PowerPoint PresentationSlide 2Slide 3Slide 4Slide 5Slide 6Slide 7Slide 8Slide 9Slide 10Slide 11Slide 12Slide 13Slide 14Slide 15Slide 16Slide 17Slide 18Slide 19Slide 20Slide 21Slide 22Slide 23Slide 24Slide 25Slide 26Slide 27Suburbia is a term that was coined in the the 1950s by social critics who felt that suburban life represented the worst aspects of both urban and rural life. Suburbs have often been detracted by their critics as ugly, tacky, mediocre, conformist, and boring.However, by the 1970s, more Americans lived in suburbs than cities. If they’re so bad, why did everyone seem to want to live in them?The main critics of suburbs in the 1950s, particularly sociologists: some lamented the loss of traditional, close-knit communities (Gemeinschaft), others thought that cities should be the centers of culture and social order. To both, suburbs were inferior. Rise of what some called mass society: loss of traditional community ties, dependence on technology, increasingly impersonal social relationsLevittown, NY: A new model for suburban lifeAbraham Levitt:“as a company, our position is simply this: we can solve a housing problem or we can try to solve a racial problem. But we can’t combine the two” “As a Jew, I have no room in my mind or heart for racial prejudice…” but “if we sell one house to a Negro family, then 90 to 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community. That is their attitude, not ours.”Herbert Gans concluded that Levittown was not a community because there were loose economic and social ties there. It was simply a loose network of groups and institutions existing in one geographical area. But, he observed, Levittowners did not come looking for a sense of community, they came to set up a traditional family unit in a new, private house.Los AngelesRio Vista, CAThe Rise of Gated Communities and “McMansions”Edge CitiesTysons Corner, VAAll of these new terms that are emerging: technoburb edge city postsuburbia urban sprawlexurbMake it clear that categories of urban, suburban and rural are not so simple. The biggest influence on all of this has been the automobile and the blessing and curse of the US: having so much space.Exploring “Lifestyle Clusters”Rises in Suburban Poverty and the Return of the Middle Class to (some) CitiesGlobalizing Suburban CultureWestgate Mall, NairobiA “Nielsen family”Nielsen Claritas is a market research firm which conducts social research through cluster analysis. Their research is based on assumptions on peoples’ lifestyle and consumer choices based upon where they live. Cluster analysis is highly profitable to marketers, political campaigns, etc. While all suburbs are not the same, and there are different types of middle class suburban lifestyles, they tend to cluster.In the US, such data is usually collected at the level of the ZIP