Inspired by Frederic Jameson‘s Archaeologies of the Future, I’ve been rereading a lot of books as well as trying to fill in gaps in my knowledge of utopian & dystopian writing.
In doing so, I stumbled on this damning quote about the suburbs by American historian & sociologist Lewis Mumford:
In the suburb one might live and die without marring the image of an innocent world, except when some shadow of evil fell over a column in the newspaper. Thus the suburb served as an asylum for the preservation of illusion. Here domesticity could prosper, oblivious of the pervasive regimentation beyond. This was not merely a child-centered environment; it was based on a childish view of the world, in which reality was sacrificed to the pleasure principle