Suburban Heights is a novella and collection of stories.

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It has become widely recognized that the development of postwar suburbia in North America has had a detrimental effect on community identity, environmental sustainability, and social conscience. Suburban development is often prominent in mid-sized cities made up of a low density or “flat” urban landscape. The Regional Municipality of Waterloo’s urban core consists of three such cities (Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo). As one of Canada’s most economically stable and fastest growing municipalities, it provides a rich opportunity for regional growth through intensification. In the Region of Waterloo’s latest planning policy plan, “A Vision for a Sustainable and Livable Waterloo Region” is outlined. In addition to this comprehensive policy, a two-part “Visualizing Densities” study provided a comprehensive analysis of the existing communities throughout Waterloo Region and how they can be improved. Both of these documents helped to promote sustainable growth in the downtown and inner city areas, however, they have not effectively addressed how to deal with existing suburban areas. The Visualizing Densities Part II study proposed a redesign of a three selected existing suburban study areas throughout the region. Although these proposals had good intentions, they all but ignored the existing network of streets and built fabric. Therefore, it only really addressed how to design and build a new green field development. By building upon current suburban redevelopment concepts and strategies, this thesis will develop an adaptable process for existing suburban community revitalization. This process will be applied to a suburban study area set within the city of Waterloo (one of the regions mid-sized cities). A critical aspect of this process will be the renewed role that architects must play as analysts, visionaries and educators. The overall intention of this thesis will be to develop a means of engaging and revitalizing existing suburban areas into more efficient, self-sustaining, and responsive community networks.

It has become widely recognized that the development of postwar suburbia in North America has had a detrimental effect on community identity, environmental sustainability, and social conscience. Suburban development is often prominent in mid-sized cities made up of a low density or “flat” urban landscape. The Regional Municipality of Waterloo’s urban core consists of three such cities (Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo). As one of Canada’s most economically stable and fastest growing municipalities, it provides a rich opportunity for regional growth through intensification. In the Region of Waterloo’s latest planning policy plan, “A Vision for a Sustainable and Livable Waterloo Region” is outlined. In addition to this comprehensive policy, a two-part “Visualizing Densities” study provided a comprehensive analysis of the existing communities throughout Waterloo Region and how they can be improved. Both of these documents helped to promote sustainable growth in the downtown and inner city areas, however, they have not effectively addressed how to deal with existing suburban areas. The Visualizing Densities Part II study proposed a redesign of a three selected existing suburban study areas throughout the region. Although these proposals had good intentions, they all but ignored the existing network of streets and built fabric. Therefore, it only really addressed how to design and build a new green field development. By building upon current suburban redevelopment concepts and strategies, this thesis will develop an adaptable process for existing suburban community revitalization. This process will be applied to a suburban study area set within the city of Waterloo (one of the regions mid-sized cities). A critical aspect of this process will be the renewed role that architects must play as analysts, visionaries and educators. The overall intention of this thesis will be to develop a means of engaging and revitalizing existing suburban areas into more efficient, self-sustaining, and responsive community networks.

Expectations clash against reality, as a group of boys grow up in 21st Century suburbia.

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Once regarded as a nation central to the development of civil society, associational activity in contemporary Britain is perceived by some authors as fragile. Whereas the urban leadership provided by the middle classes was crucial to the trajectory and character of towns and cities all over Britain in the nineteenth century, it has been claimed that their relocation to suburbia has become synonymous with detachment, disinterest and the decline of the associational sphere. Depicted in literary and historical accounts, as well as in the popular media, as pursuing a suburban lifestyle that was both monotonous and disengaged, the middle classes of the twentieth century were assumed to have relinquished the management of a multitude of municipal and voluntary functions that defined an urban place. Yet such accounts stereotyped middle-class lifestyles, oversimplifying their relationship with the city, and prompting a ‘new wave’ of suburban research in America that has offered a revisionism that stresses diversity and challenges prevailing assumptions regarding middle-class behaviour. Assumptions of suburban detachment are contested in the research that underpins this study. The thesis ‘Semi-Detached Britain? Social networks in the suburban fringe of Leicester and Loughborough, 1950-2005’ provides a detailed analysis of social and cultural networks and reviews the consequences of relocation on civic engagement since 1950. Geographically the middle classes may have distanced their home lives from the urban centre, but through an examination of their participation in the associational sphere of clubs and societies it is evident that suburban living was not synonymous with disinterest and detachment. Furthermore, analysis of cultural changes post 1950, including the issue of conservation, the shifting nature of gender relations, and the process of racial assimilation, reveal how voluntary organisations, and their middle-class membership, continued to shape the physical, spatial and cultural landscape of modern Britain. Through the intricate networks of power developed in local clubs and societies, the middle-classes found a continuing utility in the transference of knowledge and expertise, often working as mediator between the citizen and the state. Far from being disconnected, the new ‘suburbans’ were ‘semi-detached’, demonstrating a vigorous and ongoing commitment to the public sphere that contributed to the stock of social and civic capital in both town and city. In this regard the thesis provides a revisionism concerning the middle classes, suburbanisation, and the construction of civil society in the modern era.

The Drowned Girl is a novel-in-stories that depicts the lives of eight characters living in a small Connecticut town. This work is one told through varying perspectives. Characters are mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, daughters, sons, and lovers. Their lives intersect physically, and emotionally, and the separate stories reveal the facets and repercussions of events both past and present: the death of a son and brother in a car accident, the life and death of a notorious town figure, the past and tragic future of a young woman, Jules, whose body is found one spring in the Connecticut river. The Jules stories, six in all, document her spiral into despair, and involve the other characters as friends, lovers, and parents. As the locus of the cycle, Jules and the mystery of her death prompt characters to re-view their own circumstances, and the way in which past decisions have played a part. These revelations-of betrayal, and loss, and the way they affect key characters, are effectively inscribed in the story cycle's ability to convey a communal disparateness. Each character's story brings a new perspective, and the accumulation of the parts provides a more encompassing view of the whole. The focus on an upper middle class neighborhood called Ridgewood-a subdivision built on dairy farm land in the mid-sixties-is key to the thematic link that ties the stories together. I am interested in revealing the corruption of the natural landscape, the carving up of rural areas after World War II to create suburban communities in which family incomes and demographics are almost completely homogenous. The suburb of Ridgewood is mapped by roads designed to conform to a hierarchy that includes cul-de-sacs, and a pattern leading to residential areas of greater affluence. This setting serves as a backdrop to the complex disintegration of the family.