The Suburban City

I've been meaning to write about this for a couple of weeks now, ever since I saw it mentioned here.

I often complain that the city has become the suburbs. I am sure this is true. Things we ran away from are all here now: strip malls and what they contain, how they model themselves, and how they revamp themselves to become current.

 It's the first sentence that's important, in that I recognise the suburbs in gentrified, enclosed 'prestige' developments. It's the only part of the post that addresses the topic, just a little fragment of thought, mentioned once and put aside. I wanted to pick up on it and say something about the wya urban character changes when cities become suburbanised. I would like to identify a city that is wholly suburban - where there's no point in walking anywhere because it's just not nice; where there are no corner shops, where people go to commercial outposts set in vast swathes of asphalt, where the riff-raff have no means of access and where the heterogeneous encounters with difference are confined to some neglected corners of industry, transport or municipal sites. I want to think about the ways big cities are becoming like this.



 I've been wanting to write somethimg substantive, something interesting, but have been compelled to keep my attention elsewhere. I haven't had time to think about this, not taken the time to write about it. So this is just a little note, a marker of sorts. A yellow Post-It on the web-fridge. There's no time for anything more, maybe not for a couple of weeks.