Radical Suburbs: Experimental Living on the Fringes of the American City

American suburbs today are diverse in race, ethnicity, and economics, with mixed political affiliations, growing numbers of renters, and increasing poverty—far from the homogenous stereotype of white picket fences. Historically, American suburbs served as sites for utopian planning, communal living, socially-conscious design, and integrated housing. Examples include the co-housing commune of Old Economy, Pennsylvania; a tiny-house anarchist community in Piscataway, New Jersey; the government-planned garden city of Greenbelt, Maryland; the racially integrated subdivision of Trevose, Pennsylvania (built before the Fair Housing Act); experimental Modernist enclaves in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the mixed-use, architecturally distinctive Reston, Virginia. Radical Suburbs examines these historical examples as blueprints for affordable, walkable, and integrated communities with environmentally sound residential options. The book presents this history as a resource for reconsidering suburban development and challenging conventional assumptions about what suburbs are and can be.