International perspectives on suburbanization: a post-suburban world?

摘要

Before unfolding this research series, the reader might not help wondering: is there really a 'post-suburbanization world'? The term is suggesting a brand new period that is succeeding the suburban era. It refers to the fundamentally de-centered or multi-centered nature of the current metropolitan region. The editors address the question more explicitly as the motivation for this book: to distinguish the post-suburbia by asking 'whether it signaled a new era, a new settlement space or new actors and forces in suburban development', and to find 'how provision for this preference is mediated'. Therefore, they declare the aim of the book is 'neither to veer towards an isomorphic geography, nor towards an area studies focusing on idiographic tendencies, but to consider issues of commonality within the contemporary of suburbanization in different settings'.