Suburbia in the 21st Century: From Dreamscape to Nightmare? (Routledge Advances in Sociology)

The majority of the world’s population now live in urban areas and the 21st century has been declared as the "urban age". However, closer inspection of where people live in cities, especially within so-called advanced liberal democracies such as Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, reveals that most people live in different types of suburban environments.

Drawing together scholars from across the globe, this book provides a series of national, regional, and local case studies from Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States to exemplify the diverse and dynamic nature and importance of suburbia in 21st century urban studies, city-building, and urbanism.

This book explores the evolving social, physical, and economic character of the suburbs and how structural processes, market dynamics, and government policies have shaped and transformed suburbia around the world. It highlights the continuing importance of the suburbs and the suburban dream, which lives on albeit under increasing challenges, such as the global financial crisis, structural racism, and the Covid-19 pandemic, which have given rise to various suburban nightmares.

Paul J. Maginn is Associate Professor in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Western Australia, Australia. He is Editor-in-Chief of Urban Policy and Research and was Co-Convenor of the Australasian Cities Research Network from 2018 to 2021. He is the author of Urban Regeneration, Community Power and the (In)Significance of 'Race' (Routledge, 2004). He is also co-editor of Disruptive Urbanism: Implication of the ‘Sharing Economy’ for Cities, Regions and Urban Policy (Routledge, 2020) and (Sub)Urban Sexscapes: Geographies and Regulation of the Sex Industry (Routledge, 2015), which won the 2016 Planning Institute of Australia National Award for Cutting Edge Research.

Katrin B. Anacker is a Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, USA. She is the editor of The New American Suburb: Poverty, Race and the Economic Crisis (Routledge, 2015) and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Housing Policy and Planning (Routledge, 2019) and Introduction to Housing (Second Edition, University of Georgia Press, 2018). Her work has been published in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban Affairs Review, Urban Geography, the Journal of Urban Affairs, the Journal of Planning Education and Research, Housing Policy Debate, and Housing Studies. She is the Editor of Housing and Society and a Senior Associate Editor of the Journal of Urban Affairs.