Suburbia

Suburbs are geographical areas that are part of a larger functional urban unit but located beyond the central core of the city. The original usage of the term suburb was associated with the cities of ancient and medieval Europe, referring to those places outside the city walls, often associated with low-status and marginalized social groups and with polluting or dangerous activities, but also in some cases with elite, semi-rural villas, situated a short distance from the city. Such geographies were a common feature of most premodern urban civilizations. However, the modern sense of the suburb is closely associated with the remarkable expansion in population and physical area of major cities in some parts of the Western world from the eighteenth century onward, and particularly with ...