Suburban Utopias?

Writer Rupa Huq offers her own transition from suburbanite to urbanite and back again, and looks at a variety of new arguments calling for suburban respect.

"Planners and architects have been among suburbia's biggest critics, accusing it of breeding ugly buildings and featureless uniformity, so it is significant that the Royal Academy of Arts recently hosted an event celebrating London suburbia as part of its architecture lecture series.

It seems that old prejudices are being displaced by the realisation that the suburban semi is the epitome of flexible living space with scope for knocking through walls, extending outwards and upwards – modifications rendered impossible in, say, the riverside penthouses of Manchester, Newcastle and Liverpool, where residents are unhappily trapped in negative equity to a higher degree than their suburban counterparts."