Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is obviously a classic of urban-studies literature and a lot of people have said a lot of good things about it.
One thing to keep in mind when considering this book, however, is that (contrary to what others have said) it is *not* a history of suburbanization through the end of the 20th century. It is much more an explanation of the roots of 20th century suburbanization -- as they took form in the 19th century.
The author does an excellent job of explaning the cultural and technological conditions that existed in the 19th century which made the move the the perifery seem attractive and, above all, logical. Today, in the 21st century, we have a difficult time placing oursleves in the shoes of the aspiring 19th century home-owner. We get stuck on the question "How could they just leave their cities to rot?" This book takes us back to show us the ideals, hopes and dreams of the 19th cenury burghers -- which the author also expertly contrasts to 19th-century realities. In this way, Jackson shows us how the move to a tract-house on a winding lane named after a tree could only seem like the conquest of the new-world utopia to the train-hopping clerks who first embraced suburbia.
The brightest examples of these cultural trends are the author's description of the rising symbolic importance of the garden, as well as his emphasis on the media-images associated with the new "old" country gentry. Overall, he describes an America (ironically) in search of its "country" roots, while in the midst of the greatest urban/industrial boom the world has ever known. By placing the reader firmly in a world where the word "cab" connoted a horse and carriage and where "pollution" meant horse-dung, Jackson makes us aware that the suburbs arose out of a legitimate desire to improve living standards in a very real way.
In sharp contrast, to so many books on the same topic _The Crabgrass Frontier_ is not a vitrolic condemnation of selfishness or race-paranoia or consumer-madness. It is a cultural commentary on certain 19th mores which -- when taken to their logical extreme (as they were in the 20th century) -- have a profound effect on the geography of the modern American city.

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