Global Suburbs: Urban Sprawl from Rio Grande to Rio De Janeiro

Global Suburbs: Urban Sprawl from Rio Grande to Rio de Janeiro, Lawrence A. Herzog, NY, Routledge, 2014, 270 pp., $39.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-415-64473-0The book on 'Global Suburbs: Urban sprawl from Rio Grande to Rio de Janeiro' is one of the publications from the 'Cultural Spaces Series'. This documentation on 'global suburbs', especially in the Latin American context, is comprehensive in nature as it addresses social, environmental, ecological and most importantly, global economic driving forces behind suburbanisation.The first half of the book efficiently portrays the evolution and true character of the American suburb, and discusses its (negative) impact on the environment, especially on ecology, public health and community life. The subject of the book is the American suburb of post World War II. Such suburbs were characterised by low-density development, detached homes and connected to the main city by freeways and highways. The author argues that by choosing to live in a suburb, dignified by privacy, exclusivity and security, Americans have willingly given up on their quality leisure time that, for example, Europeans would take for granted as part of their daily life - like walking, biking, and hanging out with neighbours. Here the author introduces 'fast urbanism' and 'slow urbanism' to characterise these two different kinds of livelihood that are built upon later in the book. He argues that suburban living leads to fast urbanism, and slow urbanism would emerge from a combination of physical planning and a 'psychological state' of being more engaged with their surroundings.The transfer and transformation of the 'American dream of suburb' beyond the boundary of North America has been discussed in the latter half of the book, especially in the Latin American context. Although still being infected by a sense of lack of community and placelessness, suburbs often take different forms such as privatised gated communities, and even mega project and gated cities, as one crosses the boundary of the United States. Examples are drawn from Chile, Brazil, Mexico and elsewhere. Besides being homogenised in physical design with American suburbs, those developments are also considered global, in terms of attracting foreign direct investment. Such suburbs have been identified as 'socio-territorial fragments' as these isolated enclaves are not built within any planned spatial structure or social context. Such global suburbs in emerging economies are argued to be unsustainable models as decisions about such development are made in a complex environment involving multiple actors where the poor inhabitants' desire to survive in their squatter settlements are constantly in conflict with global investors' desire to invest in America-like suburban real estate.This book brings up four key themes that are most salient for the discipline of Planning. First, it argues that ecology should be at the centre of the decision-making on urbanisation policy rather than the decisions being merely driven by globalisation and real estate forces. The author refers to the concept of 'bioregionalism' that sits well with slow urbanism.Second, the author argues that fast urbanism is a psychological state that has been created as a consequence of the global suburbs. This echoes the same sentiment associated with 'edge cities' by Joel Garreau (Garreau, 1991) and with 'American suburb' by Swedish Photographer Adolfsson (2015), whose contribution is discussed below. However, global suburbs are, by definition, different from 'edge cities' as the former is mainly residential in nature and the latter is job-centred.Third, for the Planning discipline, this book makes the unique point that the global suburb develops a shrinking sense of security, as well as a shrinking sense of identity and 'belongingness' in its inhabitants. The author makes a very valid point that by moving towards such global suburbs, they are losing the sense of walkable space and public space, in spite of the false sense of security claimed by these gated communities. …