Design
Suburbs Are Urban Places, Too
A scholar argues that suburbs have complex urban qualities, but they are poorly understood.
While both urban and rural studies have long thrived, the academic study of suburbs is still a relatively new field—despite the fact that, as the author Peter Ackroyd has claimed, suburbs are as old as the city itself.
Taking just one example from the historical record, the carved stone relief of the ancient Persian city of Madaktu, dating from the 600s BCE, shows a remarkable distinction between the city itself, with its neatly arrayed buildings, and the suburban villas dispersed outside the wall, each with its own palm tree. This image of city contrasted with suburb is a commonplace visual and conceptual trope that has continued to feature in urban studies, especially in the past century and a half.