Suburban Dreams: Imagining and Building the Good Life

265 Pages·2015·1.614 MB·English

by  Greg Dickinson

Suburban Dreams
Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique
Series Editor
John Louis Lucaites
Editorial Board
Jeffrey A. Bennett
Barbara Biesecker
Carole Blair
Joshua Gunn
Robert Hariman
Debra Hawhee
Claire Sisco King
Steven Mailloux
Raymie E. McKerrow
Toby Miller
Phaedra C. Pezzullo
Austin Sarat
Janet Staiger
Barbie Zelizer
Suburban Dreams
Imagining and Building the Good Life
GREG DICKINSON
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALA BAMA PRESS
Tuscaloosa
The University of Ala bama Press
Tuscaloosa, Ala bama 35487- 0380
uapress.ua.edu
Copyright © 2015 by the University of Ala bama Press
All rights reserved
Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should
be addressed to the University of Ala bama Press
Typeface: Bembo
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cover photograph: Construction site on the outskirts
of Las Vegas, 2007; courtesy of the author
Cover design: Michele Myatt Quinn
∞
The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of
Ameri can National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48- 1984
Cataloging- in- Publication data is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN: 978- 0- 8173- 1863- 5 (cloth) — ISBN: 978- 0- 8173- 8811- 9 (ebook)
For Elizabeth Munson and Roger Munson

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Rhetorical Constructions of the Good Life 1
I. ImagIng the Suburban good LIfe
1. Everyday Practices, Rhetoric, and the Suburban Good Life 17
2. Imaging the Good Life: Visual Images of the Suburban Good Life 39
II. home and KItchen: buILdIng Safe and authentIc Space
3. Housing the Good Life: Residential Architecture and Neighborhoods 65
4. Eating the Good Life: Authenticity, Exoticism, and Rhetoric’s Embodied
Materiality in the Italian- Themed Suburban Restaurant 97
III. conSumIng SuburbS: buILdIng Sacred and cIvIc Space
5. Worshipping the Good Life: Megachurches and the Making of the
Suburban Moral Landscape 125
6. Buying the Good Life: How the Lifestyle Center Became Suburbia’s
Civic Square 154
Conclusion: Remembering and Rethinking Suburbs 182
Notes 195
Bibliography 231
Index 245

Illustrations
3.1. Entrance to The Heritage Estates in Las Vegas 77
3.2. Paved trail meandering through Highlands Ranch 82
3.3. Surprise Farms windmill on North Cotton Lane and Bell Road 87
3.4. Typical curving arterial street in suburban Las Vegas 89
3.5. Typical Surprise, Arizona, suburban home 91
4.1. Olive Garden in Northglenn, Colorado 110
4.2. Entrance to Macaroni Grill in suburban Las Vegas 113
5.1. Radiant Church from the east 133
5.2. Desert Ridge Market Place 134
5.3. Seattle’s Best Coffee drive-thru 135
5.4. Radiant Church’s main, northwest entrance 135
5.5. RadiantChurch.com bumper sticker 146
6.1. Diagonal and center of the street parking in Centerra Promenade 164
6.2. Fire pit, Centerra’s town square/central park 166
6.3. Sign on grassy roundabout in the middle of The District in Henderson,
Nevada 168
6.4. Stone and mortar columns in the food court area of Desert Ridge 170
6.5. Chapungu sculpture of a mother and her child 177