Suburbs

On the outskirts of every major city are large business and residential areas known as the suburbs, sometimes called industrial or residential suburbs. The term came from the Latin suburbium, with the first use in English by John Wycliffe referring to subarbis in 1380. A few scholars, such as Christopher Tunnard, saw it as a modern phenomenon, certainly in its present manifestation. However, others have argued for it having happened in ancient cities.

Since the building of the first cities, there have been suburbs created for various reasons. As the population in a particular area grew, there were many activities such as slaughterhouses and light industry (and later heavy industry) that many people did not want in the increasingly crowded city centers, and conversely the land became too valuable to occupy with such activities. Other places needed port areas. Many early cities chose to have cemeteries and burial grounds beyond the city walls. Furthermore, there were often people who were quite happy to live outside the city where they would forgo the protection of the city walls to live in large residential areas with cheaper land, more space, and greater privacy. During long periods of peace, many cities quickly developed suburbs.

Many cities grew haphazardly over time, with shanty towns being common on the outskirts of Sumerian and other settlements. Sir Leonard Woolley felt that Ur had suburbs—with some important buildings as far as four miles from the city center. One of the earliest excavated totally planned cities was El-Amarna in Egypt—the capital of the Pharaoh Akhnaten in the 14th century b.c.e. The ceremonial heart of the city was carefully developed, with a small northern suburb and a much larger southern suburb—both being residential areas with houses for government officials and their retinues. Ancient Greek and Roman settlements also had suburbs. Rome itself had large numbers of suburbs, and when, following the defeat of Hannibal, it went six centuries before being attacked again, massive suburbs sprang up all around the city.

New rail and road systems allowed people to live farther and farther away from their places of work in the 20th century.

It was during the Middle Ages that some suburbs became divided into largely industrial areas with working class residences and other suburbs for wealthier residents. The former were often polluted, and the latter tended to be healthier and on better land. To help regulate this, zoning restrictions—albeit [Page 1671]under other names, and sometimes haphazardly administered—were introduced. Some of the new housing and settlements tended to be on good agricultural land, often the reason for locating the city in a particular location in the first place. In this way much rich agricultural land around London has long been occupied by housing.

The growth of the suburbs changed the nature of many cities. Many people continued to work in city centers, but gradually many people found business opportunities in their own suburbs with the development of shops and service industries. Only the rich could afford to maintain a property in the city center and another in a suburb.

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