The word ‘suburbani’ was first used by Cicero in Ancient Rome
The word ‘suburbani’ was first used by Cicero in Ancient Rome
Suburbs got popular on a large scale during the 19th and 20th century following mass urbanization and increase in population densities across metropolitan areas. Naturally, the suburbia tends to proliferate around cities that come with an abundance of adjacent flat land. However, from continent to continent they differ. In Australia and New Zealand for instance, they have become formalized as geographic subdivisions of a city and are instrumental for the workflow of post offices. In both these countries, their equivalents are called localities.
Tract housing in Colorado Springs, Colorado-Cul-de-sacs are hallmarks of suburban planning, photo credit
It’s different in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In large cities such as London, suburbs include formerly separate towns and villages that have been gradually absorbed during the city’s growth and expansion. In the States and Canada, suburbia can be almost any outlying residential area of a city or town, or it could be a realm unabsorbed by the big city.
Mid-rise social housing in Clichy-sous-Bois, a banlieue of Paris, photo credit
Turns out that it was none of these countries that came up with the concept or the word “suburb”. Large walled towns tended to be the focal point around which smaller villages grew up in a symbiotic relationship with the market town as early as in the Ancient Rome. There, the statesman Cicero in reference to the large villas and estates that were built by wealthy patricians of Rome on the city’s outskirts first used the word “suburbani”. As history goes, many big cities today as much as can be the home of the wealthiest, they can be also the home of the poorest.
The origins of the modern suburb
Modern suburbs started to develop in the late 18th century in England following rapid migrations of the growing populations. The poor migrated to the evolving and industrialized cities of the kingdom, but at the same time, the opposite trend also started to happen. Those who were rich or even “new money” began to purchase estates and villas in the outskirts of cities such as London and Manchester.
View of housing development near farm in Richfield, Minnesota (1954)
The first suburban districts developed around central city areas to accommodate those who wanted to escape the horrible conditions of the industrial zones. Once modern transport networks emerged such as the tube, trams, and buses, it was possible for the majority to occupy houses outside the city and commute into the center for work.
In fact, when the Metropolitan Railway opened in the 1860’s, the line directly connected the financial heart of the city of London to what were to be the suburbs of Middlesex. The line further extended to Harro and Verney Junction in the next decades.
A neighborhood in Al Ashrafiyeh, in Amman Jordan (1997), photo credit
During the interwar period, another phenomenon can be noted in England and that is the garden city movement of Ebenezer Howard, who had previously also authored an intriguing publication entitled “To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform”. The publication provided a depiction of a utopian city in which people live harmoniously together with nature. At least, that was the idea of Howard. He inspired this movement which was taken a step forward by social reformer Henrietta Barnett and her husband.
A photo of current Suburban Sprawl in Santa Fe, New Mexico, many subdivisions are popping up in the “city different”, photo credit
During WWI, the Tudor Walters Committee was commissioned to prepare recommendations for the post-war reconstruction and housebuilding. A reason for this was the shocking lack of fitness noted amongst the majority of recruits during WWI, which was eventually attributed to poor living conditions. A housing poster of that era read: “you cannot expect to get an A1 population out of C3 homes”, referring also to military fitness classifications of the time. The Committee’s report of 1917 initiated new legislatures that allowed the construction of large new housing estates in the suburbs.
Dalas skyline and suburbs, photo credit
Within just a decade after the WWI, England got over 4 million new suburban houses. It was an era remembered as the “suburban revolution”, making the country count as the most heavily suburbanized worldwide.
In the States, the trends first went up in Boston and New York. The rail lines in Manhattan and the streetcar lines in Boston eased traffic and daily commute so suburbia started to extend there as well.
Kliptown, one of the poorest quarters of Soweto Slums in Soweto, suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa, photo credit
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