AndersonMatrix1Post




 * The Matrix: The Downside of Suburbs: Car Culture and Social Problems**
 * Elizabeth Anderson**
 * Word Count: 1247 words** (does not include title, references, or article annotations)
 * Total: 3173**

Suburbs are very popular in the United States and other countries. According to [], fifty percent (//so 150 million people!//) of Americans live in the suburbs. Suburbs are a sustainability problem in many ways: their design encourages people to drive everywhere (and automobiles are a major source of carbon emissions), they limit people from interacting with each other, and they promote individualism and isolation.
 * Introduction**

In the 1800’s, due to rapid industrialization and urbanization, cities were not healthy places to live. There were few sewage systems. Horse manure and garbage littered the roads. Homeless and poor people lived in the cities. Disease was very common, since people had no concept of sanitation. Suburbs allowed people to live outside of the city and raise their children in a cleaner, safer place. Many of the suburbs were “gated” to keep undesirable people, such as minorities or poor people out.[Nasser] At first, inhabitants of suburbs used streetcars to commute from their quiet houses in the country to their workplaces in the city. Had streetcars continued to be the main method of transportation, America would probably not be as dependent on gasoline for transportation. General Motors, a car and bus manufacturer, began buying up streetcar lines and then changed them to bus lines. The buses were more expensive to run, which meant that many of them went out of business. Today, people have a choice between government-run public transportation or their own cars.[Mankoff] After World War II, returning soldiers married, had families, and wanted to buy a home.[Kenney] Mass production of look-a-like homes sprang up, turning farmlands into suburbs. Different suburbs catered to people of different incomes. Even when minorities were able to afford to live there, nearly all suburbs did not allow non-whites in. At the time, even the government supported this—“Government supported suburban development through the assistance of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), a department that worked to create neighborhood solidarity through homogeneity, harmony and attractiveness.”[Smukler] The media also encouraged people by painting a rosy picture of suburban life.[Kenney]
 * History**

Suburbs today are the cause of many environmental problems. The way they are designed is not efficient; perhaps the winding roads inside the suburb make cars drive slower, but just looking at an overhead map of a suburb makes people realize how silly their design is. The distance between two locations may be short enough for people to easily walk, but paths might not exist. People could walk on the roads, but oftentimes that is unsafe. Land-use zoning further complicates the problem. Residential areas, commercial areas, and so on are built far apart from each other to comply with zoning laws. As a result, suburbanites have to use cars to get pretty much everywhere. Automobiles are a huge sustainability problem in themselves. They emit many greenhouse gases, such as “sulfur oxides (SOx), nitrogen oxides (NOx), hydrocarbons (HCs), lead, particulates, carbon monoxide (CO), and carbon dioxide (CO2).”[Sagar, 241] Sagar also states that vehicle emissions account for about fifteen percent of greenhouses emitted globally. Not only do automobiles pollute, but fossil fuel supplies are growing scarcer. An article in a 1998 //Scientific American// predicted that oil production would decline by 2010.[Campbell and Laherrere, 79] Scientists have come up with new technologies for extracting fossil fuels, such as hydrofracking. Still, some experts believe that peak oil has happened or will happen within the next ten to twenty years.[//Science Daily//] Once the world reaches peak oil, prices for fossil fuels will become more expensive. Suburbs are not just an American problem. The first suburbs were actually in Manchester, England. The idea of living in a single-family dwelling out in the “country” quickly caught on the United States. Now, suburbs have spread to other countries, such as China and South America. Not only are the suburbs seen as good places to live and an ideal for people wealthy enough, but they are also seen as safer, since, like the earliest suburbs, many of them are gated.[Nasser] The question that needs to be asked, though, is whether all citizens of this planet can live a lifestyle like Americans sustainably.
 * Suburbs Today**

Suburbs are the cause of another, less obvious, sustainability problem: loneliness and disconnectedness. People who live in individual houses with their own TV, lawnmower, car, refrigerator, and so on do not need to go over to their neighbors to borrow something. They can stay in their own homes and travel to work to sit by computers in large office buildings and commute back home again. As opposed to cities, which have many different smells, “What you can smell in the suburbs, though, is fear—fear of the other, of strangers, and a withdrawal from the public spaces in which city life is lived, and civic life, for that matter.”[Fleming] Many people who live in suburbs do not share consumer goods, either, which contributes to consumption since everyone has to have their own stuff. Another problem is ever-increasing consumption. Everybody has to have more and better stuff (house, car, consumer goods, etc.) than everybody else. Obviously, if everybody has something, then it is hard for someone to have more than everyone else, so people keep ratcheting up the “standard of living”. Soon, it becomes socially unacceptable to not have a smartphone where only a few years ago, just a few people had any kind of cellphone. The insistence to have a perfect green lawn is a sustainability problem in itself; how on earth can one think that using chemicals, fossil fuels (to run that lawn mower which must be owned by everyone individually), water, and //space// to grow a lawn is even remotely environmentally friendly?
 * Social Problems**

Everyone on the planet is a stakeholder in this problem. The future of the planet and the species //Homo sapiens sapiens// depends on solving the closely connected problems of oil dependence, the inefficiency of living far from work and school, and the social issues caused by suburban life. Many solutions to the environmental problems caused by suburbs do exist. Some are relatively easy to implement and will reduce our impact on the environment, while other solutions will take longer but will provide more permanent solutions. The recent economic problems have led some people to reduce the amount of goods they consume. Some researchers are hopeful that this trend will continue and that people will realize that they are happier without lots of consumer goods.[Rosenbloom] If they do realize that consumer goods are not necessary for happiness, consumption of goods will decrease. Some environmentalist thinkers have suggested that cities be revamped so that upper and middle class people feel comfortable living there. The idea is that cities are more compact than suburbs. City dwellers are often able to walk or take public transportation from their houses to workplaces, shops, and schools. Public transportation is better and easier in cities since the population is denser. A redesign of cities may result in more civic involvement.[Appleyard and Jacobs, 461] We need to realize that the planet’s resources are not infinite, and that our actions are harming it. There are dozens of other aspects related to suburbs—agriculture, child labor, globalization, and a list of others to long to list here—that need change, too. Building “green” houses and adding solar panels will help some, but it will not change the fundamental problems with suburbs. Anything done to lessen the impact of suburbs will help, but we need to rethink our culture and our values for a long-lasting, valid solution.
 * Solutions**



Appleyard, Donald and Allan Jacobs. “’Toward an Urban Design Manifesto’”. In //The City Reader Fourth edition//. Richard LeGates and Frederic Stout, Eds. New York City: Routledge, 2009, pp. 456-466. Berger, Bennett M. “Suburbia and the American Dream”. Internet. Available: []. Accessed: November 2011. Campbell, Colin J. and Jean H. Laherrere. “The End of Cheap Oil.” //Scientific American.// Vol. 278 (March 1998): 78-83. Downs, Anthony. “The Need for a New Vision for the Development of Large U.S. Metropolitan Areas”. In //The City Reader Fourth edition//. Richard LeGates and Frederic Stout, Eds. New York City: Routledge, 2009, pp. 245-255. //The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream//. Dir. Gregory Greene. The Electric Wallpaper Co., 2004. Film. Fleming, Anne T. “Suburban Blues”. Online News Hour: October 10, 2003. Internet. Available: []. Accessed: November 2011. Kenney, Kim. “Suburbanization in the 1950’s: Glamorizing Suburbia in Popular Culture”. Internet. Available: (December 18, 2008) []. Accessed: November 2011. Mankoff, Al. “Revisiting the Great American Streetcar Scandal”. Internet. (1999) Available: []. Accessed: November 2011. Nasser, Haya El. “Modern Suburbia Not Just in America Anymore”. Internet. Available: (April 18, 2008) []. Accessed: November 2011. Rosenbloom, Stephanie. “But Will It Make You Happy?” Online //The New York Times//. Available: (August 7, 2010) []. Accessed: November 2011. Sagar, Ambuj. "Automobiles and Global Warming: Alternative Fuels and Other Options for Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reductions." Environmental Impact Assessment Review 15, no. 3 (May 1995): 241-274. “’Significant Risk’ Of Oil Production Peaking in Ten Years, Report Finds”. //Science Daily//. Internet. Available: (October 7, 2009) []. Accessed: November 2011. Smukler, Maya Montanez. “Race, TV, and Suburbia”. Internet. Available (2008) []. Accessed: November 2011. Spigel, Lynn. “Family on Television”. Internet. Available: []. Accessed: November 2011. Ulaby, Neda. "Popular Culture's Evolving View of the Suburbs." National Public Radio: 07 Oct 2006. Internet. Available: []. Accessed: 4 Nov 2011. "US Population Now 300 Million and Growing". Internet. Available: (October 17, 2006) []. Accessed: November 2011.
 * Bibliography**

**Annotation 1**
 * Article Annotations**

1. Appleyard, Donald and Allan Jacobs. “’Toward an Urban Design Manifesto’”. In //The City Reader Fourth edition//. Richard LeGates and Frederic Stout, Eds. New York City: Routledge, 2009, pp. 456-466. 2. Appleyard was a professor at Berkeley before he died. Jacobs still teaches there as a professor emeritus. Both worked in the area of urban design and city planning. 3. The main topic of the text is that cities can be much better places than they are now and there are ways to fix that. 4. Appleyard and Jacobs state that cities are not currently at their full potential. Cities have many issues, including many resulting from their design or lack thereof. Better urban design will make cities livable for many more people. 5. “We think it’s time for a new urban design manifesto.” (page 457) “We propose, therefore, a number of goals that we deem essential for the future of a good urban environment: livability; identity and control; access to opportunity, imagination, and joy; authenticity and meaning; open communities and public life; self-reliance; and justice.” (page 460) “Given a choice of the kind of community we would //like// to live in—the sort of choice earlier city dwellers seldom had—we would choose to live in an urban, public community that embraces the goals and displays the physical characteristics we have outlined.” (page 466) 6. Although the article does not focus on sustainability, its “manifesto” lays out many detailed solutions to the problems cities currently face (which is why many people prefer the suburbs). 7. Two details that I used from this article were the fact that people find cities to be far from perfect places to live and that some experts argue that better city design will fix this.

**Annotation 2** 1. Campbell, Colin J. and Jean H. Laherrere. “The End of Cheap Oil.” //Scientific American.// Vol. 278 (March 1998): 78-83. 2. Campbell was a petroleum geologist until he retired. He has a PhD from Oxford. He has written several papers and articles about peak oil. Laherrere works as a petroleum consultant and has written reports about the oil industry and peak oil. He has worked for or consulted with many petroleum-related companies and organizations. 3. The main argument of the text is that peak oil is going to happen very soon. The authors were writing in 1998 and predicted that we would have reached peak oul by now, which, depending on the expert consulted, may or may not be true. Despite the fact that oil resources are running low, demand for fossil fuels is growing. 4. Many graphs showing current trends and predictions are shown in the article. These help demonstrate that this truly is a problem. The article also discusses the fact that some oil reserves may not exist and other errors (so fossil fuels are going to peak sooner than some experts think). They also make the point that other oil crises have occurred and were hard on people (like the oil embargo in the 1970’s). The effects of oil running out worldwide would be even more disastrous. 5. "Using several techniques to estimate the current reserves of conventional oil and the amount still left to be discovered, we conclude that the decline will begin before 2010." (page 79) "It is here that the official statistics have become dangerously misleading" (page 80) "With sufficent preparation, however, the transition to the post-oil economy need not be traumatic." (page 83) 6. The article explained the details of peak oil to me. While peak oil is only a small part of my presentation, I think that it is necessary for me to have a firm grasp of it so that what I wrote is factual and to help me answer any questions that may come up after my presentation. It also thoroughly detailed the need to use less oil. 7. Two parts of the article were very important for my presentation: the prediction that peak oil will be reached by 2010 and that oil demand is ever-increasing, in part due to automobile use.

**Annotation 3** 1. Kenney, Kim. “Suburbanization in the 1950’s: Glamorizing Suburbia in Popular Culture”. Internet. (December 18, 2008) Available: []. Accessed: November 2011. 2. Kenney works as the curator of the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum. She has written several books about history. 3. This article explains why so many Americans moved to suburbs following World War II. 4. The US government actually encouraged people to move from the cities to the suburbs. After World War II, many people got married, started families, and moved to the suburbs. Popular media played a role in encouraging people that a house out in the suburbs was the ideal. 5. “ Suburbia personified the American Dream for every young couple in postwar America as a place where they could own their own home and raise their children away from the horrors of city life.” “The fertility rate soared 50 percent between 1940 and 1957, and nearly half of all American women had their first children before they turned 20.” “The postwar economic boom, accompanied by the ease with which one could obtain a house in the suburbs, made it simple for many middle-class families to embark on a quest for the American dream. 6. This article succinctly describes many of the reasons why people wanted to move to the suburbs, and why they are still so popular. 7. A lot of the information in the “History” section of this presentation comes from this article. While I also found similar or more detailed information from other sources, the description of the influence to see suburbs as the ideal from the media came from this article.

** Annotation 4 ** 1. Nasser, Haya El. “Modern Suburbia Not Just in America Anymore”. Internet. (April 18, 2008) Available: []. Accessed: November 2011. 2. Nasser is a reporter for //USA Today//. She focuses on writing about demographic issues. 3. Other countries are building suburbs, too, modeling them after suburbs in the US. 4. The article describes the history and motivation behind the construction of suburbs inside and outside the US. It then provides some statistics about the spread of suburbs to other countries. It provides hope that things will change, stating some examples. 5. “For good or bad, the USA's suburbs have become a living laboratory for the world.” “Personal safety, a concern that has driven Americans out of cities and into suburbia, plays an even greater role in Latin America.” “China, where major cities are choking on stifling pollution, is striving to build the world's first sustainable city — Dongtan, which broke ground last summer.” 6. This article discussed both the history of suburbs inside and outside the US as well as explained the reasons behind suburbs being built in other countries such as China. 7. I used the information I found in this article for the first paragraph in the History section and for the last paragraph in the Suburbs Today section. ** Annotation 5 ** 1. Rosenbloom, Stephanie. “But Will It Make You Happy?” Online //The New York Times//. (August 7, 2010). Available: []. Accessed: November 2011. 2. Rosenbloom writes for the //New York Times// and other newspapers. 3. This article argues that consumer goods will not necessarily make people happy. 4. The article starts with a story about a woman who realized she was not happy working hard and buying lots of consumer goods. After cutting back and simplifying her life, she realized that she was happier and her family had less debt. With the recession, many people have cut back. They have realized that consumerism is not necessary for happiness and is on fact detrimental. 5. “So one day she stepped off.” “’We’re moving from a conspicuous consumption—which is “buy without regard”—to a calculated consumption,’ says Marshal Cohen, an analyst at the NPD Group, the retailing research and consulting firm.” “Current research suggests that, unlike consumption of material goods, spending on leisure and services typically strengthens social bonds, which in turn helps amplify happiness.” 6. This second paragraph of my “solutions” section came almost entirely from this article. 7. People are unhappy despite high consumption of consumer goods. After the recession, some people have cut back and realized they are happier. ** Annotation 6 ** 1. Smukler, Maya Montanez. “Race, TV, and Suburbia”. Internet. Available (2008) []. Accessed: November 2011. 2. Smukler teaches at the New School University. She studies film and its impact on culture. 3. The main topic of the text is the portrayal of racial minorities in film and culture and media in general when it applies to suburban living. 4. The US government supported people moving to the suburbs, but minorities were kept from living in suburbs. Suburbs were portrayed positively in the media. Even today, media portrayal of minorities is not the same as that of whites. 5. “The relationship between race and the American suburbs has been one of possibility, contradiction and exclusivity.” (page 1) “Home and family went hand in hand in the televised suburban landscape; the American Dream was not for the singleton.” (page 3) “Suburbia embodies duality: the calm and fearful, perfection and failure, individuality and conformity.” (page 16) 6. This article really opened my eyes to media portrayal and its effect on culture and people’s thoughts, as well as explaining the racial segregation of suburbs until recently. 7. Details that were important to me for this presentation were the racial make-up of suburbs. The quote about the US government helping people to move to the suburbs also came from this article.