Cover Story: Suburbia: The New American Plurality

THE suburb has long had a powerful hold on the American imagination. In the national mythology it is a place of status and security: it is the persistent dream of a green and pleasant oasis not too far from the office, a plot of ground that offers the calm of the country with all the advantages of the city within easy reach. The dream ranges from the manicured privacy of Long Island's "Gold Coast" to the die-stamped uniformity of California's Daly City, which inspired Malvina Reynolds' derisive song Little Boxes. Between those extremes hovers...