Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870-1930 [Hardcover]

Professor Robert M. Fogelson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0300108761 | ISBN-13: 978-0300108767 | Publication Date: September 5, 2005

The quintessential American suburbs, with their gracious single-family homes, large green lawns, and leaf-shaded streets, reflected not only residents’ dreams but nightmares, not only hopes but fears: fear of others, of racial minorities and lowincome groups, fear of themselves, fear of the market, and, above all, fear of change. These fears, and the restrictive covenants that embodied them, are the subject of Robert M. Fogelson’s fascinating new book.

As Fogelson reveals, suburban subdividers attempted to cope with the deep-seated fears of unwanted change, especially the encroachment of “undesirable” people and activities, by imposing a wide range of restrictions on the lots. These restrictions ranged from mandating minimum costs and architectural styles for the houses to forbidding the owners to sell or lease their property to any member of a host of racial, ethnic, and religious groups. These restrictions, many of which are still commonly employed, tell us as much about the complexities of American society today as about its complexities a century ago.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Bourgeois Nightmares is an original and sweeping history of restrictive covenants and the role they played in the development of high-end American suburbs. It is a great subject and the book is fascinating. This will be a standard work in the field of urban studies for many years to come."-Douglas W. Rae, author of City: Urbanism and Its End (Douglas W. Rae )

"This masterful study of the netherworld of racial and social exclusions that once walled off the American suburb is not only an original and troubling inquiry into the origins of our gated communities and divided metropolitan regions. It is also and above all a profound examination of the divided psyche of the American middle class and the deep tensions that underlie American democracy."-Robert Fishman, University of Michigan, author of Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (Robert Fishman )

"Based on an amazingly comprehensive review of deed restrictions across the nation, driven by a brilliant analysis of American suburban history and culture, and written in a style that engages the reader as with a good mystery, Bourgeois Nightmares is a landmark study of enormous value to anybody interested in understanding the governance and culture of suburbia."-Evan C. McKenzie, University of Illinois at Chicago, author of Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government (Evan C. McKenzie )

"Required reading for anyone who wants to understand not just land use but American culture itself, Bourgeois Nightmares explains the emergence of restrictive covenants, a fundamental but relatively unexplored cornerstone of American suburbia. Robert Fogelson deftly connects historical particularities with an insightful and nuanced social analysis."-Gwendolyn Wright, Columbia University, author of Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Gwendolyn Wright )

"Fogelson systematically examines for the first time the phenomenon of restrictive covenants from a historical perspective, telling us much about the impact they have had (and continue to have) on where and how we live. This book is essential reading."-Richard Longstreth, George Washington University (Richard Longstreth )

"Fascinating."-Barbara Fisher, Boston Globe (Barbara Fisher Boston Globe )

"In his deeply researched and well-written book . . . Fogelson persuasively demonstrates that fear-not future-looking optimism-shaped the geography of metropolitan America."-Thomas J. Sugrue, Nation (Thomas J. Sugrue Nation )

About the Author

Robert M. Fogelson is professor of urban studies and history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300108761
• ISBN-13: 978-0300108767
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,916,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disorganized if colorful, August 24, 2011

By 

Rebecca L. Tushnet (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870-1930 (Paperback)

History of restrictive covenants in suburbia, not very well organized but with various interesting details. There is a great story under here, though Fogelson doesn't do much more than scratch the surface: how did Americans, at least at the level of legal discourse, shift from thinking that "property rights" meant "no one can interfere with my property" from thinking that "any private agreements people make about land are enforceable, even if that means they can't repaint their houses without the consent of the Governing Committee"? There's something about the larger move from status to contract and the idea that the costs of variation in contracting can be disregarded in order to achieve more flexibility than property rights generally allow. Fogelson's best point is that the adopters of restrictive covenants didn't think that excluding the wrong kind of people (nonwhite, poor, and/or working-class) was sufficient: they also distrusted people with the racial and economic credentials to buy in initially, so they put other constraints on how property in these new planned communities could be used, both economic and aesthetic.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Please grade the book on what it is, not what you hoped for!!!!!!, May 18, 2007

By 

Dr. Cardinal "Cardinal Bound!!!!" (Free of the Mountains!!!!!) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870-1930 (Hardcover)

This book is a great introduction to the genesis of gated communities. If you do not know, that genesis lies in developer's need to earn a high rate of return for their investment. In the past, developers included many design features to attract those who would purchase the most profitable properties and homes from these developers. These features included aspects such as strict zoning within areas, design demands to protect scenic views, and requirements for landscaping. The book shows how many developers took the favored design ideas of time and made them applicable to profitable development. They bastardized many of these ideas, but by using marketing were able to obscure this fact. In the end, the author stresses the role of marketing in facilitating such development.

The author does not discuss many of the purported, and debated, consequences these developments have generated. That is not the purpose of the book. There are other books covering that treatment.

So the previous poster is off the mark. Way off the mark. They reference the America's continued purchase of these properties as an indication of their stupidity. This is unfounded. America desires the suburban properties because they maximize privacy which people value. They do not want to be forced to purchase many of the forms proposed by the design geniuses (Duany et al.) because these forms of design do not maximize the values desired by individuals. Yes, there are costs to this form of development.

But Americans have made the decision to pay these costs so they can enjoy privacy. These are the costs of freedom. If you do not wish to pay those costs, be honest and advocate for the abolition of freedom in what type of property we can purchase. But do not cast the lack of favor for "enlightened development" of property as stupid, because that is little more than intellectual snobbery and dishonesty. In short this book is worth buying.

5 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars eden for some, January 16, 2007

By 

Blueprint Brains (car-free in san francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870-1930 (Hardcover)

this book makes a point and drives it home over and over (and over) again. While it was a stunning revelation that restricted communities were actually the norm during the first half of the 20th century, rather than the exception, the author pounded it home without speaking about the repercussions of such covenants: Inner cities destroyed, ghettoization, crime, and life in the burbs turned out to be a dubious gift, at best. America is now plagued with obesity, depression, pollution, and all around stupidity, because of moving people so far apart from each other and the services they need to live.
This author could have well spent more time looking at the bigger picture, rather than beating us with one fact.