From the session description:
If the “Leave it to Beaver” suburb was ever an accurate representation of archetypal post-war suburbanism in North America, it is clear today that this notion can no longer hold. The expansion of post-Fordist, neoliberal urbanism and the important transformations in household arrangements and gender relations since at least the 1970s have challenged us to re-think our interpretations of metropolitan social space and recognize heterogeneity where homogeneity was once assumed. Spatial and systemic inequalities associated with economic globalization, changing international and domestic migration patterns, and rampant gentrification in many cities are similarly forcing us to re-examine contemporary processes in the suburbs and our ways of mapping their development, consequences, and overall significance. Are we in need of new or re-worked concepts, research methods, and quantitative indicators to track and understand these socio-economic and spatial changes?
Check out the full photo set of the Contemporary North American Suburbanisms: Concepts and Metrics II session at Flickr.