The Suburbs represents my ongoing attempt to understand the phenomena which characterize twenty-first century suburban existence. The method employed in investigation is borrowed (with modification) from Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project. Walter Benjamin was interested in the phenomena of Metropolitan Modernity as it manifest itself during his lifetime. In an attempt to understand these phenomena, he spent a great deal of time and energy exploring the Paris Arcades of the nineteenth-century, recording his findings (quotes, ideas, theories) in a series of notebooks that came to be known as The Arcades Project. Benjamin did not survive World War II, and if he had, his Arcades Project would likely have taken a very different form.
In many ways, a study of suburban America represents an extension of the inquiry into Metropolitan Modernity that Benjamin began in The Arcades Project. In other ways, suburbanization marks a decided shift away from the patterns of existence that Benjamin sought in the Paris Arcades. With this study, I hope to trace out the path which begins with contemporary suburban existence.
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