Sound of the Suburbs: Living on the edge...

The suburbs are important geographical territory.

They are home to a large proportion of the urban population, and have featured in novels, music, art and other cultural forms for decades. They also provided the background for a range of classic sitcoms (when sitcoms were half-decent)
Terry and June - 1970's - Purley
The Good Life - 1980's - Surbiton
One Foot in the Grave - 1990's -Pinner

An excellent Guardian article features an interview with Andy Partridge of XTC, who of course sang about the 'RESPECTABLE STREETS'.

It features George Orwell's "Coming up for air" which has a description of the street where the main character lives, which could describe many suburban streets.

Do you know the road I live in – Ellesmere Road, West Bletchley? Even if you don't, you know fifty others exactly like it . . . Always the same. Long, long rows of little semi-detached houses . . . as much alike as council houses and generally uglier. The stucco front, the creosoted gate, the privet hedge, the green front door. The Laurels, the Myrtles, the Hawthorns, Mon Abri, Mon Repos, Belle Vue.

There is a whole new area to explore here, which make suburbs a fertile geographical area:

IDEAL HOMES explores the suburbs of south London

Explore the issue of urban sprawl in the USA (and other locations)

An interesting Telegraph article, which mentions the film 'Revolutionary Road'

It also led me to a fascinating post on the STRANGE HARVEST blog on the plans for a purpose-built series of film sets at Pinewood Studios.

PROJECT PINEWOOD would make a great context for a geographical unit - in fact I'm going to pursue that in another blog post...

The suburbs are also the territory for some of my favourite programmes, such as the Beiderbecke Trilogy - which is probably the only programme I could watch where the main characters were teachers....

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