Suburban Legends
This review appears in our Fall 2020 Housing Issue. Subscribe now to get a copy in your mailbox.
Discussed in this essay: The Sprawl: Reconsidering the Weird American Suburbs
, by Jason Diamond. Coffee House Press, 2020. 256 pages.
NEVER LET A GOOD CRISIS go to waste, Winston Churchill supposedly said; good advice, regardless of the source. As Covid-19 has wreaked havoc worldwide, 2020 has also produced a gathering wave of progressive action in the United States: rent strikes, labor organizing, and, most powerfully, an unprecedented uprising against white supremacist police violence and the racism that infects this country, root to stem. But the pandemic has also created private opportunities for people with the means to build a more comfortable life raft. Seizing the moment can mean coming together with others in protests, marches, mutual aid networks or it can mean securing oneself a place apart. A house in the suburbs, for example.