The development of suburbs—residential communities on the outskirts of cities—was one of the most dominant features of American life in the twentieth century. Far from being merely a way Americans organized their housing and changed their landscape, the suburbs created an entirely new way of ordering American social life and culture. The result was a phenomenon known as "suburbia," a term meaning both a physical place and often a cultural and social mind-set as well.

As a physical place, suburbs first appeared in the nineteenth century as a way for wealthier Americans to move out of crowded, dirty, and often dangerous cities into the calm and quiet of the country. But because most of these Americans still worked in cities, they had to stay somewhat close to the urban center, thus these new areas were called suburbs. As suburbs developed in the early twentieth century...