Suburbia in the 21st Century: From Dreamscape to Nightmare?

The 21st century has been declared the ‘urban century’ now that a majority of the world’s population live in cities. A number of nations have been highly urbanised since at least the 1960s. Moreover, the UN predicts that a number of countries will be hyper-urbanised (i.e., 90 per cent of the population live in cities) by 2050. Closer examination of the geography of where people live in cities points to the majority living within a constellation of suburban contexts. Notably, however, the suburbs and suburban ways of living have been overshadowed or relegated to the intellectual and policy margins by city-centric scholars, cultural elites, and policymakers. The growing significance of the suburbs, as measured by the increasing share of population who live there, and now work from home due to the global Covid-19 pandemic, are clear indicators that the suburbs matter. It is arguably more accurate to say that the 21st century is a (sub)urban century.