I have not listened to an early Billy Joel album for a long time. In my quest to find more music that explicitly references suburbs, I recently ran into his song “The Great Suburban Showdown,” track number three on his 1974 album Streetlife Serenade. The character in the song is headed home for a visit and this is the chorus:
I’ve been gone for a while Made some changes in my style And they say you can’t go home anymore When the streets all look the same And I’ll have to play the game We’ll all sit around in the kitchen chairs With the tv on, with the neighbors there
The song describes several common images of American suburbs:
Family life in suburbia. Home is where mom and dad are. There are barbeques, neighbors.
Things look the same and the suburbs have not changed.
In contrast to #1 and #2, the main character is now living somewhere else. He has made changes to his life while the suburban life still looks and feels the same. Suburban life is dull and predictable but not other kinds of places are not like this.
The song refers to a “suburban showdown” where all this will come into conflict. Joel himself grew up in suburban Long Island; could he be referring in this song to his own experiences?
As the weather warms up, residents of the Chicago suburbs can visit many farmers markets. This list shows 54 options held across the week and across the region.
From my study of suburban communities and their character, here is what I would want to know about all these farmers markets: what makes them unique from each other? Are there features that connect them to the suburb in which they are being held? Here are a few factors that could influence this:
The setting in which they are held. Is the market in a parking lot? A special space constructed for this? Near historic buildings? The setting could help set the tone and indicate the importance of the market.
Are the goods sold significantly different across markets? Do some markets specialize in certain items compared to others? How much do the vendors differ across markets?
Who is the intended customer? This could be tied to the goods sold and the setting as well as other things offered at the market. Do some try to attract kids? Which ones are dog friendly? How do the markets approach customers with different levels of resources?
How does the farmer’s market fit in with the other events in the suburban community? Is the market the one regular event or is there a full calendar of options for residents and visitors to choose from?
Who comes to the farmers market? Are these primarily for residents or do these draw more widely from neighboring suburbs?
This could be a research project with dozens of markets to visit and examine.
Given that I study suburbs, I have had numerous opportunities to discuss suburban lifestyles, communities, and history with a range of people: family, friends, college students, colleagues, people at church, and more. Reflecting back on these experiences, I have seen some patterns:
-Perhaps not surprisingly, suburbanites can have a hard time seeing some of the patterns that are present. The suburbs are what they are used to. This is just how life is lived. More broadly, more than half of Americans live in suburban settings and now multiple generations have been suburban dwellers. The suburbs are both a long-term aspirational place for many Americans and it is what is familiar to many.
-Drawing contrasts between other kinds of places can be helpful to point out what is going on in suburbia. This might be asking about other places people have lived, whether actual small towns or rural areas (not smaller suburbs), big cities (places that are centers of metropolitan regions and not just big suburbs), or international contexts. This could be through highlighting how Americans often think about certain places, such as perceptions often held of big cities or wild or natural areas.
-Having conversations about broad patterns in suburbs often leads to considering the intersection of those with individual experiences in suburbs. People like talking about their own experiences and how their lives have gone in suburbs or particular suburban communities. There are a variety of suburban settings – what I would call different types of suburban communities, including bedroom suburbs, edge cities, working-class suburbs, and more – and suburban communities have particular characters and histories. Americans often take an individualistic approach to life and so talking about commonalities across suburbs and their history can conflict at times with how people understand their own experiences. (This is the argument Mills makes regarding the sociological imagination: seeing how our individual experiences are shaped by social forces.)
-A concern that analysis is necessarily critique. Research on suburbs can often carry this along: we need to understand suburbs so that we can see their flaws and point systems and people in other directions. But understanding the suburban context does not have to lead to admonition. Can suburbanites articulate what they do like about suburban communities and what they don’t? Are people willing to discuss the trade-offs that come with any choice about where to live? If places and zip code do shape many of our life chances, can we consider that?
Elections in the United States are often decided by suburban voters. As voters in cities and suburbs closer to big cities tend to vote for Democrats and voters in rural areas and outer suburbs tend to vote for Republicans, the middle suburbanites are ones both parties want to capture. Where are those voters ending up in new congressional districts a number of states have mapped?
Two examples are worth looking at: first Virginia and then Texas.
These maps shows some of the ways to neutralize voters the party in power does not want to get seats. This can take the form of long and skinny districts that go from near a big city and out into the countryside. Vary where this district starts and ends or the width of the district and those key suburban voters can be pulled in a direction that party wants.
This is often a shift away from more square or rectangular shapes that might cover geographies that are similar to each other: voters in big cities in a district with largely similar voters, suburbanites matched with suburbanites, and small towns and rural areas together.
How might this change the influence of the voters in middle suburbia? The 2026 mid-terms could offer some hints and I am sure there will be a lot of analysis ahead of the 2028 elections.
Home prices across the New Jersey climbed nearly 6% in February compared to a year earlier, the sharpest gain of any state in the nation, according to figures released this week by Cotality, a property data firm.
The national average over that same stretch is only half a percent. The Garden State did not just beat the field. It lapped it.
Why the bigger rise in New Jersey?
The state’s dense corridor of finance and fintech firms, pharmaceutical giants and biotech campuses has kept demand humming even as buyers elsewhere pump the brakes.
Cotality analysts specifically flagged New Jersey’s high-wage employment base as a structural driver of housing demand, one that insulates the market from the volatility hitting Sun Belt states hard right now.
I might put it another way as someone who studies suburbs: the state is positioned between two major metropolitan areas, New York City and Philadelphia. This both provides access to jobs and opportunities there but includes its own large collection of suburban jobs and opportunities across numerous communities that have different industries and populations. The fate of these suburban possibilities are tied to what happens in these big cities but it also has some life of its own.
Dayspring’s journey is a tale of three homes, a decades-old contact and a generous gift. And it’s led them to the long-abandoned CF Industries corporate headquarters adjacent to the Heron Creek Forest Preserve near Route 22 and Old McHenry Road.
Empty and vandalized over 18 years, the 120,000-square-foot, brick-faced concrete and steel “miracle” building will be revived, revamped and modernized with an expected move in fall 2027…
That will allow the college of about 80 students to accommodate twice as many, double the current square footage and be closer to the Quentin Road Baptist Church in Lake Zurich, where the college found a home in its early years…
Church leaders met with residents in neighboring subdivisions to discuss the vision and hosted an open house and barbecue before making the case to the village’s advisory plan commission and zoning board of appeals. Approval was unanimous and the village board followed suit…
Long Grove also is benefiting from the move. For the college’s soon-to-be neighbors, having an academic institution with a 24/7 presence will eliminate trespassing and vandalism concerns and greatly reduce calls for service to the Lake County sheriff’s office, said Long Grove Village Manager Chris Sparkman.
Having studied religious buildings, I find this story interesting on multiple levels.
First, suburban communities tend not to want to have vacant buildings. Structures should be productive, preferably producing tax revenue and/or contributing to day to day life in the community. A former headquarters building is an opportunity for another business to make it their own.
Second, having a vacant suburban building for 18 years in a wealthier suburb is a long time of vacancy. Even if a suburb might have wanted a corporate taker for this building, they might be happier after 18 years to have any productive use. As the story suggests, the community is glad someone will be taking care of the property and the approvals process went smoothly.
Third, religious groups are often willing to use all sorts of buildings and properties if they can adapt it. This is not a religious congregation – though it is a school connected to a particular congregation – but they are taking a corporate headquarters, cleaning it up, and plan to make it a religious school. Also noted in the story: acquiring the corporate headquarters required Hobby Lobby purchasing it and giving it to the congregation/school.
In the end, the suburb has a tenant for a long empty building, the former property owner was able to sell the property that sat for a long time, and a religious congregation/school has a new suburban home.
Narrow it down to homes walkable to a Whole Foods.
According to a few search results, there are over 500 Whole Foods locations in the United States. Who tends to live within walking distance of these locations?
The video keeps going with the theme. After seeing some expansive interiors and a gourmet kitchen with the AI chipping in that it has white quartz countertops, the final home shown is $1.425 million.
The homes depicted appear to be in single-family home, if not suburban, neighborhoods.
So it appears “Homes Ai” is aimed at a wealthier potential homebuyer with particular lifestyle interests? Could “Homes Ai” help people search for reasonably priced housing or affordable housing?
Yes, this was a major surprise during my research. While scanning through microfilm reels of local newspapers, I kept coming across exposés of “illegal apartments,” that is, single-family homes illegally converted for multifamily occupancy. This took many forms: owners might rent out the basement, convert the garage into a dwelling, or wall off the attic as a separate apartment. Urban planners conducted comprehensive studies, and they estimated that by the 1970s between 10 and 20 percent of the single-family homes had been subdivided. A truly astounding statistic!
In addition to being exclusionary and costly, the postwar suburban development model was completely unsustainable. Today the housing stock in Nassau County consists almost entirely of single-family dwellings. But people in the suburbs also needed cheap rentals, especially low-income families, young singles, divorced couples, retirees, and undocumented immigrants. Because zoning prohibited multifamily housing in most places, homeowners and landlords met these needs by converting single-family homes into apartments.
The apartments were hidden, but certainly not a secret. Local officials absolutely knew the subdivisions were happening, and they let it continue because the informal apartments were meeting important housing needs. What I take from scholars of informal housing in the Global South – folks like Ananya Roy and Raquel Rolnick – is that turning a blind eye is itself a policy choice. It’s a way for government officials to manage housing needs in a context of scarcity.
My basic argument is that informal apartments became the tacit solution to the affordable housing crisis. It helped resolve contradictions: local officials could simultaneously declare their opposition to new apartment construction while continuing to quietly tolerate informal units.
People needed housing in the growing suburbs, homeowners adapted their properties, and local officials responded by not doing much. I wonder how much the lack of local reaction discovered was due to:
The actual need for housing. How many units were needed in the postwar decades, particularly in comparison to today? Even as suburbs were growing rapidly, how much would local officials admit that even more housing was needed?
The reference in the quote above to apartments is interesting as many suburban communities did consistently resist apartments because this might lead to different kinds of residents and affect the character and property values of nearby single-family homes. Informal housing is preferable to apartments until when?
What happened when local residents complained about informal units? Say a resident suggests their neighbor has created an informal housing unit in violation of local regulations. How did local officials respond given #1 and #2 above? The quote above refers to media exposes so there must have been some local responses.
This might fit into a bigger story of suburban residents who since World War Two have used their homes and properties in ways that go against local regulations or what was expected. The idea of property rights is pretty important in many suburbs but so is the impulse to not have one’s property and housing values threatened by nearby land uses.
A 29-acre site in St. Charles — one of the last remaining open properties in town for residential development — is becoming a flashpoint for housing affordability in the city.
With a new proposal on the table, some city officials are requesting affordable units while the project’s developers argue it would hurt their private equity-backed bottom line…
The developers said they are trying to support retail along the Randall Road corridor by “attracting residents with disposable income.” City officials responded by saying there are people who work for the city who can’t afford to live there.
During the March 16 meeting, the developers said offering affordable units, such as a $1,070-per-month studio, would “provide a revenue gap.”
The basics of the story are not unusual for suburban residential development projects. A developer sees an opportunity. Upscale residential units can bring a good profit and upscale suburban communities tend to like residential properties that enhance their status and character. The city responds to the proposal with a few requests, including requesting some affordable housing units for several groups in the community the suburb would like to retain or attract. A period of negotiation or dialogue commences.
What is different here is that the developer has clearly stated that substituting affordable housing units will lead to a revenue problem. Why? Because there are expectations from the private equity supporting the development. The article does not discuss the details (and they may not be publicly available) but it sounds like it can be put another way: not enough money will be made on this development if affordable housing is included.
Profit-making is not unexpected. The clash between private equity money and affordable housing is less often in the public view. What amount or percentage does private equity expect to make on residential development? Can it make room for any affordable housing or is it completely about profit maximization?
Many major American sports teams have names referencing cities or states. Some of these teams are located in the suburbs while they refer to cities in their names. But I recently was thinking about teams that are intentionally suburban. Perhaps they never were located in the city (versus teams that started in cities but moved out later). Perhaps their name refers to a suburb or suburban area. These four teams came to mind:
Anaheim Ducks. They started in a large suburb in southern California and are still there today. Makes sense given that it is in the sprawling Los Angeles area?
New Jersey Devils. Named after a state but this team has been in the suburbs of New York City (in the named state) for a number of years after an earlier homes in Kansas City and then Denver. Newark is also a large suburb but the state is largely caught between the big cities of New York City and Philadelphia.
New York Islanders. Named after the state but located from the beginning in the Long Island suburbs (with a short time in Brooklyn in the 2010s).
Arizona Cardinals. Since moving to this state, they played in Tempe and Glendale. (The team played in St. Louis and Chicago in their previous stops – they were a city team until they moved to a new region.)
On one hand, a few other teams might seem to fit this bill. Take the New England Patriots who play in the suburbs and whose name refers to a larger region. They were initially founded as the Boston Patriots. There might be others.
Two questions emerge from these quick thoughts:
Was there something about hockey teams founded in the last 50 years that some aimed at suburban audiences moreso than other sports?
Does being a major sports franchise in the suburbs or associated with the suburbs make a substantive difference to the team and its results? Given that more Americans live in suburbs than other settings, do these suburban locations tend to make it easier for residents of the region to attend?
Legally Sociable 