Suburban Alchemy: 1960s New Towns and the Transformation of the American Dream. By Nicholas Dagen Bloom. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001. x, 333 pp. Cloth, $70.00, ISBN 0-8142-0874-6. Paper, $27.95, ISBN 0-8142-5075-0.)

Reviewed by the Journal of American History

The American suburbs, where the majority of Americans have lived since 1970, should permit one to examine authentic American behavior. Earlier studies of suburbia, however, have generally studied everything but suburbanites. The critics' urbanized views of the subject have filtered the narrative and made the suburbs affluent, homogenized, and middle class without sufficiently interpreting the historical meaning of those words. Suburban Alchemy makes a substantive contribution to a new kind of history; the author assumes that the bedrock force of community building is resident initiative, particularly when focused on priorities of civic action, social consciousness, and cultural enhancement. The heart of this comparative narrative lies in the political force of cultural institutions, especially those directed by activist women.

Nicholas Dagen Bloom's impressive study concentrates on the "new towns" of Reston, Virginia, Columbia, Maryland, and Irvine, California, in the last third of the twentieth century. Their stories have convinced the author that the power of urban design and master plans promote the very novelty they claim, even when they do not meet their original standards. Those suburbs responded to perceived criticisms of cultural indifference, civic apathy, and individual anomie at the heart of middle-class life. Reston's Robert Simon and Columbia's James Rouse, particularly, become inspiring catalytic developers for structured social interaction, walkable routines, the necessity of natural, woody landscapes, village and town centers, and architecture varied by style and price to ensure social class mixes. The initial developers and their resident-followers strove mightily and often successfully to realize an American communal alternative. Over time citizen initiative became more powerful and constructive than the original developer or his design.

Bloom's fine critical analysis forces the reader to see the political consequences of voluntary behavior that did not originate as a conscious political orientation. The author comes to a sophisticated, layered political consciousness, precisely because of the suburb's deeply American tradition of civic power. His argument is sufficiently convincing to make one wonder if the "traditional suburb," so attractive to so many different Americans, really differed so substantially from the "new towns." Is not the convenient antithesis of "the traditional suburb" a historical construct that plays its own role in the historian's mind as well as in the shaping of any "new" suburban culture?

Paul H. Mattingly
New York University
New York, New York




Other Review Citation Information

Suburban Alchemy: 1960s New Towns and the Transformation of the American Dream.
(book review) Jon C. Teaford.
Contemporary Sociology Sept 2002 v31 i5 p574(2)

Book tells tale of '60s reform in suburbia; today, diversity reshapes America's `new towns'. (Suburban Alchemy: 1960s New Towns and the Transformation of the American Dream by Nicholas Dagen Bloom)
(book review) Anthony B. Smith.
National Catholic Reporter May 17, 2002 v38 i28 p32(1) (811 words)

Joshua Olsen , Independent Scholar.
"Bringing New Towns Up to Date"
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-DC
December, 2001)