Episode 29 - Suburbia’s Past, Present, and Future with Hana Suckstorff

Today we’re digging into the history of urban planning in twentieth-century Canada and the US! Particularly, we discuss why our cities came to be oriented around car-dependent suburbs, and what consequences that style of design has for our lives today.

In this episode, I’m joined by fellow Torontonian and historian, Dr. Hana Suckstorff. Our conversation today responds to ongoing political debates about urban design in the Greater Toronto Area; anyone living in southern Ontario knows that we have had multiple recent provincial and municipal elections (and soon will have another) in which our urban design has been a major political issue. While our discussion centers on these debates in the GTA, many of the themes we get into are applicable to cities across Canada and the US. We get into why governments, businesses, and ordinary people took up car-dependent suburbanization in the mid-twentieth century; the roles of race, class, and gender in this history; why this history matters for current political debates about the issue; and much more.

For those interested in learning more local Toronto history on this topic, check out Richard Harris's Unplanned Suburbs: Toronto’s American Tragedy, 1900-1950 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). For those interested in a more general history focused on the US, have a look at Kenneth T. Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). Also, if you’re interested in learning more about Hana’s work in educating people about WWII in Asia, check out ALPHA Education’s website here: https://www.alphaeducation.org/.

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