jurisdiction of the Provinces and the Provinces have imposed city-suburb mergers. The Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver areas still have suburban municipalities, although their suburban areas are generally grouped into fewer cities than is typical in the U.S. Ontario created a "metropolitan" government for the Toronto area in 1954, but the urbanized area has since grown well beyond it.

Today, Toronto has some of the largest suburban municipalities in North America, with more than three quarters of a million people living in Mississauga alone. Many Toronto suburbs have significantly improved on the suburban philosophy, adding a downtown to many suburban centres (Markham, Brampton, Scarborough, North York etc.) In 1998 the governmental structure was reorganized to include many of these formerly independent suburbs into the Greater Toronto Area (see Greater Toronto Area).

In the United States

Typically, many post-World War II American suburbs have been characterized by:

• Lower densities than central cities, dominated by single family homes on small plots of land, surrounded at close quarters by very similar dwellings.
• Zoning patterns that separate residential and commercial development, as well as different intensities and densities of development. Daily needs are not within walking distance of most homes.
• Subdivisions carved from previously rural land into multiple-home developments built by a single real estate company. These subdivisions are often segregated by minute differences in home value, creating entire communities where family incomes and demographics are almost completely homogenous.
• Shopping malls and strip malls behind large parking lots instead of a classic downtown shopping district.
• A predominantly white, increasingly diverse, middle- or upper-class population, with a few exceptions (e.g., Ford Heights, Illinois, a predominantly black working-class suburb of Chicago, and Inglewood, California, also a predominately black and Latino suburb of Los Angeles).
• A road network designed to conform to a hierarchy, including culs-de-sac leading to larger residential streets, in turn leading to large collector roads, in place of the grid pattern common to most central cities and pre-World War II suburbs.
• Ready access to large, multi-lane freeways or tollways
• Limited or no access to public transit
• The importance of public space reduced in favor of private property
• Sometimes a lower crime rate than a comparable urban neighborhood
• Schools considered "better" than inner-city schools
• Governance split between local town governments and homeowners associations (especially in newer developments)
• More wildlife habitat than is found in the city, and more areas set aside as nature preserves.
• All or most homes in the suburbs are built to reduce costs; homes can be built from homogenous, pre-determined plans, or entire neighborhoods can be color-coordinated if desired.
• Retail and office buildings designed as minimalist "big box" structures, with little or no exterior decoration and few (if any) windows

Some suburban areas have developed their own large clusters of office and retail buildings, usually in a business park setting. These areas, such as Tysons Corner, Virginia, Parsippany, New Jersey & Pontiac, MI, are sometimes referred to as "edge cities", a term invented by journalist Joel Garreau. Edge cities differ from traditional downtowns in that they are completely automobile-centric rather than providing options for walking, bicycles, or public transportation.

In Australia

Suburbs in Australia are the official postal subdivisions of a city. Inner suburbs are subdivisions within the denser urban areas of the cities and outer suburbs are the postal divisions found in the outer rings of the metropolitan areas, and usually lying within the boundaries of a separate municipality. This differs from British and North American usage, in which the term "suburb" is never applied to inner-city neighbourhoods.

In other countries

In many parts of the globe, however, suburbs are economically poor areas, inhabited by people sometimes in real misery, keeping them at the limit of the city borders for economic or social reasons like the impossibility of affording the (usually higher) costs of life in the town. An example in the developed world would be the banlieues of France, or the concrete suburbs of Sweden which are comparable to the inner cities of the US.

In the UK, the government is seeking to impose minimum densities on newly approved housing schemes in parts of southeast England. The new catchphrase is 'building sustainable communities' rather than housing estates. However, commercial concerns tend to retard the opening of services until a large number of residents have occupied the new neighbourhood.

In the Third World, such slum areas are often irregularly built or managed, with individualistic, unregulated building and other forms of social or legal disorder. It has been said that this would be sometimes a case of spontaneous or psychological apartheid. In some cases inhabitants just live off the waste materials produced by the city (like, increasingly, around new African towns) and usually in such situations suburbs and houses are roughly built, often not even in the traditional building materials, as seen for example in the bidonvilles. Often nomads settle their camps in suburbs. The occupiers of more industrialised or longer-lasting homes may refer to such suburbs as "shanty towns".

In the illustrative case of Rome, Italy, in the 1920s and 1930s, suburbs were intentionally created ex novo in order to give lower classes a destination, in consideration of the actual and foreseen massive arrival of poor people from other areas of the country. Many critics have seen in this development pattern (that was circularly distributed in every direction) also a quick solution to a problem of public order (keeping the unwelcome poorest classes - together with criminals, in this way better controlled - comfortably remote from the elegant "official" town). On the other hand, the expected huge expansion of the town soon effectively covered the distance from the central town, and now those suburbs are completely engulfed by the main territory of the town, and other newer suburbs were created at a further distance from them.

Traffic flows/flaws

Contrary to popular belief, suburbs typically have more traffic congestion and longer travel times than traditional neighborhoods.^[6] Only the traffic within the short streets themselves is less. This is due to three factors: almost-mandatory automobile ownership due to poor suburban bus systems, longer travel distances and the hierarchy system, which is less efficient at distributing traffic than the traditional grid of streets.

In the suburban system (sometimes also called a "sprawl network"), most trips from one component to another component requires that cars enter a collector road, no matter how short or long the distance is. This is compounded by the hierarchy of streets, where entire neighborhoods and subdivisions are dependent on one or two collector roads. Because all traffic is forced onto these roads, they are often heavy with traffic all day. If a traffic accident occurs on a collector road, or if road construction inhibits the flow, then the entire road system may be rendered useless until the blockage is cleared. The traditional, "grown" grid, in turn, allows for a larger number of choices and alternate routes.

Suburban systems of the sprawl type are also quite inefficient for cyclists or pedestrians, as the direct route is usually not available for them either. This encourages car trips even for distances as low as several hundreds of meters (which may have become up to several kilometres due to the road network). Improved sprawl systems, though retaining the car detours, possess cycle paths and foot path connecting across the arms of the sprawl system, allowing a more direct route while still keeping the cars out of the residential and side streets.

Notable suburbs

Many suburbs have become famous in their own right. This can be either due to the wealth and prestige associated with the suburb, or because of an event occurring in, or a person or group originating from, the suburb.

North America

Perhaps the best-known American suburb is Beverly Hills, California, a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles. Other well-known suburbs include Shaker Heights, near Cleveland, which was one of the first planned garden communities in the U.S.; the North Shore area above Chicago; the Grosse Pointe region of Michigan, near Detroit; the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia; Long Island, Yonkers, Westchester County, New York Fairfield County, Connecticut, where most towns are suburbs of New York City (much of the lower Hudson River Valley in New York is also a suburb of New York City); much of Northern New Jersey, with New York City and cities in North Jersey across the river serving as employment centers; Redmond, Washington, home of Microsoft and Nintendo's American division, near Seattle; and the Northern Virginia area outside Washington, D.C..

Because of different local government patterns, suburbs of one city may be bigger than a central city in another area. The most-populous suburb in the United States is Mesa, Arizona near Phoenix, with an estimated population of 447,541 in 2006 — more than Cleveland, Miami, or Minneapolis.^{[citation needed]} Virginia Beach, with a population of around 450,000 is the largest city in the state of Virginia; some would consider it a suburb of Norfolk, because the urban core of its region is in Norfolk.^{[citation needed]} Canada's largest suburb, Mississauga, Ontario, has nearly 700,000 people, greater than Vancouver, Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., and is itself the sixth largest city in Canada.

Some suburbs swell so fast that they take over the politics of the counties they are built in. This happened in the 1990s to three suburbs in Florida: The Villages, Palm Bay and Deltona.^{[citation needed]}

Australia

In Australia, many of the most famous suburbs are associated with sport, however the majority of these suburbs are unknown outside of Australia, unlike U.S. suburbs such as Beverly Hills.

The popularity of Australian Rules Football, and the tradition of naming the club after the suburb or city in which it is based, has led to several inner suburbs of Melbourne becoming well-known throughout the country. These clubs include St. Kilda, Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon, Richmond and Hawthorn. Most of these areas have other attractions, but none, with the possible exception of St. Kilda, would be a household name without the football club.

In the north-eastern states of New South Wales and Queensland, the homes of National Rugby League teams play a similar role.

The Brisbane suburb of Woolloongabba is famous as the location of the city's cricket ground, known colloquially as The Gabba.

The Sydney suburbs of Bondi and Manly, and the beaches of the same names, are known as the origin of surf lifesaving.

In Melbourne, Albert Park is known as the home of the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit.

Largest suburbs worldwide

The following is a table of the largest incorporated suburbs worldwide, with over 800 thousand people. Only census data is listed. (Except cities that require exact records of birth/death/move registration such in Japan, and Brazil which estimates all its cities annually)

Rank	City	Population	Metropolitan Area	Nation	source
1	Bekasi	1,931,976	Greater Jakarta, Jabotabek	Indonesia	Indonesia Census 2000
2	Ecatepec de Morelos	1,688,258	Greater Mexico City	Mexico	Mexico Census 2005 CONAPO
3	Tangerang	1,488,666	Greater Jakarta, Jabotabek	Indonesia	Indonesia Census 2000
4	Depok	1,353,249	Greater Jakarta, Jabotabek	Indonesia	Indonesia Census 2000
5	Kawasaki	1,342,232	Greater Tokyo Area	Japan	Japan Oct 2006
6	Guarulhos	1,283,253	Greater São Paulo	Brazil	Brazil IBGE Estimate 2006 [3]
7	Thana	1,261,517	Greater Mumbai	India	India Census 2001
8	Kalyan	1,193,266	Greater Mumbai	India	India Census 2001
9	Saitama	1,182,000	Greater Tokyo	Japan	Japan Census 2005
10	Caloocan	1,177,604	Metro Manila	Philippines	Ph Census 2002
11	Zapopan	1,155,790	Greater Guadalajara	Mexico	Mexico Census 2005 CONAPO
12	Nezahualcóyotl	1,140,528	Mexico City	Mexico	Mexico Census 2005 CONAPO
13	Faridabad	1,055,938	Greater Delhi	India	India Census 2001
14	Suwon	1,033,829	Greater Seoul	S. Korea	S. Korea NSO Estimate [4]
15	Haora	1,008,704	Greater Kolkata	India	India Census 2001
16	Pimpri	1,006,417	Greater Pune	India	India Census 2001
17	Seongnam	977,166	Greater Seoul	S. Korea	S. Korea NSO Estimate [5]
18	São Gonçalo	973,372	Greater Rio de Janeiro	Brazil	Brazil IBGE Estimate 2006 [6]
19	Ghaziabad	968,521	Greater Delhi	India	India Census 2001
20	Chiba	930,388	Greater Tokyo	Japan	Japan Oct 2006
21	Goyang	886,000	Greater Seoul	S. Korea	S. Korea NSO Estimate [7]
22	Shubra al Khaymah	870,716	Greater Cairo	Egypt	Egypt Census 1996
23	Bucheon	866,000	Greater Seoul	S. Korea	S. Korea NSO Estimate [8]
24	Duque de Caxias	855,010	Greater Rio de Janeiro	Brazil	Brazil IBGE Estimate 2006 [9]
25	Nova Iguaçu	844,583	Greater Rio de Janeiro	Brazil	Brazil IBGE Estimate 2006 [10]
26	Sakai	832,287	Greater Osaka	Japan	Japan Oct 2006
27	Naucalpan de Juárez	821,442	Greater Mexico City	Mexico	Mexico Census 2005 CONAPO
28	São Bernardo do Campo	803,906	Greater São Paulo	Brazil	Brazil IBGE Estimate 2006 [11]

Indonesia and India census populations are from citypopulation.de

Census data is self-evident as it is published extensively, census dates for all nations are available here and national statistical agencies here.

References

1. ^ Merriam-Webster Online
2. ^ The Fractured Metropolis: Improving the New City, Restoring the Old City, Reshaping the Region By Jonathan Barnett
3. ^ LONDON`S METROLAND
4. ^ Garden Cities of To-Morrow
5. ^ Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival By Paul S. Grogan, Tony Proscio. ISBN 0813339529. Published 2002. Page 142.

   "Perhaps suburbanization was a 'natural' phenomenon—rising incomes allowing formerly huddled masses in city neighborhoods to breathe free on green lawn and leafy culs-de-sac. But, we will never know how natural it was, because of the massive federal subsidy that eased and accelerated it, in the form of tax, transportation and housing policies."

6. ^ [1]

• Baumgartner, M. P. The Moral Order of a Suburb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
• Baxandall, Rosalyn and Elizabeth Ewen. Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
• Blakely, Edward J. and Mary Gail Snyder. Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997.
• Bruegmann, Robert. Sprawl: A Compact History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
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See also

• Boomburbs
• Commuter town
• Edge city
• Faubourg
• Inner suburbs
• Microdistrict
• Streetcar suburb
• Urban rural fringe
• Urban sprawl

External links

• provides images of a mature north London suburb illustrating a wide range of domestic architecture
• The End of Suburbia, documentary film
• Europe's first interdisciplinary research centre for the study of suburbs, based at Kingston University
• "Boomburbs": The Emergence of Large, Fast-Growing Suburban Cities in the United States, from Fannie Mae.
• Sierra Club Stopping Sprawl Main Page

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