Suburban Colonization - Theoretical Analyses

Theoretical Analyses

Joel Garreau in Edge City described the growth of cities on the edge of major urban areas, which became population and power centres in themselves.

Dale Johnston in Lost in the Suburbs described a cultural and political gap that occurred in New Jersey and Ontario in the early 1990s when suburban voters began to outnumber urban or rural voters, and began to perceive that they were paying taxes to provide urban areas with services that were not duplicated in their community. Meanwhile, suburban communities would export problems to the cities, typically in the form of drug addicts, homelessness, smog, prostitution and other crimes serving suburban residents, and the need to accommodate a large number of commuters and their sewage and parking requirements. As downtown residents and suburban voters became estranged, each perceived themselves subsidizing the other, and accordingly a common solution, called in both New Jersey and Ontario the Common Sense Revolution, transferred funds from urban needs to suburban sprawl, triggering a decline in urban quality of life in both places, as population further spread out and downtowns became more hostile to suburban visitors.