Global Suburbs

This paper advances the hypothesis that a crucial encounter for world urbanism is between the American suburb and the megacities of the developing world. Urban form in such cities had been marked by the wealthy living as close to the core as possible, with the poor pushed out to shantytowns on the periphery. But as the core of the 21st-century megacity has become increasingly chaotic and the middle-class increasingly automobile-dependent, a new model has arisen in which the middle class live in highly-securitized enclaves at the edge, close to but protected from the still-existing peripheral shantytowns. The design language of such American-style suburbs as “Orange County” outside Beijing, China and “Alphaville” outside Sao Paolo, Brazil embodies the deep social divisions of the megacity.

Volume Editors
David Covo & Gabriel Mérigo Basurto

ISBN
0-935502-57-2