Table of Contents
Definition of Suburb
(noun) A residential area outside of a city that is close enough for a daily commute.
Types of Suburb
Suburb Pronunciation
Syllabification: sub·urb
Audio Pronunciation
Phonetic Spelling
- American English – /sUH-buhrb/
- British English – /sUHb-uhrb/
International Phonetic Alphabet
- American English – /ˈsəbərb/
- British English – /ˈsʌbəːb/
Usage Notes
- Plural: suburbs
- Also called:
- suburbia
- suburban area
- Informally called:
- burb
- “the burbs”
Related Quotations
- “Concern with identity means taking seriously the importance of fashion in gentrification: gentrifiers and suburbanites are members of different status groups, using housing as status symbols to define and claim membership of those groups. Displacees are just as concerned with the maintenance of their identity, but do not have access to the same amount of resources as gentrifiers. Because the solution to the gentrifiers‘ identity crisis takes place at the expense of the displacee, gentrification takes on a synecdochal quality: the concerns expressed in struggles over gentrification exemplify the general concern with identity in conditions of modernity, which should be understood as the subjective experience of everyday life within a capitalist mode of production. The context within which these struggles over status take place is nonetheless class-constituted and class laden. Gentrification and the struggles it engenders should be interpreted as a form of hegemonic practice. Ultimately, it is this that makes gentrification ‘gentrification‘” (Redfern 2003:2351).
- “Like suburbanisation, gentrification in Europe and the United States is a process which has often worked to the benefit of white people at the expense of ethnic minorities” (Macionis and Plummer 2012:846).
Additional Information
- Word origin of “suburb” – Online Etymology Dictionary: etymonline.com
- Gans, Herbert J. 1967. The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community. New York: Columbia University Press.
Related Terms
References
Macionis, John, and Kenneth Plummer. 2012. Sociology: A Global Introduction. 4th ed. Harlow, England: Pearson Education.
Redfern, P. A. 2003. “What Makes Gentrification ‘Gentrification’?” Urban Studies 40(12):2351–66. doi:10.1080/0042098032000136101.
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Cite the Definition of Suburb
ASA – American Sociological Association (5th edition)
Bell, Kenton, ed. 2013. “suburb.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Retrieved September 17, 2024 (https://sociologydictionary.org/suburb/).
APA – American Psychological Association (6th edition)
suburb. (2013). In K. Bell (Ed.), Open education sociology dictionary. Retrieved from https://sociologydictionary.org/suburb/
Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date – Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition)
Bell, Kenton, ed. 2013. “suburb.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Accessed September 17, 2024. https://sociologydictionary.org/suburb/.
MLA – Modern Language Association (7th edition)
“suburb.” Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Ed. Kenton Bell. 2013. Web. 17 Sep. 2024. <https://sociologydictionary.org/suburb/>.