Description
Suburbia may be best recognized by its most tangible forms: sprawl, strip mall, cul-de-sac, single family home, or lawn, yet those typologies, especially in Los Angeles (a city often conflated with suburbia), are neither static nor universal. This course looks at suburbia as a place shaped by entanglements of privatization, real estate markets, and infrastructures that reflect conditions of 19th and 20th century values and desires—the epitome of the American Dream. Suburbia is not confined to the periphery; however, it exists as a spectrum across the urban fabric. Suburban Tendencies considers it a construct that exceeds any cliched imaginary. It is a place ripe for reconsideration and speculation.
Suburban Tendencies is interested evolutions and mutations over time, architectures of inclusion and exclusion, shifting politics, and the many subjectivities contained within similar formal languages. Through readings, lectures, and films, we will investigate the histories and policies t