Suburbs as creative

Flower Valley, Maryland

Suburban development near Washington, D.C.

Announcements on a storefront (Virginia)

The film ["American Beauty"] simply recycles a view of the suburbs -- that they are vortexes of tedium and alienation -- which has been a staple of artistic contempt at least since John Cheever. This view has probably never been accurate. (Herbert Gans . . . shot it full of holes in "The Levittowners" more than 30 years ago.) But it is getting less accurate by the day, as the suburbs mutate in all sorts of interesting ways. If the complaints about the suburbs are doomed to remain forever the same, the suburbs themselves are changing beyond all recognition. The most obvious change is that the suburbs are the smithies of almost everything that is new and innovative in the American economy. . . . "The new economy and the new suburbs are really the same thing," as Fred Siegel at New York's Cooper Union puts it. . . . Many of the most ethnically diverse places in the country are now suburbs. This is not to say that the suburbs have completely solved the problem that obsesses their critics. A little alienation is inevitable in places that lack both natural centres and public spaces. . . . Yet many suburbs are trying valiantly to create a sense of place and public purpose. Older suburbs like Pasadena and Santa Monica in California and Downers Grove and Highland Park near Chicago have rebuilt their historic town centres, to great effect. Newer suburbs are creating downtowns from scratch. . . . Sprawl is now the home of almost everything that is most vital and daring, if not most beautiful, in America. Lexington 2000, 36

• [Nearby: What are cities for now ? -- Gated communities -- System effects bring debate ]