Making Sense of Suburbia through Popular Culture

Huq, Rupa

doi:10.5040/9781472544759

Cited by 15 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Recently the term peri-urban areas gained relevance in the context of the integrated European Union research project PLUREL. [8] A significant difference between these terms and the term suburbia is that they have almost exclusively remained within the field of professional and scholarly discussions while suburbia made it into the realm of US popular culture [9]. The geographer Donald W. Meinig [10] even includes the suburbs in his description of three American Symbolic Landscapes: New England, Main Street America and the California Suburb.…”

Section: Suburbs and Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Helyi identitás regionális szinten

Höfer

2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The interaction of people and place creates local identity, providing orientation in a complex world and a sense of place for residents. Over time, as the cultural interactions of a group creates links between narratives and places, local identities evolve. These identities are impacted by urban expansion: meaningful places are included, changed or completely built over completely by urban sprawl. Additionally, changes within the population may result in a fading narrative, because the group that originally created the narrative moved away. The flux of place-related cultural stories will be discussed in the context of suburban development in the US, where growth in suburban areas is driven by economic goals and guided by land-use planning. Middlesex County, New Jersey, is situated in the New York metropolitan area and will serve as a case study for the question of how environmental planning on a regional scale can support local identity within a changing environment. This includes the story of the Hungarian community of New Brunswick as an example of a sense of place that was strong in the first half of the twentieth century, but that faded over time.

show abstract

Section: Suburbs and Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Helyi identitás regionális szinten

Höfer

2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the study of popular music, the suburbs and dormitories tend to be neglected in favour of the scenes, subcultures and imageries of metropolitan centres. Although sometimes mentioned in passing, the few sources that focus on the suburbs tend to take musicians’ statements about blandness and boredom at face value, interpreting lyrical imagery from songs as if a straightforward representation of place and articulation of experience (Frith 1997; Huq 2013). As Huq also notes, there is a tendency to reinforce received ideas that trace back to the 1930s, particularly in accounts of London.…”

Section: The Metropolitan Margins and The Moral Mobilities Of Suburbiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Postcolonial paths of pop: a suburban psychogeography of George Michael and Wham!

Negus¹,

Sledmere²

2022

Pop. Mus.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article draws on psychogeography to explore suburban Bushey, Hertfordshire (UK), where the popular music duo Wham! formed and created the foundation for the later career of George Michael. It locates this neglected cultural narrative within the context of parental postcolonial and metropolitan journeys, arguing that migrations from the margins of the British Empire and across London form part of a ‘spatial moral order’. Exploring how a distinct pop group emerged at a particular time, it emphasises the importance of family and friendship within the suburban landscape of school, home, a pub, church halls, and a scout hut. A focus on the formation of Wham! contributes to debates about the postcolonial journeys and suburban circumstances that have shaped UK popular music since the end of World War II, and illustrates how psychogeography can contribute to the study of popular music.

show abstract

“…In this stereotypical concept, suburbia is essentially a collection of homes where suburbanites come to spend the night after working weekdays elsewhere in major urban centers. 48 A closer look at the history of suburbs in the twentieth century, however, reveals a wide variety of suburban forms. 49 For example, many suburban municipalities also embrace industrial and commercial functions to diversify their community's activities and revenue streams; these functions are much more than cosmetic insofar as they play a decisive role in these municipalities' development, which was very much Ville d'Anjou's case.…”

Section: Hyperfunctionalism and The Role Of Industry In The Developme...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobilizing Suburban Stereotypes: The Case of Ville d’Anjou (1956-1973)

Jolette

Hatton-Proulx

Neste

2022

Journal of Urban History

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article, we examine how in the 1960s the political leadership in Anjou, a suburban community in the Greater Montreal region, cultivated the stereotypical ideal of a bourgeois residential suburb in contrast with its actual dynamics of development in the metropolitan region. Our analysis focuses on three dimensions of the suburban ideal: residential monofunctionalism, political autonomy, and an exclusive and apolitical community. For each of these dimensions, we show how Anjou’s political leadership grappled with a complex reality and adapted the suburban ideal to ensure that their community, dependent as it was on metropolitan infrastructure and a host to heavy industry, could still be considered an ideal suburb. Our contribution speaks to the material and political impacts of such representation in a more complex set of processes of suburban and metropolitan development.

show abstract

Making Sense of Suburbia through Popular Culture

Cited by 15 publications

References 28 publications

Helyi identitás regionális szinten

Helyi identitás regionális szinten

Postcolonial paths of pop: a suburban psychogeography of George Michael and Wham!

Mobilizing Suburban Stereotypes: The Case of Ville d’Anjou (1956-1973)

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About