What does suburbia mean to me after studying it for the past semester? Entering this class, I thought of suburbia as a wonderful place to live, raise a family and live out any dreams associated with the United States and freedom. My parents immigrated to the United States from Taiwan and were able to make it to the suburbs. I am very content with the way I lived my childhood so there was no reason for me to dislike the environment that I grew up in. My views have changed since then. I noticed right away that more and more of my classmates were turning into cynics toward suburban issues and I tried to hold out my positive attitude, playing devil's advocate for as long as I could. However, the negative vibes of the class discussions were too strong to fight against. I could relate almost every negative issue discussed back to my own life and finally, the cynic in me came out towards the end of the class. I am now more aware of how the negatives in suburbia came about.

According to Robert Fishman, the suburban ideal of living was formulated by the upper middle class of Britain who worked in the city and wanted to take their home life elsewhere. Thus, the suburbs erupted. The suburbs proved to be a better place to live than the city because it was quieter, cleaner, and overall, allowed a more peaceful way of living. Houses were clumped together away from businesses and industrial plants. Parents had an easier time raising children and teaching them values. From the looks of it, hard work was the only thing that gave them the rewards and opportunities of living in the suburbs. In all these ways, the suburbs seemed like the ideal place to live back then in the late 1700's, but even so, there were negatives aspects. Concerning gender roles, males dominated the working world while females inhabited the domestic world. This separation of duties prevented father to get close to his children and mother to have too many duties at home and no chance to do anything outside of the home. In dealing with exclusion, this was what made suburbia what it was. Industry and work, lower class who couldn't afford the suburbs, and the general weirdos who were considered different were all excluded by these suburbanites. That was then. Now is worse. Not only do we not live in an ideal world, but the negative aspects, like exclusion, have gotten much worse. We have even managed to add more negatives without boosting the positives, which nobody realizes is a never ending cycle.

With the onset of Populuxe ideals, materialism took over everybody's lives. New products were being invented and continuously upgraded from the previous models and people had money to spend. This country became the center of consumption and nobody noticed that it was getting slightly out of hand. With materialism comes superficiality. Suburbanites today in general, lead shallow lives with goals such as, "I want to buy that" and "I want to be that". They see that their neighbors have that kind of car in their driveway and feel that they have to do better. They see that they are wearing brand names and feel inferior if they can't afford the absurd prices. From superficiality comes unhappiness and no satisfaction in their lives. They are doing everything they possibly can to reach that ideal suburban life they keep hearing about but never realize that they will never get there. Somewhere amidst all these bad values is bad parenting. Taking money and happiness for granted gets passed down with every generation if parents don't stress rewards of hard work and with every generation, it gets worse.

I feel that among the top five negatives that the class voted, none of them deserve to be the absolute number one negative. They are intertwined and tied in ranking. One fosters the next which leads to the next. For example, bad parenting teaches extreme materialism gives life a superficial meaning, which results in unhappiness, which makes the person prone to excluding others who they feel are inferior to them. That gets passed down and it starts all over. The issue of gender roles was surprisingly left off the list, possibly because we are so set in our ways from growing up with our mothers caring for us and doing housework and fathers working during the day. Plus, change is not negligible is hard to get used to. If my parents switched roles all of a sudden, it would take a long time to get accustomed to. Getting back to the voting, the class could easily vote which aspects are the worst but it is easier to vote a top five that all qualify for number one rather than rank those five. One probably would not be that negative if it weren't for the other four.

Suburbia will never be ideal. It is turning into a "technoburb" with businesses sprouting up everywhere and the whole peaceful park-like look disappearing. There is crime in suburbia and some middle school kids even have to go through metal detectors and weapons checks before entering the school. The media and government continues to help foster a sense of exclusion and stereotype of the American dream of suburbia and until they change, the public's view of suburbia will not budge either. However, even though the suburbs have very definite negatives, it will always be different kinds of negatives than the city. The city is just a whole different way of living and I personally would not want to live in the middle of rampant crime, noise, and uncleanliness. The positives of suburbia, like good education, orderliness, and good place to raise a family still to me, override the negatives. I saw different perspectives of suburbia during this class and I take many of them into account when thinking about where I want to raise my family, but I am almost sure I want to stay living in the suburbs. There is a reason why 43.4% of the US population live in suburbia. That's 115,010,000 people that choose to raise their families in suburbia and want carry on their lives in its culture. There must be something good about it.