This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Some critics of the suburbs argue that they’re not a place at all. “The anthropologist Marc Augé coined the term non-places to describe interchangeable, impersonal spaces lacking in history and culture that people pass through quickly and anonymously,” Julie Beck wrote last year. The highways and chain stores of suburbs such as the ones Beck grew up in can often feel that way. But suburbs have identities, and they leave their mark on people’s lives, Beck notes: “Where there is life, there is connection and emotion. Where there is connection and emotion, nostalgia follows.”
America’s suburbs have evolved: Once known for segregation, they are now more diverse than ever, Beck writes. But suburban life is prone to its own dynamics of racial and socioeconomic disparity, mirroring the gaps that have become clearer and clearer in America’s cities. Today’s newsletter explores the nostalgia, the dream, and the failures of the suburbs.
American Suburbs Have a Financial Secret
By Michael Waters
Municipal bonds have become an unavoidable part of local governance—and their costs divide rich towns from poor ones.
Read the article.
Liberal Suburbs Have Their Own Border Wall
By Richard D. Kahlenberg
Residents of rich blue towns talk about inclusion, but their laws do the opposite.
Read the article.
What the Suburb Haters Don’t Understand
By Julie Beck
The homogeneity of the suburbs has an upside: If strip malls and subdivisions remind you of home, you can feel nostalgic almost anywhere.
Read the article.
Still Curious?
- Revenge of the suburbs: Suburbia was never as bad as anyone said it was. Now it’s looking even better, Ian Bogost wrote in 2020.
- The suburbs have become a Ponzi scheme: A book looks at how white families depleted the resources of the suburbs and left more recent Black and Latino residents “holding the bag,” Alex Kotlowitz wrote in 2024.
Other Diversions
P.S.
I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “Every fall, millions of monarch butterflies travel several thousand miles from Canada to California and Mexico,” Cynthia C., 69, from Laguna Woods, California, writes. “I am in awe of how these delicate creatures can survive what has to be a perilous journey.”
I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
— Isabel
