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Discussions on the implications of power relations among the state, market, and society in urban plans and planning processes are usually centered on urban issues. Studies on suburbanization generally look at suburbs and satellite towns as “spillovers” of high density in the cities, deteriorating conditions of the innercity – particularly in the case of the United States – as well as the longing for living closer to nature. During the twentieth century, both the garden suburb and garden city movements in Britain influenced the planning of new communities overseas. The garden city movement of Ebenezer Howard, emphasizing new and attractive planned towns with their own socialisitic administration, employment, and local facilities, has strong echoes in Singapore's new towns, although the adaptation of the concept in Singapore is more towards the physical landscapes and built greeneries rather than embracing the whole idea of the garden city.

In 1983, Charles T. Goodsell reviewed the depictions of bureaucracy in popular culture and academic writing in the United States and concluded that bureaucracy was viewed as “a hate object.” He wrote:Bureaucracy, then, is despised and disparaged. It is attacked in the press, popular magazines, and best sellers. It is denounced by the political right and left. It is assaulted by molders of culture and professors of academia. It is castigated by economists, sociologists, policy analysts, political scientists, organization theorists, and social psychologists. It is charged with a wide array of crimes, which we have grouped under failure to perform; abuse of political power; and repression of employees, clients, and people in general. In short, bureaucracy stands as a splendid hate object. (Goodsell, 1983, p. 11)