DISILLUSIONED

A well-informed, ambitious narrative about the simmering inequities in American suburbs.

Though Herold grew up in “a middle-class white family that passively accepted suburbia’s bounty,” he convincingly argues that numerous factors, including “sweeping demographic changes, rising housing costs, and the vanishing heart of America’s middle class,” alongside the troubling history of segregation enforced by structural racism, have created a systemic crisis: “Suburbia is now home to a collision of competing dreams, each of which seems to be crumbling.” In his energetic debut, Herold chronicles how he “traveled the country, immersing [himself] in the lives of families on the front lines of suburban change,” tracking several families’ arcs amid the mostly declining fortunes of representational suburbs, including communities outside Atlanta and Dallas, progressive Evanston, Illinois, and the notoriously troubled city of Compton, California, arguing that these locales each demonstrate a “larger pattern of racialized development and decline.” Indeed, he discovers a disturbingly pervasive entropy in areas across the U.S., including Penn Hills, located outside an increasingly gentrifying Pittsburgh. Contrastingly, the author portrays the “anxiety about the erosion of long-standing privileges” of a conservative white family who moved to a new Texas exurb where they encountered similar strife concerning finances, infrastructure, and education budgets. Herold ably navigates these issues, particularly the divisive role played by school board politics (“public education in America had become a hot-button issue”) and sets the dreams of these diverse families against regional history. The author was still conducting interviews during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which further fractured each community’s social cohesion. As he writes, “conflicts over masks, vaccines, and racial equality were all raging anew.” Herold adeptly manages the sprawling storytelling and subtopics (albeit frequently focused on bureaucratic minutiae) with empathy, varied scenes, and well-rounded characterizations.

A deeply valuable study of the decline of suburbia.