Robin M. Leichenko and William D. Solecki. 2005. Exporting the American Dream: The Globalization of Suburban Consumption Landscapes. Regional Studies 39.2: 241-253
This paper examines how
cultural, economic, and political aspects of globalization are interacting with
processes of urbanization in less developed country (LDC) cities to create new
landscapes of housing consumption. Drawing evidence from current literature,
the paper demonstrates that globalization processes are influencing the housing
preferences and housing consumption decisions of a small yet growing,
middle-income segment of LDC urban residents. These changes are leading to
patterns of urban resource use that are akin to those associated with
suburbanization and suburban sprawl in more developed countries (MDC), particularly
the United States. In effect, these changes amount to the manifest export of
the American Dream —the ideal of homeownership of a single-family house in a
suburban area— to LDC cities. A
critical element of this process, explored in the paper, is how this suburban
ideal is set down within each city context.
This placement is presented as the result of global, national, and local
level drivers. The emergence of consumption landscapes raises critical
questions about the environmental and social sustainability of globalization,
as LDC residents increasingly emulate the highly resource-consumptive, energy
intensive, and exclusionary lifestyles currently practiced by MDC suburbanites.
Keywords: globalization; suburbanization; housing consumption; environmental degradation.