Sociologies (Feb 2017)
La maison individuelle au prisme de l’historiographie anglo-américaine : un contraste marqué entre le xxe et le xxie siècle
Abstract
In the 70’s and 80’s Anglo-American sociologists and historians took the single-family house surrounded by a garden as an object of research and made it the central element of urbanization and suburbanization going back to the end of the XIXth century. They underlined the role of the Federal State to explain its diffusion on the entire national territory, and they demonstrated how this model succeeded in embodying the American way of life. Today, there is more questioning of the future of the single-family house. Some talk about metropolization as a process which restructures cities and suburbs and stress the emergence of new forms of urbanity. Others suggest taking the subprime crisis as a “turn” in the history of the single-family house in favor of compact urban environments. Thus the article presents the researchers’ main arguments (70’s and 80’s) and contrasts them with the planners’ recent ones. It questions the future of the single family house in the XXIst century.
