Line #23 Main/Suburbia


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4	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/suburbia.png]]
5	[[caption-width-right:350:Where they cut down all the trees and name the streets after them.]]
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11	->''"Little boxes on the hillside,''
12	->''Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,''
13	->''Little boxes on the hillside,''
14	->''Little boxes all the same."''
15	-->-- '''Malvina Reynolds'''[[note]]Incidentally, the song ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "Little Boxes"]]) was directly inspired by the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westlake,_Daly_City,_California Westlake District]] of Daly City, a suburb of UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco.[[/note]]
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17	%% One quote is sufficient. Please place additional entries on the quotes tab.
18
19	The place where the DomCom usually lives, a homogeneous ObsessivelyNormal "bedroom community" of single family homes. Unlike many old inner city neighborhoods, which grew organically in a "hodge-podge" way, the suburbs are often newly built all at once by a housing MegaCorp using a generic street plan. Most of the residents are families or couples and, due to zoning regulations that make apartments impermissible, there are few lower-income residents. People live in houses that, while not exactly palatial, are still a lot bigger than those available downtown for a similar price.
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21	Most of the houses [[CutAndPasteSuburb look alike]], having been built according to the {{Mega Corp}}'s two or three plans as an efficiency measure. The street names are bland and banal, like the architecture. The Suburbs are designed around the car, with long distances to shops and services, so adults will mostly drive around. [[FreeRangeChildren Kids may bike around alone]] in this relatively safe community.
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23	Instead of a Main Street with small "mom and pop" stores and family restaurants like most small towns of EverytownAmerica, a suburb will have TheMall, be it a big, enclosed shopping center or a "big box" mall with a UsefulNotes/{{Walmart}} and national and multinational chain stores. You can walk or ride a bike to a few places, but not most of the important places like TheMall, so plots involving the availability of a car (such as the VerySpecialEpisode about the dangers of drunk driving) are possible.
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25	Depending on the genre, Suburbia may also be home to a [[RagtagBandOfMisfits ragtag band of kids and teens]], {{The Quincy Punk}}s, talking animals, and [[CoolOldGuy cool Elders]]; sometimes, all there together! In less satirical examples (see below), Suburbia may be the staging point for a CityOfAdventure, especially if it borders [[TheCity The Big City]].
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27	While the mythology of suburbia's idyllic perfection has become a lauded part of UsefulNotes/TheAmericanDream, a deep well of satire and (often not very affectionate) parody has arisen, especially from disaffected youth. In the middle of the 20th century, the American intelligentsia were obsessed with attacking the actual and perceived shortcomings of suburbia. By the nineties, the idea of satirizing suburbia was so ingrained in American culture that it was itself satirized. The fact that we have an entire trope about this, StepfordSuburbia, speaks volumes about the way many Americans view the suburban lifestyle.
28
29	Suburbia in TV and film has three distinct flavors:
30	* '''The Coastal Regions''', which is often on the outskirts of TheCity, because downtown houses are owned by BourgeoisBohemian executives and condos are too small for families. Coastal city suburbs are therefore not downtown, as houses there are too expensive. As well, these families want yards and lawns and they to be distant from the downsides of big city life (e.g., crime, the AddledAddict and TheAlcoholic). Most people are college educated, upper middle-class, and at least slightly liberal. If not set in California, then Pacific Northwest; if on the Northeast, Washington D.C. and its ring cities are readily available.
31	* '''[[EverytownAmerica The Midwest]]''' in FlyoverCountry which is more rural or depicts small cities. [[MoralGuardians Family Values]] often abound. Frequent forays into the QuirkyTown, which may be the TownWithADarkSecret. More modest income and less educated than their coastal brethren, more likely to be working-class and somewhat more likely to be conservative. Often, these portrayals stray far from real life and enjoy an undercurrent of hypocrisy (the respectable church-goers are all sleeping with each other or binge-drinking), partly to add color, but mostly because the Midwest is just slightly less alien than Mars to most of the folks who write TV[[note]]That said, it isn't [[TruthInTelevision always inaccurate]]...[[/note]].
32	* '''The gated community'''. The entrance to this posh neighborhood of beautifully-landscaped {{Big Fancy House}}s and luxury cars is restricted to residents, mail and [[{{Courier}} delivery people]], cops, and visitors, with a guard booth at the road in and out. More likely than the other suburbs to have servants. Often shares the conservatism of Midwestern suburbs, with the residents of the community hoping to create a idyllic life for themselves, just like in those [[TheFifties Fifties]] {{sitcom}}s, free from "[[LowerClassLout those people]]" outside. There's also a big element of [[SlobsVersusSnobs snobbery and class warfare]] -- these people ''bought'' their way into Sunnyside Estates, thank you very much.
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34	For examples in fiction where all of the houses look basically alike, see CutAndPasteSuburb.
35
36	In RealLife, the "Father of Suburbia" in the US is real estate developer UsefulNotes/WilliamLevitt. He introduced the idea of planned suburban communities with strict rules on the look and style. Levitt built Levittown, a suburb outside New York City built on a former potato farm. Every house was quickly built using an assembly-line-style system, using 27 steps and the same floor plans. Newly-returned soldiers from WWII got loans from the government to buy the houses; thanks to these subsidies, even working-class families could get their own home. With the peace and prosperity, the Baby Boom, a big surge of births took place. Until Levittown, these new families had been cramped in downtown apartments or in improvised housing, like metal Quonset huts turned into dwellings. Levitt made churches, schools and malls the centerpieces of his planned communities.
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38	One criticism of suburban development in the US is "redlining" a discriminatory practice in which people in neighborhoods with many Black or other minority residents are categorized as "hazardous" to investment" by banks and other institutions and denied credit, mortgages and insurance. In practice, this kept Black and minority people out of predominantly white suburbs.
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40	Environmental activists have raised concerns about how suburbs take away agricultural land and forests and replace them with paved-over surfaces. Environmental activists have also criticized suburbs' reliance on cars and their contribution to pollution (as suburbanites drive to TheCity each day).
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42	----
43	!!Examples
44
45	[[foldercontrol]]
46
47	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
48	* ''Film/EdwardScissorhands'' derives a contrast from the gothic castle Edward is from and the friendly, pastel mid-century suburb at the foot of the town. The townsfolk are friendly, if a little insensitive to his condition, at least until Edward's situation begins deteriorating.
49	* ''Film/TheFamilyMan'': Jack spends much of his glimpse trying to get used to life in the suburbs. After Kate rejects his efforts to relocate the family to TheCity, he finally makes peace with their New Jersey home.
50	* ''Film/FrightNight2011'': Most of the movie is set in a new middle-class residential development, a little island of identical houses surrounded by desert. Aerial shots at the beginning emphasize the homogeny of the homes and the banal, wholesome ambiance of the neighborhood.
51	* ''Film/Halloween1978'' takes place in an ordinary Midwestern suburb (although it was actually filmed in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena), and was one of the first horror films to utilize the familiar suburban environment and a key contributor to the "suburban Gothic" sub-genre.
52	* ''Film/{{Stepmom}}'': Anna and Ben divide their time between Luke and Isabel's apartment in TheCity and Jackie's house in suburban Englewood, New Jersey.
53	[[/folder]]
54
55	[[folder:Literature]]
56	* ''Literature/{{Disclosure}}'' has the Coastal Regions variant: Tom and his family live on Bainbridge Island, a bedroom community within a 40-minute ferry ride of Seattle.
57	* In the AlternateHistory of ''Literature/MaleRising'', suburbia emerges in the US a decade ahead of schedule thanks to the Great Depression not happening, as well as a left-wing Farmer-Labor government in the '40s that supported heavy infrastructure development to boost the economy, the single-family tract housing of the suburbs being one of their more famous accomplishments. As a result, suburbia sees critics emerge on the right wing as well as the left, seeing suburbia as a symbol of the left's desire to pave over tradition and replace it with soulless development. Since the civil rights movement had been accomplished early, black professionals follow their white counterparts into the suburbs as they become middle-class (often to get away from their new immigrant neighbors) rather than being redlined into ghettoes. (There are exceptions to this, though — in those former Jim Crow states that went down kicking and screaming, suburbia is still badly segregated, with only the city centers being mixed-race.)
58	* ''Literature/TheOrderOfMelkizedek'': Sonya's house is in a spanking-new Makati planned subdivision, either for the Nouveau Riche upper classes or the aspirational middle classes. It's modelled on a very American, midcentury-modernist style, with a wide-open lawn, flat-roofed profile, wide property footprint and low fence. Adela, too, lives with her husband Santiago in a similar suburban-style house.
59	* ''Literature/OrdinaryPeople'': The wealthy suburb of Lake Forest (and the Jarretts' unhappiness within it) is contrasted with the peace Calvin and Conrad find in Evanston (technically a city – and referred to as such in the novel – but still a suburb of Chicago). [[spoiler:Calvin and Conrad move to Evanston at the end of the novel.]]
60	* ''Literature/ThePowerBroker'': The parkways Moses built so that the increasing amount of city dwellers with automobiles could get to the state parks he built on Long Island help turn Nassau County from potato-farming country into today's suburban sprawl after World War II.
61	* In ''Literature/TheRestOfUsJustLiveHere'', Mikey describes where he lives as "a suburb of a suburb of a suburb of a suburb of a city that takes about a hour to get to."
62	* ''Literature/RallyRoundTheFlagBoys'' is set in the nice, typical suburban village of Fairfield County, Connecticut and is about the lives of the townsfolk disrupted by a new missile installation.
63	* ''Literature/TheWednesdayWars'': The whole book takes place in the nice town of Camillo, Long Island. Everyone knows each other and most of the kid's parents are pretty well-off, except Doug's and Mai Thi.
64	[[/folder]]
65
66	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
67	* The topic of the ''Series/AdamRuinsEverything'' episode "Adam Ruins...The Suburbs". UrbanSegregation divided 20th-century neighborhoods into "red" and "green" zones. Modern suburban residents are descended from the those who lived in "green" zones, where mostly white residents were allowed to borrow money from banks and buy houses. This was discouraged and very difficult in "red" zones.
68	* The NuclearFamily at the center of ''Series/TheDickVanDykeShow'' lived in suburban New Rochelle.
69	* ''Series/{{Maude}}'' was set in the affluent real-life NYC suburb of Tuckahoe, New York.
70	* ''Series/MyFamilyAndMe'': The show stars a NuclearFamily in the suburbs of Cloverdale, California.
71	* ''Series/TheWonderYears'' chronicles a teenager growing up in a suburb [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield somewhere]] during TheSixties.
72	* TransatlanticEquivalent: Not just the USA: the classic setting for a British DomCom, a setting the Creator/{{BBC}} has used to the point of cliché and self-parody, would be the better-off suburbs of a typical British city, most usually [[BritainIsOnlyLondon North London]]. These were usually built in the period 1900 - 1939, and are composed of street after street of large semi-detached houses, often with big bay windows and mock-Tudor half timbering. A typical visual example would be Reggie Perrin's walk to the railway station each morning, along a never-changing beat of streets in unchanging British suburbia with unchanging neighbours, in ''Series/TheFallAndRiseOfReginaldPerrin''.
73	[[/folder]]
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75	[[folder:Music]]
76	* Music/ArcadeFire's "Music/TheSuburbs" is a ConceptAlbum described as "a letter from the suburbs".
77	* Music/PetShopBoys' "Suburbia" is a critique of suburban life.
78	-->''Suburbia: where the suburbs meet utopia''
79	* Music/{{Rush\|Band}}'s classic "Subdivisions" is a song about children raised in the suburbs failing to rebel against stifling conformity, getting crushed by the banality of the job market in the cities, and being nostalgic for their childhood and so moving back to the suburbs to perpetuate the cycle.
80	* Some of Music/TheStooges' early songs are about just how boring Ann Arbor suburbs were in TheSixties. No news on how boring it is today though...
81	[[/folder]]
82
83	[[folder:Video Games]]
84	* The first district of ''VideoGame/CriminalCaseTheConspiracy'', Fairview, takes place in a stereotypical middle-class suburbia at the very edge of Grimsborough, brimming with identical-looking homes and {{Nosy Neighbor}}s. Unfortunately, the neighborhood is far from tranquil during the player's visit due to the presence of a SerialKiller terrorizing it.
85	* The setting of ''VideoGame/EagleEyeMysteries''. At Richview's north end is a farm area; northwest is the local Buccaneer Beach; downtown has two jewelry stores and a bank; and most of the map's lower half is residential.
86	* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':
87	** ''VideoGame/Fallout3'': Tranquility Lane, a computer simulation, is modeled after 1950's suburbia with cheerful background music, neat and clean houses, perfectly manicured lawns, and white picket fences: a complete contrast to the wrecked and rotten neighborhoods of the surface world. It turns out to be a StepfordSuburbia, however.
88	** ''VideoGame/Fallout4'': Sanctuary Hills, Massachusetts, is a 1950's style suburb where the HappilyMarried player character lives at the beginning. It seems to be a surprisingly nice place to live, especially considering the broader milieu of 2077 with resource problems, urban riots, and a war between America and China. Then the bombs drop, and Sanctuary Hills becomes a mutant-infested ruin for the next two centuries. You can work with the Minutemen to make it a safe settlement once again, albeit no longer as this trope.
89	* Though the neighborhood of ''VideoGame/FattyBear'' is never shown, both the interior and exterior of their house has the generic suburban structure.
90	[[/folder]]
91
92	[[folder:Visual Novels]]
93	* ''VisualNovel/CauseOfDeath'': The gated community's conceit of being a haven from all things nasty takes a beating in the Domestic Disturbance dyad. Even apart from the psycho killer who just got activated, Natara discovers that just about every adult in the walls is cheating on their spouses. The sole exceptions that she noticed? The two swingers.
94	* ''VisualNovel/DreamDaddy'': The setting is a peaceful cul-de-sac in a friendly neighborhood.
95	* ''VisualNovel/{{Melody}}'':
96	** At the beginning of the story, the protagonist, Bethany, and Tim appear to live in the suburbs of a major city.
97	** [[spoiler:In both the Good Ending and the Family Ending, this is where the protagonist and Melody eventually settle down. They have their little detached house with a manicured lawn for themselves and maybe a little one.]]
98	[[/folder]]
99
100	[[folder:Western Animation]]
101	* ''WesternAnimation/KatieAndOrbie'': The main characters live in a nice, friendly suburb, apparently far from a major city. When they visit their grandparents in the big city, it's like visiting a new world.
102	[[/folder]]

Context Main / Suburbia