马唐草边疆 (1985)

《马唐草边疆：美国城市的郊区化进展》（英语：Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States）是一本由美国历史学家与社会学家肯尼思·T·杰克逊创作的城市史著作，1985年由牛津大学出版社出版，获得1986年的弗朗西斯·帕克曼奖与班克洛夫特奖。

Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States is a book written by historian Kenneth T. Jackson and published in 1985. Extensively researched and referenced, the book takes into account factors that promoted the suburbanization of the United States, such as the availability of cheap land, construction methods, and transportation, as well as federal subsidies for highways and suburban housing.

Introduction

Jackson attempts to broadly interpret the American suburban experience, which he views as unique. He states that "the United States has thus far been unique in four important respects that can be summed up in the following sentence: affluent and middle-class Americans live in suburban areas that are far from their work places, in homes that they own, and in the centre of yards that by urban standards elsewhere are enormous. This uniqueness thus involves population density, home-ownership, residential status, and journey-to-work." His working definition of suburbs has four components: function (non-farm residential), class (middle and upper status), separation (a daily journey-to-work), and density (low relative to older sections). Also dominant in the book is the notion that the wealthy began the flight from the city first—something that the middle classes eventually emulated as city tax rates gradually increased to pay for resulting urban problems—as the poorer classes remained in the older central urban areas.

Suburbs as substandard

From ancient times, the city's primary function was as a central meeting place to conduct business.

Jackson argues that before 1815 and the Industrial Revolution, every major city was a "point" on a map that could be walked from edge to centre in two or three hours. Cities had five characteristics:

High population density or "congestion", comparable to New York City in the 1980s: 35,000-75,000 residents per square mile.

Sharp distinction between country and city. In Europe the demarcation was a literal wall of defense (nowadays city walls may have been replaced by a ring road or business boulevard).

Mixture of functions with neighborhoods: without industrial factories, neighborhoods mixed commercial and residential activities.

Short distances between work and residence; most people had to walk to work, and often lived and worked in the same building.

Centrality of culture and elite residences. The upper classes lived within walking distance of work and cultural activities, while the poor laborers lived on the periphery of the urban areas along with the undesirable smells of trades like animal skin tanning and soap-making.

“Suburbs, then, were socially and economically inferior to cities when wind, muscle, and water were the prime movers of civilisation… Even the word suburb suggested inferior manners, narrowness of view, and physical squalor."

Transportation innovation

Between 1815–1875, however, the situation began to change in the United States. With new transportation alternatives such as the steam ferry, omnibus, the commuter railroad, the horsecar, the elevated railroad, and the cable car came "an exodus that would turn cities inside out and inaugurate a new pattern of suburban affluence and centre despair."

The steam locomotive in the mid 19th century provided the wealthy with the means to live in bucolic surroundings, to socialize in country clubs and still commute to work downtown; these were the railroad suburbs. However, "railroad commuting was not only expensive but… the steam engine generated speed slowly [so] that railroad suburbs were usually discontinuous and separated by …open space."