Also, I was talking to my friend who’s an urban studies major about this earlier today. She told me that in the suburbs “the lack of public spaces and public transportation means suburbs don’t have as many opportunities for interactions between diverse groups of people, for public protest, or for the cross-pollination of ideas”
I remember I saw a post on here once about how making the primary mode of transportation cars was really insidiously capitalist and helped maintain an individualist ethos by making transportation an individual investment and responsibility, and also by isolating people for the time that they’re commuting. I think that can be expanded to explain the suburbs in general.
it’s worth considering that beyond the way that suburbs and cars accommodate capital by turning people’s basic human needs (transportation and shelter) into marketable private goods, they also serve a purpose of spreading people out and impeding collective action both on the psychological scale (because people have no sense that their own welfare is tied up with the public good) and on the physical scale– where are people supposed to organize? are they supposed to drive to mass demonstrations? will there be parking?
so I strongly and urgently believe that we need to abolish the suburbs