Museum planned to honor suburbia
Academia says the lifestyle born in the U.S. merits study.
SHAWNEE, Kan. - The numbingly similar tract homes, strip malls, and minivans filled with youth soccer players indelibly mark this former Indian mission territory as a Kansas City suburb.
Look deeper, and a more nuanced portrait of Johnson County, Kan., emerges: an economic powerhouse that has eclipsed its big-city neighbor in political influence. An educated community with a vibrant arts scene. A cultural melting pot where Brazilian groceries and Vietnamese nail salons blend in with the Walmarts and Burger Kings.
Suburban America has been the butt of jokes and stereotypes for decades, including Hollywood's desperate housewives.
Enough, say Johnson County civic leaders, who are planning a National Museum of Suburban History. With more than 50 percent of the country living in places like Shawnee, they say, it is past time to take the suburbs seriously.
"That's a major shift in how we live," said Johnson County Museum director Mindi Love. "There hasn't been a recognition of that change. And there hasn't been a lot of serious study on why that's happening."
That is starting to change. Besides the national museum, which remains in the planning stage, academia is also slowly embracing suburban studies as a legitimate field of scholarly inquiry.
In Southern California, the Center for Sustainable Suburban Development at the University of California, Riverside, was formed in 2003 to promote economic research and examine regional planning as well as the political, cultural, and environmental effect of suburbia.
In Long Island, N.Y. - home to Levittown, the epicenter of the mid-20th-century suburban boom - Hofstra University's National Center for Suburban Studies also aims to push conversation about suburban life beyond cheap laughs or pulp fiction.
"It takes a lot of time for perceptions to change," said Lawrence Levy, executive director of the New York center.
Despite the shrinking populations of cities and their waning influence, urban studies remain a fixture on college campuses.
Scholars of suburbia say many of urban studies' main concerns - such as race relations and poverty - are now relevant in the once-homogenous suburban communities.
"Change your mind about what the suburbs are," said Robert Puentes, a suburban scholar at the Brookings Institution. "They're not just bedroom communities for center-city workers. They're not just rich enclaves. They're not all economically stable. They're not all exclusively white."
Larry Meeker, Johnson County Museum board president, personifies the complexity of suburban dwellers that is visible only once you peel back the layers.
A retired executive at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, the 64-year-old Meeker lives in the gated golf community of Lake Quivira, where he is in his second term as mayor.
The self-described conservative collects scrap-metal sculptures by an eccentric folk artist and boasts that county residents are not hesitant to support tax increases to pay for schools, parks, and other public services that promote quality of life.
Meeker and Love call the eastern Kansas heartland the ideal location for a national suburban museum.
They hope to align with a higher-education partner, perhaps the University of Kansas or Johnson County Community College, and establish a suburban-policy institute to complement the two coastal suburban think tanks.
Project leaders are using a pair of grants totaling almost $170,000 to hone their vision.