The most pervasive of these mechanisms is Euclidean zoning a land use tool that separates ‘incompatible’ land uses and gives preference to single-family detached residential uses. This form of development has become so engrained in American society, that even as residents change, the mechanisms that regulate this form of development are slow to evolve. In the American suburb, the cultural norm of the nuclear family resulted in the low density, single-use developments of the postwar period. 1 The spatiality of a community determines its material character. Space not only contains social processes, but actively constructs them. Society and space are mutually constitutive. Theoretical Framework: Mutual Constitutivity of Society, Space, and Law The tool is Euclidean zoning and the social processes that frame it are a separation of public and private spheres and the dominance of the white nuclear family as the archetype for which the suburbs were built.ģ.
To fully discuss the implications of a more diverse suburb, both the tools that created the landscape and the social processes that restructure that landscape must be explored. However, as the suburb becomes more ethnically and economically diverse, scholars and communities are faced with an important decision: will they embrace and support this shift or undermine it with a rigid adherence to historical conceptions of family type and zoning rules?
The suburban ideal is apostwar cultural construction of the American Dream - a single family detached house, surrounded by a yard, and inhabited by the nuclear family. The American suburb is at a crossroads, a pivotal moment when demographic and economic changes exist in tension with the ideal and design of the suburban landscape. We present an agenda for the future that includes planning responses that rethink the zoning hierarchy, promote new forms of densification, move beyond restrictive family definitions, and experiment with new forms of service delivery. In order to respond to the needs of a diversifying suburban population, communities need to challenge the underlying assumptions of traditional zoning ordinances – the separation of uses and preference for single-family housing. We argue that these demographic changes create both a point of rupture that challenges traditional land use regulations and actual uses of space, and an opening for communities to embrace and plan for new residents. Today’s suburb is not your mother’s suburb. Built upon a middle class, white, nuclear family ideal, the suburb is now diversifying demographically and economically, yet zoning ordinances and the built environment continue to reflect this outdated ideal. But the suburb is more than a physical location it is also a social production. The United States is a suburban nation with a majority of Americans living and working in this landscape.
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