Urbanization-Subdivisions and Suburbs

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Recommended: Urbanisation and how it leads to environmental degradation

Growing up in Northern Toronto, it had never occurred to me that the neighbourhood I was living in was planned long before my neighbors or I decided to move and build this a community. As I grew older and I started to notice new “areas” being built I noticed that from afar those hundreds of houses were being built and organized in preparation for hundreds of families. Personally, I am interested in the development of subdivisions and the suburbs due to my family owning a property around the area of Lake Simcoe. It seems as though that with every passing year it takes another few kilometers or minutes to escape the confines of the city due to the growth of the suburbs around Toronto.

Suburbs or outlying districts of cities have been present since ancient times . In early history, individuals would live on the outskirts of cities to take advantage of the economic benefits of a major market while living affordable. In particular, Rome had a continuously growing population outside it’s city limits (Stambaugh, 1988). Archeological excavations have concluded that Rome expanded on it’s city walls many times in history to protect those on it’s fringes (Stambaugh, 1988).
Modern suburbs arose almost 2000 years later during the Industrial Revolution in London, England. London’s promise for economic growth attracted millions immigrants from across the British Empire and the globe at an exponential rate. The 19th century saw the city experience rapidly grow to more than six million (Brown, 2004). This dramatic growth in population size and the lack of affordable housing drove individuals who could permit themselves to do so outside the city (Brown, 2004).
By 1868 an underground public transportation railway had been built in London to...

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...uncategorized/levittown/.

Naish, P. (n.d.). Homegrown History: Popular Historiography on Exhibition at the Levittown Mini-Museum*. The Columbia Journal of American Studies. Retrieved February 3, 2014, from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cjas/levittown.html.

Hobbs, F., & Stoops, N. (n.d.). Demographic Trends in the 20th Century. US Census Bureau. Retrieved February 3, 2014, from http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/censr-4.pdf.

Islam, A., Lynn, B., & Maher, B. (n.d.). Suburbia: Excess and Spectacle . Suburban Sprawl & New Urban Growth. Retrieved February 3, 2014, from http://sitemaker.umich.edu/section007group5/suburbia__excess_and_spectacle.

Roo, G. d. (1999, February 15). Environmental conflicts in compact cities: complexity, decisionmaking, and policy approaches. EPB Planning and Design. Retrieved February 3, 2014, from http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=b2614.

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