The Suburban Placeness Affected by the Absence of Urbanity - focusing on the Discourses on Image and Commodity in Urban Sociology -

This paper aims to examine the relationship between 'suburban placeness' and 'urbanity' through investigating conditions which were forming the newly-invented modern suburbs, based on mobility technologies and mass consumption culture. The discourses on the contemporary suburban problems in urban sociology prove that the issues of commercializing and imaging place have affected formation of the suburban placeness. This phenomenon enables the suburbs to possess the in-between characteristics to shuttle between homogeneity, generated by advance of modern mobilities, and heterogeneity, acquired by pursuing individual identities with mass consumption culture. In this process, it can be construed that, for the sake of creating the suburban placeness, the suburbs benefit from the absence of consequential elements of urbanity - 'densified space', proximity', and 'historical context' - which performs as a primary role in forming the urban placeness. Paradoxically, a lack of urbanity has made it possible for the suburbs to secure the suburban placeness distinct from the traditional urban placeness.