Cultural journalist and curator of the exhibition ‘Suburbia. The construction of the American dream’ exhibition / Photograph: Juan Carlos Rodríguez
By Marc Amat
A house with a garden, a swimming pool, and a two-car garage in an idyllic residential neighborhood: next to nature, with children running around on bicycles and neighbors who, from time to time, visit you with a smile and a blueberry pie in their hands. This could be the neighborhood where Elliot, the boy in E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), the ordinary Burnham family in the award-winning American Beauty (1999), or little Kevin in the Home Alone film saga (1990-2021) lives. For decades, cinema, television, and advertising created in the United States have shown us protagonists living in an idyllic environment, the American suburbs. In Catalonia, despite the influence of the screens, the word ‘suburb’ has maintained a very different connotation: instead of being the neighborhoods where the wealthy live, it is where people with fewer resources live.
Until September 8, 2024, the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) hosts the exhibition Suburbia: Building the American Dream. It is an exhibition that brings visitors closer to the image of the idyllic family home. It invites them to reflect on this lifestyle, the value of the city, and the function of public space. To find out how the suburbs were created, how they connect with European cities such as Barcelona, and what social, economic, and environmental impacts this urban model has, we talked to Philipp Engel, curator of the exhibition and journalist specializing in film and literature.
The American suburbs are more than just an urban model: they are a lifestyle, a cultural trait… How has the exhibition been approached?
The exhibition traces the cultural history of the suburbs of the United States, from the early 19th century to the present day. Visitors will see how the suburbs have left their mark on all kinds of artistic disciplines. For example, in the exhibition, you will find photography, painting, literature – in part from the bibliographic collection of the Institute of North American Studies (IEN) -, film and television. This is the pop culture part, but the exhibition ends with a space dedicated to understanding how this phenomenon resonates in Catalonia, through dispersed urbanism. It is a more analytical final colophon.
Let’s talk about the beginnings of the suburbs. You say they were born in the 19th century.
Yes, this is the thesis of Kenneth T. Jackson, one of the first historians to study this phenomenon. He claims that the seed of the American suburbs appeared in the late 1810s, coinciding with the opening of a steam ferry that connected Manhattan and Brooklyn. Suddenly, New Yorkers could live in a quiet, natural setting just 20 minutes from the noise of the city.
So, is the emergence of the suburbs connected to the industrial revolution?
Exactly. Those were times of many changes. In addition to being an era marked by technical and economic progress, the Industrial Revolution brought epidemics, great migratory waves, and an increase in crime and alcohol consumption… The urban environment was demonized and, on the contrary, the natural space became a place of refuge. With the implementation of new methods of transportation, such as the train or the steam ferry, the first wave of suburbans was produced.
Who was part of it?
The first to move to rural environments were wealthy families. The heads of families wanted to leave the city to create a kind of sanctuary in the middle of nature where they could leave their wives and children, but close enough to the urban center to go only to work. Robert Fishman, another scholar on the subject, has a book called Bourgeois Utopias where he analyzes how the bourgeois of the 19th century took the step of becoming suburbanites. They left the richest and provoked the admiration of the rest.
And that’s how the American dream was created.
In the middle of the 19th century, people began to dream of having a house with a garden on the outskirts of the city. Proof of this is the commercial success achieved by the books of Andrew Jackson Downing, one of the fathers of American landscape architecture. He sold plants, but he also wrote and accompanied his publications with drawings of landscaped mansions. People who could not afford them bought the books and thought that perhaps in the future they might own one. The first part of the exhibition is about the birth of that dream.
Did this phenomenon also reach Europe?
The cities of the Anglo-Saxon world developed differently than Paris or Barcelona. In the Catalan capital, for example, the bourgeoisie of the 19th century went to live in the Eixample. However, there are timid English precedents that even predate the first American suburb: at the end of the 18th century, some of London’s bourgeoisie began to emigrate out of the city. However, the volume of people had nothing to do with the 200 who moved up and down the ferry between Manhattan and Brooklyn from 1814 onwards.
Perhaps that is why the English word ‘suburbs’ and the Spanish word ‘suburbios’ have different meanings?
Despite being a word that comes from Latin, in Catalan and Spanish, we have always used it with a negative connotation. Without going any further, the RAE defines it as “a depressed area on the outskirts of cities”. The IEC notes the nuance “where humble people live”. For us, a suburb is a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, full of tower blocks where migrants who go to work in the city live. An industrial space. When we read in the newspaper “Paris suburbs light up”, they are not referring to a residential neighborhood with sprinklers watering the lawn.
So, the demographic movements between the United States and Europe are also different…
In the United States, there has been a doughnut effect. There are fewer and fewer people living in the center of big cities. They just go to work, and they live in the periphery. In Europe, on the other hand, people have traditionally continued to live in the capitals. We see it in Barcelona, but also in Madrid or Paris. This is starting to change. In fact, this is one of the reasons why it is more interesting than ever to do this exhibition now.
How do you connect this phenomenon born 250 years ago in the United States with today’s Barcelona?
It is a very interesting case. In September last year, the Institut Metròpoli de Barcelona calculated that 70,000 Barcelonans would move out of the city in the next 5 years, looking for their version of the suburban dream. We are at a time when rental prices are also forcing many people to think about this option. This may be a difference concerning the US phenomenon, but the data shows that 70% of Barcelonans who have already moved out have done so to improve their housing. The COVID-19 effect also boosted it.
Does the urban model of the U.S. suburbs still have a future?
In the environmental field, it is not a sustainable model. It is based on continuous travel by car to city centers, higher energy and water costs, pesticides in the garden… In the exhibition, however, we have always wanted an ambivalent look: it is not sustainable, but it has a very powerful imagination. In fact, people still aspire to it and want to go live in the suburbs, even if it is not sustainable.
