Suburbs for nations? Some interdisciplinary connections on the suburban economy

This paper reviews the (primarily North American and European) literature for signs of the economic significance of suburbs. It has been common to view suburbs as economically inert. Yet as national economies have continued to grow, the bulk of urbanisation and national economic activity has been suburban. If suburbs have been important in quantitative terms to the growth of national economies, it is less clear what if any qualitative contribution suburbs have made to national economies. There is, for example, considerable uncertainty over whether the suburban economy possesses the sorts of agglomeration economies that sustain central cities. Moreover, whilst segments of what have been referred to as the ‘creative class’ continue to underpin central cities, selective out-migration from cities suggests that yet other segments may be apparent in suburbia and beyond. The inequity of private and social costs and benefits across city-regions is by now quite well appreciated. The fact that ‘the nation’ is one of the largest net beneficiaries in this inequitable pattern of growth is less appreciated but points to interesting links to be made between the economics literature, on the one hand, and the political economy literature, on the other hand. It is the latter which indicates how the economic vibrancy of outer suburbs has been licensed by nation-state restructuring in both the Fordist and post-Fordist era.