Mobilizing Suburban Stereotypes: The Case of Ville d’Anjou (1956-1973)

In this article, we examine how in the 1960s the political leadership in Anjou, a suburban community in the Greater Montreal region, cultivated the stereotypical ideal of a bourgeois residential suburb in contrast with its actual dynamics of development in the metropolitan region. Our analysis focus...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of urban history 2024-01, Vol.50 (1), p.98-122
Main Authors: Mercure Jolette, Frederic, Hatton-Proulx, Clarence, Van Neste, Sophie L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In this article, we examine how in the 1960s the political leadership in Anjou, a suburban community in the Greater Montreal region, cultivated the stereotypical ideal of a bourgeois residential suburb in contrast with its actual dynamics of development in the metropolitan region. Our analysis focuses on three dimensions of the suburban ideal: residential monofunctionalism, political autonomy, and an exclusive and apolitical community. For each of these dimensions, we show how Anjou’s political leadership grappled with a complex reality and adapted the suburban ideal to ensure that their community, dependent as it was on metropolitan infrastructure and a host to heavy industry, could still be considered an ideal suburb. Our contribution speaks to the material and political impacts of such representation in a more complex set of processes of suburban and metropolitan development.
ISSN:0096-1442
1552-6771
DOI:10.1177/00961442211069188