Streets in Suburbia as Spheres of Comfort
Vol.20,No.2(2023)
Street Politics. Space, Identities, Memories, and Conflicts from the Sidewalk
How to manage the “self” on the streets of suburbia when everybody knows each other? Due to the social and spatial manageability of suburban spaces, contact with more or less (un)known others is to be expected. Through repeated and continuous contact, residents are automatically and reciprocally assigned the role of acquaintances. This situation requires finding the right distance. The positioning of oneself and others, the perception and practice of distance, results in comfort and freedom from conflict. This coping strategy for public (street)spaces reflects a socio-spatial (con)figuration that is enacted as street management. Although street life is dominated by the notion of nothingness, everyone campaigns to stay private in public by setting up a “public self”. The research findings I refer to are based on two case studies in suburban spaces on the outskirts of Hanover (the state capital of Lower Saxony, Germany). In order to understand and explain the life-worlds of suburbanites in general and their manifestation on streets in particular, I conducted exploratory interviews, go-alongs and field observations. To create an atmosphere of comfort, convivial as well as conflictual situations are to be avoided, which is achieved by the residents positioning themselves and others at a distance. Since street life in the suburbs is uneventful and provides a sense of security and familiarity, living together in coexistence is routine. The delegation of responsibility for everything public enables suburbanites to be indifferent to others and the setting. The minimal sympathetic way of interacting with each other is symbolised by greetings, which both facilitates and hinders communication. In the end, the life-world suburbia and its streets are spheres of comfort because they are manageable, expectable and knowable.
suburbia; comfort; street management; distance; (con)figuration; positioning; public self
Anderson, Elijah. 1990. Street wise. Race, Class and Change in an Urban Community. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.
Anderson, Elijah. 1999. Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York: Norton.
Amin, Ash. 2002. “Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with Diversity.” Environment and Planning A 34(6): 959–980.
Baumgartner, Matthew P. 1988. The Moral Order of a Suburb. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Blokland, Talja and Julia Nast. 2014. “From Public Familiarity to Comfort Zone: The Relevance of Absent Ties for Belonging in Berlin’s Mixed Neighbourhoods.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38(4): 1142–1159.
Boustedt, Olaf. 1970. “Stadtregion.” Pp. 3207–3237 in Handwörterbuch der Raumforschung und Raumordnung, edited by Akademie für Raumforschung und Landesplanung ARL.
Böhme, Gernot. 2013. Atmosphären. Essays zur neuen Ästhetik. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Brighenti, Andrea, M. and Andrea Pavoni. 2019. “City of Unpleasant Feelings. Stress, Comfort and Animosity in Urban Life.” Social & Cultural Geography 20(2): 137–156.
Bruinsma, Gerben and Shane D. Johnson. 2018. The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Criminology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
BMVBS – Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Bau und Stadtentwicklung, eds. 2013. “Suburbaner Raum im Lebenszyklus.“ Nr. 24/2013. Retrieved May 4, 2022 (https://www.bbsr.bund.de/BBSR/DE/veroeffentlichungen/ministerien/bmvbs/bmvbs-online/2013/DL_ON24013.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=1).
Carmona, Matthew. 2003. Public Places – Urban Spaces: Dimensions of Urban Design. Oxford: Architectural Press.
Clapson, Mark. 2003. Suburban Century. Social Change and Urban Growth in England and the USA. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Cohen, Anthony P. 1985. Symbolic Construction of Community. London: Routledge.
Demerath, Loren and David Levinger. 2003. “The Social Qualities of Being on Foot: A Theoretical Analysis of Pedestrian Activity, Community, and Culture.” City and Community 2: 373–390.
Fava, Sylvia F. 1956. “Suburbanism as a Way of Life.” American Sociological Review 21(1): 34–37.
Fishman, Robert M. 1999. Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia. New York: Basic Books.
Flick, Uwe. 2008. Triangulation. Eine Einführung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Forsyth, Ann. 2012. “Defining Suburbs.“ Journal of Planning Literature 27(3): 270–281.
Frank, Susanne. 2003. “Gender Trouble in Paradise: Suburbia im Wandel.“ Pp. 275–344 in Stadtplanung im Geschlechterkampf, edited by Susanne Frank. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Gans, Herbert J. 1967. The Levittowners. Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community. New York: Columbia University Press.
Geertz, Clifford. 1979: Dichte Beschreibung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Goffman, Erving. 1963. Behavior in Public Places. Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: The Free Press.
Göb, Angelina. 2021. Lebenswelten im Suburbanen – (Re)konstruktionen von Raum und Routinen am Rande von Hannover. Oldenburg (=Wahrnehmungsgeographische Studien Bd. 30): BIS-Verlag.
Gutmann, Robert. 1978. “The Street Generation.” Pp. 249–264 in Handbook on Streets, edited by Stanford Anderson. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Harris, Richard. 2010. “Meaningful Types in a World of Suburbs.” Pp. 15–50 in Suburbanization in Global Society. Research in Urban Sociology Vol. 10, edited by Clapson, Marc and Ray Hutchinson. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Heitmeyer, Wilhelm. 2019. The Codes of the Street in Risky Neighborhoods: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Youth Violence in Germany, Pakistan, and South Africa. Cham: Imprint: Springer.
Hesse, Markus. 2018. “Suburbanisierung.“ Pp. 2629–2639 in Handwörterbuch der Stadt- und Raumentwicklung, edited by Akademie für Raumforschung und Landesplanung ARL.
Hesse, Markus and Stefan Siedentop. 2018. “Suburbanisation and Suburbanisms – Making Sense of Continental European Developments.” Raumforschung und Raumordnung RuR 76(2): 97–108.
Hochschild, Arlie. 1979. “Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure.” American Journal of Sociology 85(3): 551–575.
Honer, Anne. 1994. “Das explorative Interview: zur Rekonstruktion der Relevanzen von Expertinnen und anderen Leuten.“ Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Soziologie 20(3): 623–640.
Ilan, Jonathan. 2016. “Understanding Street Culture: Poverty, Crime, Youth and Cool.” Youth Adolescence 45: 1954–1956.
Intravia, Jonathan, Benjamin R. Gibbs, Kevin T. Wolff, Rocio Paez, Allison Bernheimer, and Alex R. Piquero. 2018. “The Mediating Role of Street Code Attitudes on the Self-Control and Crime Relationship.” Deviant Behavior 39(10): 1305–1321.
Jacobs, Jane. 1993. Great Streets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Friedrichs, Jürgen and Hartmut Lüdtke. 1977. Teilnehmende Beobachtung: Einführung in die sozialwissenschaftliche Feldforschung. Weinheim: Beltz.
Keil, Roger. 2013. Suburban Constellations. Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century. Berlin: Jovis.
Keith, Shelley and Elizabeth Griffiths. 2014. “Urban Code or Urban Legend: Endorsement of the Street Code Among Delinquent Youth in Urban, Suburban, and Rural Georgia.” Race and Justice 4(3): 270–298.
Klinenberg, Eric. 2018. Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. New York: Broadway Books.
Knauft, Bruce M. 1996. Genealogies for the Present in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Routledge.
Kurtenbach, Sebastian, Steffen Zdun, Simon Howell, Muhammad Zaman, and Abdul Rauf. 2021. “Global Street Code. A Cross-cultural Perspective on Youth Violence.” Deviant Behavior 42(2): 171–192.
Kusenbach, Margarethe. 2003. “Street Phenomenology: The Go-Along as Ethnographic Research Tool.” Ethnography 4(3): 455–485.
Kusenbach, Margarethe. 2006. “Patterns of Neighboring. Practicing Community in the Parochial Realm.” Symbolic Interaction 29(3): 270–306.
Lacy, Karyn. 2016. “The New Sociology of Suburbs: A Research Agenda for Analysis of Emerging Trends.” The Annual Review of Sociology 42: 369–384.
Lamnek, Siegfried. 2005. Qualitative Sozialforschung. Weinheim: Beltz.
Latham, Alan and Jack Layton. 2019. “Social Infrastructure and the Public Life of Cities: Studying Urban Sociality and Public Spaces.” Geography Compass 13:e12444: 1–15.
Lofland, Lyn H. 1973. A World of Strangers: Order and Action in Urban Public Space. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press.
Lofland, Lyn H. 1998: The Public Realm: Exploring the City’s Quintessential Social Territory. New York: Routledge.
Lupi, Tineke and Sako Musterd. 2006. “The Suburban ‘Community Question’.” Urban Studies 43(4): 801–817.
Markus, Hazel R. 1977. “Self-schemata and Processing Information about the Self.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35: 63–78.
Mehta, Vikas. 2013. The Street: A Quintessential Social Public Space. Oxon: Routledge.
Menzl, Marcus. 2007. Leben in Suburbia: Raumstrukturen und Alltagspraktiken am Rand von Hamburg. Frankfurt: Camus Verlag.
Menzl, Marcus. 2014. “Urbanisierungsprozesse in Suburbia? Überlegungen zur Ubiquität der urbanen Lebensweise.“ Pp. 43–60 in Urbane Peripherie Jahrbuch StadtRegion 2013/2014, edited by Frank Roost, Brigitta Schmidt-Lauber, Christine Hannemann, Frank Othengrafen, and Jörg Pohlan. Opladen: Verlag Barbara Budrich.
Michelso, William H. 1977. Environmental Choice, Human Behaviour, and Residential Satisfaction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Milgram, Stanley. 1970. “The Experience of Living in Cities.” Science 167: 1461–1468.
Milgram, Stanley. 1977. The Individual in a Social World: Essays and Experiments. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Moudon, Anne V. 1987. Public Streets for Public Use. New York: Columbia Press.
Moos, Markus and Pablo Mendez 2015. “Suburban Ways of Living and the Geography of Income: How Homeownership, Single-family Dwellings and Automobile Use Define the Metropolitan Social Space.” Urban Studies 52(10): 1864–1882.
Nohl, Arnd-Michael. 2017. Interview und dokumentarische Methode. Anleitungen für die Forschungspraxis. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Rapoport, Amos. 1987. “Pedestrian Street Use: Culture and Perception.” Pp. 80–94 in Public Streets for Public Use, edited by Anne V. Moudon. New York: Columbia Press.
Ross, Jeffrey I. 2018. “Reframing Urban Street Culture: Towards a Dynamic and Heuristic Process Model.” City, Culture and Society 15: 1–7.
Ross, Jeffrey I. 2021. Routledge Handbook of Street Culture. New York: Routledge.
Schumacher, Thomas. 1987. “Buildings and Streets: Notes on Configuration and Use.” Pp. 133–150 in Handbook on streets, edited by Stanford Anderson. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Schütz Alfred and Thomas Luckmann. 1973. The Structures of the Life-World. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Sharkey, Patrick. T. 2006. “Navigating Dangerous Streets: The Sources and Consequences of Street Efficacy.” American Sociological Review 71(5): 826–846.
Sieverts, Thomas. 1997. Zwischenstadt. Zwischen Ort und Welt, Raum und Zeit, Stadt und Land. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag.
Simmel, Georg. 1903. “Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben.“ Pp. 116–131 in Aufsätze und Abhandlungen, edited by Otthein Rammstedt. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Steward, Eric A. and Ronald L. Simons. 2010. “Race, Code of the Street, and Violent Delinquency: A Multilevel Investigation of Neighborhood Street Culture and Individual Norms of Violence.” Criminology 48: 569–605.
Siedentop, Stefan. 2015. “Suburbane Räume unter Anpassungsdruck – ein deutsch-amerikanischer Vergleich.“ Pp. 23–41 in Refitting Suburbia: Erneuerung der Stadt des 20. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland und den USA, edited by Jessen, Johann and Frank Roost. Berlin: Jovis.
Siedentop, Stefan and Stefan Fina. 2012. “Who Sprawls Most? Exploring the Patterns of Urban Growth Across 26 European Countries.” Environment and Planning A 44(11): 2765–2784.
Tajfel, Henri and John C. Turner. 1986. “The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior.” Pp. 7–24 in Psychology of Intergroup Relations, edited by Stephen Worchel and William G. Austin. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
Tilly, Charles. 1984. Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Turner, John C. 1987. Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-categorization Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.
Vaughan, Laura, Sam Griffiths, Mordechai Haklay and Catherine E. Jones. 2009. “Do the Suburbs Exist? Discovering Complexity and Specificity in Suburban Built Form.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34(4): 475–488.
Walks, Alan. 2013. “Suburbanism as a Way of Life, Slight Return.” Urban Studies 50(8): 1471–1488.
Whyte, William H. 1956. The Organization Man. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Wilson, Helen F. 2017. “On Geography and Encounter: Bodies, Borders, and Difference.” Progress in Human Geography 41(4): 451–471.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright © 2024 Angelina Göb