Allan Cochrane, The Open University Bob Colenutt and Martin Field, The University of Northampton Paper presented to ISA RC21 Conference, Berlin, September 2013

 Urbanists have struggled to engage with the suburbs over many years  For Gans (in 1968) the point was already (counter to Wirth) to argue that suburbanism was a way of life  For others, like Jacobs and her more contemporary followers suburbs were simply a means of avoiding the intensity of city life

 From Chicago to (Southern) California – claims that cities no longer spread out from (and draw in to) the centre (Dear).  And from a European perspective, the identification of the Zwischenstadt (Sieverts)  Moving beyond the megacity to new forms of urbanisation – the future city explored (Simone)

 Worrying about city regions – mega region, super-region – but…beyond the metropolis (8m)  Defined in relational terms (Allen et al)  Activity space stretches across a huge area of England (Gordon)  Over half the population of England included in some versions (Dorling)  Polycentric city region (Hall and Pain)

 Popular representations of life in England’s ‘home counties’ well into the 1960s are quintessentially suburban  Men in pin stripe suits and bowlers travelling up to the city or Whitehall to work  Containment of urban England (Hall et al), defending South Bucks (Charlesworth and Cochrane)

 1990s attempt to construct forms of suburb that drew on images of rurality in the South East, apparently to escape from urban sprawl into the protected space of the countryside (Murdoch and Marsden 1994 and Marsden et al 1996).  21 st century new urbanism and the drive for sustainable communities beyond the metropolis

 Explicit state strategy in first decade of 21 st century focused on housing growth to underpin economic growth (housing as driver)  Growth regions identified (our research focused on one of these)  Housing targets set  Sustainable urban extensions  BUT then  Revenge of the suburbanites (and…banking crisis)

 Still at the imaginative core of public policy – housing growth on the edge of the South East  Centre for Cities  City Deals – the case of Milton Keynes  From sustainability to viability (removing perceived constraints of the planning system)  Still effectively London dominated – i.e. to rework Dear, ‘the imperative towards decentralization…has not (yet) become the principle dynamic in this contemporary city’  Suburbs no longer just an afterthought, but an integral part of contemporary urbanism