Global Suburbs: Urban Sprawl from the Rio Grande to Rio de Janeiro by Lawrence A. Herzog (review)

So much of what Americans have written about their suburbs—and they have written a lot—has been parochial. For that reason Lawrence Herzog’s Global Suburbs is to be welcomed. Embracing the Americas, Herzog explores what he regards, essentially, as the diffusion of U.S.-style suburbs southwards. Indeed, as the title suggests, he believes that his account of “the global suburb in the western hemisphere” typifies a still-broader trend.

He is careful to limit the scope of his survey. Readers of this journal know that “suburb” is a slippery term. Many people speak of “global suburbanization” as a process that involves various types of urban fringe development, including squatter settlements, pirate subdivisions, and for that matter malls, airports, freight yards, and industrial districts. Herzog notes in passing that a great deal of peripheral development around Latin American cities has taken an informal character and that this has attracted a good deal of attention. But his focus is narrower. He draws our attention to the particular type of place that North Americans usually think of as suburban and that the Economist had in mind very recently when it surveyed (and celebrated) global suburbanization: the planned and formally developed subdivision. His point is that this sort of place is regrettably more widespread than we might suppose.¹

A professor of planning in San Diego who has traveled quite extensively in Latin America, Herzog speaks from years of personal experience. He explains that during his travels he has been struck by the increasing similarity of the places that he has visited. He attributes this to the diffusion from the United States of a particular set of consumer preferences: for privatized consumption built around the car and celebrated at the mall; for residential enclaves that exclude those deemed undesirable; for the security of gated communities and fortified leisure centers; and for a predictable homogeneity of built forms that imply safe investments (129).

Herzog suggests that such preferences have been disseminated above all through the media: “in film, television, radio, print and the internet” (134). In response, land developers, lenders, and multinationals such as Walmart have happily catered to them. Naturally, details vary. In the border states of the American Southwest, the subject of the first half of the book, the stereotypical dwelling is the single-family home, with attendant freeways, malls, and so forth. So, too, in Mexico, as in Mexico City and border cities such as Tijuana, which Herzog considers in chapter 4. But in Brazil “vertical suburbs” of high-rise and apartment complexes are more common, often framed within satellite suburban megaprojects. These he illustrates in chapter 5, using Alphaville-Tamboré (Sao Paulo) and Barra da Tijuca (Rio de Janeiro) as examples. Densities vary, then, and so should access to public transit, but everywhere he sees the influence of the automobile and of shared social impulses.

His account is predictably and, as far as it goes, quite reasonably critical. In early chapters he recapitulates the standard critique of sprawl. It embodies a fast-paced lifestyle, long commutes, and road congestion. It contributes to physical ill health, for example, by promoting obesity and also to the experience of social alienation. Notably in the border states region, weakly regulated development has created or exacerbated water shortages and air pollution while inviting damage from wild fires. In Brazil and Mexico, Herzog emphasizes that it has been associated with overbuilding in relatively remote, poorly serviced areas. Appropriately, in a concluding chapter he outlines some suggestions as to how these environmental and social problems might be addressed, and at four scales. He advocates bioregional planning, which recognizes the interrelation of built environments and natural ecosystems; “slow cities” that are designed to encourage active transportation, local farming, and...