Real-Existing Suburbia

Definition

"Real-existing suburbia" is Keil's term for the suburb as it actually exists — "mixed and diverse" in density, form and social reality — set against "some of its enduring myths": the low-density, privatized, automobilized stereotype that functions as "the hegemonic image of single-family homes behind picket fences and a driveway leading up to a garage" (Keil 2015, p. 579). The operation is named as a program: "I will disentangle the real-existing suburbia from some of its enduring myths. I will do this mostly through a discussion of densities" (p. 579). The myth is not innocent: "the appearance of the stereotypical suburban morphology-cum-community as an ideal(ized) community has contributed to hiding poverty, diversity and change, as it did in Watts before the 1965 uprising and Ferguson, Missouri before the tragic events of 2014" (p. 580) — and it flattens internal differentiation, as with France's banlieue, "usually depicted in a one-dimensional environment while in fact it often contains a spectrum of morphologies and socioeconomic realities" (p. 580).

The concept has three methodological edges. (1) It is demographic: "many suburbs are as diverse as many inner cities" — the same unevenness of density and difference holds on both sides of the municipal line (p. 589). (2) It is critical of the critics: the "fairytale image of present suburbanization dynamics underplays the reality of structural and formal diversity and abstracts from the various political economies that build and support that diversity" (p. 588); the "cookie-cutter suburbs" picture is itself a stereotype operating "with idealized notions of single-family homes and individualized backyards, automobilized infrastructures and cul-de-sac streetscapes" (p. 585). (3) It is political: the myth's emphasis "has disempowered other, more progressive, collective consumption-oriented and social justice-seeking forms of everyday suburbanism and the politics that result from it" (p. 579) — the real-existing suburbia is where a progressive suburban politics is to be found, not the caricature's conservatism.

The production audit (Wentling 2017). The cluster's fifth source performs the disentangling operation from inside the industry — an audit of what is actually built, in the banal register Keil's myth-critique demands. Wentling's scope discipline makes the point methodologically: the book studies "the 'plain vanilla,' the most common and numerous types of housing and communities underway throughout the country" — 4–8 units/acre, garden buildings to three stories, median-income market (pp. 6–7) — the empirical base the myth-talk skips. The audit's findings: excessively wide streets without sidewalks; one-quarter to two-acre Eastern lots vs Sunbelt lots of 40×90 ft with "the entire façade… garage doors and driveways" (pp. 34–35); the zero-lot-line/Z-lot/wide-and-shallow/zipper-lot wave that "did little to help with the affordability problem, while introducing even lower standards" (pp. 39–40); and the small-lot verdict — "the overriding problem is basic: the lots are too small for the size of house being built on them" (p. 95), Western practice "effectively double[ing] Kendig's recommended housing size standards" (p. 95). The audit also supplies the sustainability counter-case to the anti-suburb myth: the walk-up neighborhood at 27.8 units/acre matching Charlestown's 26.7 (p. 243) — real-existing suburbia containing densities the myth assigns only to cities. See suburbanism, housing, towers-in-the-park.

This page requires fuller treatment — created at the Keil ingest; deepened at the Wentling ingest. The phrase's heritage (the "real-existing" formula's socialist-usage echo) and its uptake in the MCRI literature await further treatment.

Key Thinkers

• Roger Keil — the concept's author: the disentangling operation, the density lens, the political charge (2015)
• Richard Harris (not yet paged — see log) — the transitional-land observer whose "city block as a one-time urban fringe" supplies the change-reality the myth resists (2013)
• Ananya Roy (not yet paged — see log) — the postcolonial deepening: "the politics of the suburban periphery is the politics of political society" (2015, quoted p. 590)

Related Concepts

• towers-in-the-park — the hidden density form the myth conceals
• everyday-suburbanism — the progressive suburbanisms the myth disempowers
• suburbanism — the parent cluster and its lived-experience theory
• ideology — the myth's mechanism: the caricature image as the basis of common depiction
• post-suburbia — the moment-claim the real-existing survey supports
• homogenization — the uniformity-claim the real-existing diversity refutes (the "cookie-cutter" myth)

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Towers in the Park, Bungalows in the Garden (Keil 2015) — the concept's founding source: the disentangling program (pp. 579, 592); Watts/Ferguson/banlieue (p. 580); the three assumptions and the "kaleidoscopic fabric of today's suburbia" (pp. 587–588, 592)
• Designing a Place Called Home (Wentling 2017) — the production audit: the "plain vanilla" scope discipline (pp. 6–7); the street/lot pathology (36-ft streets without sidewalks, 40×90-ft Sunbelt lots with garage-door façades, pp. 34–35); the failed small-lot wave ("did little to help with the affordability problem," pp. 39–40); the "lots are too small for the size of house" verdict and the Kendig doubling (p. 95); the persistence data (detached >80% of owned stock and growing, p. 5); and the walk-up density counter-case (27.8 units/acre ≈ Charlestown's 26.7, p. 243)

Source Support linking rule: All entries in this section must be wikilinks to source note pages in wiki/source-notes/ using the source-notes/ path prefix. Never link to raw files — raw files are not wiki pages.

Open Questions

• The article demonstrates the myth's political cost (disempowered progressive suburbanisms) more than its descriptive falsehood — how would the real-existing suburbia be measured so that the disentangling is empirical rather than rhetorical?
• Does the term's Echo of "real-existing socialism" mark Keil's ironization — the suburb as the actually-existing condition of a promise long defaulted — or is the echo incidental?
• If the myth "has contributed to hiding poverty, diversity and change" in Watts and Ferguson, what responsibility do representational practices (media, planning imagery, this wiki's own concepts) carry for the concealment?