Suburbanisation

Overview

What pushed people out of the inner city and what pulled them to the edge, the part transport played, and what the movement left behind.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is suburbanisation?

   Model answer

   The outward movement of people, housing and economic activity from the inner and central parts of a city to the suburbs on the edge of the same urban area. The population moves outwards but remains within the city, so the built-up area expands while the inner city loses population. It is an urban-to-urban movement within one settlement.

2. 2

   How does suburbanisation differ from counterurbanisation?

   Model answer

   Suburbanisation is movement from the inner city outwards to the suburbs, which are still part of the same urban area, so the mover remains an urban resident and the city's built-up area grows. Counterurbanisation is movement from the urban area altogether out to genuinely rural settlements and small towns beyond the city, so the mover leaves the urban area and rural populations grow while the urban population falls. Suburbanisation expands the city; counterurbanisation depopulates it.

3. 3

   What pushed people out of the inner city during suburbanisation?

   Model answer

   Poor-quality, overcrowded and often unfit older terraced housing with small or no gardens; high densities and lack of open space; air pollution, noise and dirt from nearby industry; congestion; industrial decline and rising unemployment as factories and docks closed; declining environmental quality and rising crime in some areas; and slum clearance programmes that demolished inner terraces and rehoused residents on peripheral estates.

4. 4

   What pulled people out to the suburbs?

   Model answer

   Larger, more modern housing with gardens and garages at lower land prices; lower density and quieter, cleaner surroundings; the perception of better schools and lower crime; proximity to open countryside; and, decisively, the growth of car ownership and public transport, which allowed people to live at a distance from the workplace and still commute into the centre.

5. 5

   What role did transport play in suburbanisation?

   Model answer

   It was the enabling factor. Railways, trams and suburban bus services first allowed workers to live beyond walking distance of the workplace, producing ribbon development along the routes. Mass car ownership from the mid-twentieth century removed the dependence on fixed routes altogether and allowed suburbs to fill in the spaces between them, while new ring roads and dual carriageways made the fringe accessible and encouraged both housing and employment to move outwards.

6. 6

   What does a suburb typically look like compared with the inner city?

   Model answer

   Lower density housing, mostly semi-detached and detached, with front and rear gardens, driveways and garages; wider, curving roads and cul-de-sac layouts; more open space, verges and trees; newer housing stock built largely in the twentieth century; more owner occupation; and land uses that are almost entirely residential, with shops concentrated in small local parades or a nearby retail park rather than mixed in among the housing as they are in the inner city.

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