Cohousing-L Mailing List: Suburbia's Anti-Social Housing

[Harry Pasternak (Harry_Pasternak]

Couple days we had a dialogue about who was (is) responsible for the
anti-social housing built in Suburbia after the second world war (and
continues todayt).

For those interested, read Anthony King's "The Bungalow". Not only will you
find out how the bungalow was imported from rural Bengal and sweeps
throughout North America from California to Florida, from Texas to Vancouver
(and is copied by Frank Lloyd Wright). Yes, the front porch is there in all
its glory.

But most interesting was the comments about Suburbia when the "Ranch"  style
came in big. You know "the double garage with attached house". Here they are:

"the linch pin of the contemporary capitalist economy...has been created and
expanded through the total reorganization of the metropolitan built form so
that it is all but impossible to live a "normal" social life without a car...
A need has been created out of a luxury".

and:

"Developers saw that a homogeneous population and use of land were no less
essential to suburban vision than a proper layout. Hence restrictions were
decreed prohibiting blacks and orientals, and the fixing of minimum costs for
houses in order to group the people more or less with like income
together....in many cases outlawed all but single family housing"

Suburbia was no accident and definitely not asked for by the middle class.
Hitler couldn't have done it better.

Harry

Harry

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