The Race & Podcast: American Architecture as a Settler Colonial Project: Levittown's Suburbia
Description
Levittown is often thought of as a paragon of mass-housing efficiency and as an influential model of how to execute suburban sprawl. It is also a primary spatiotemporal incidence -- and general representation -- of a settler colonial disposition toward occupying land in the United States. We propose that by focusing on the parallel nature of written policies that codified segregation, discrimination, and other white supremicist values, and the instantiation of these systems and beliefs “on the ground,” in the form of pastoral, quaint imagery and objects on a typical suburban street, it is possible to see how Levittown -- and suburbia at large -- used traditional settler visual cues to both soften the insidious nature of the discriminatory policies underlying its organization, as well as to signal to prospective and current homeowners that this form of community was an extension -- a direct descendant -- of the centuries-old practice of white folk settling in the country(side). Levittown is known among planners, designers, and architects for its role in ushering in a new mode of living that is highly dependent on the petrol economy, and it is also, more or less, already recognized as being a prime example of racist housing policies. In this podcast, we seek to more explicitly show how images embody and convey meaning, and to assert, via the example of Levittown, that innocuous, even decorative objects and architectural constructs and expressions, may symbolize far more sinister machinations.
Show Notes available at:
https://www.sahraah.com/race-podcast
United States
