Suburban Snob Control

In the June issue of its magazine, the American Enterprise Institute takes on snobs and particularly anti-suburban snobs, who break down into Anti-Sprawl Snobs and Anti-WalMart snobs. Architectural historian Robert Bruegmann leads the charge against the former category with an essay adapted from his new book, "Sprawl." The concern about suburban sprawl, he argues, amounts to class bias. "Sprawl" means subdivisions and shopping centers for middle-and lower-middle-class families," he writes, and implies that anti-sprawl activism is fed by the well-to-do exurbanites who don't want those families as neighbors. If history is any guide, the houses that make up today's ugly sprawl will become the fashionable, collectible homes of tomorrow. "The now-treeless subdivisions of look-alike stucco boxes at the edge of suburban Las Vegas," he predicts, "… will likely be candidates for historic landmark designation."

Bruegmann doesn't pause to consider that it's precisely the creation of exurbs deplete interest in restoring these close-in "vintage" neighborhoods. Nor does he quite close the gap between his seeming affection for the architecture of first-ring burbs and his support for teardowns. But his article is part of a larger defense of suburban development that says the suburbs, like the cities, are organic, dynamic communities in their own right, and not social laboratories awaiting the next urban planning experiment in correcting their ills. " Tear up and start over at your own risk," he warns.

Also in the issue is an interesting interview with urban design chronicler Witold Rybczynski.