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Consideration needs to be given to the difference [that] the diversity of cities makes to theory.Robinson (2002, p. 549)

South Africa has long been an intriguing subject of study, particularly for scholars from the United States. The intensification and dismantling of the apartheid state offers a wealth of material to political scientists and social movement theorists. As the African country with the highest White population, race relations are always in the foreground, as they are in most studies of U.S. urban (and suburban) policy, while they are only just beginning to be taken as a serious ‘issue’ in European social science. U.S. scholars may occasionally look at South Africa as if it were a distorted mirror.¹ Depending on one's perspective, as well as the focus of the study, South Africa can be taken as a hopeful symbol of reconciliation or as a warning of the great difficulty in overcoming decades of oppression and systemic inequality. This chapter focuses on the generally overlooked aspect of suburbanization in South Africa, which, surprisingly enough, in certain respects looks very much like U.S. suburbanization.

World population is expected to increase by some 2.6 billion from 6.9 billion in 2010 to more than 9.5 billion by mid-century. Most of this population increase will occur in the developing nations, and most of this increase will be absorbed in the rapidly expanding metropolitan regions of these countries – the so-called megacities of the twenty-first century (United Nations, 2009). And as urban development accelerates across the globe, most of the population increase will occur in the emerging megacities and other metropolitan areas in Africa, Asia and South America. Because the original areas of settlement in the city centre have long been established, much of the population increase in these metropolitan regions will occur in the suburban areas of cities in the Global South – areas of favelas and shanty towns alongside earlier middle-class and upper-class suburbs, newly planned gated communities and garden suburbs, and indigenous models of suburban growth that will emerge in the next century.

The contemporary city of Rome is being built differently from the expanding post-war peripheries. New, mainly private residential developments are changing our perception of the cityscape. According to the General Plan, these projects are designed to encourage a polycentric metropolitanization, with mixed uses and facilities. But they have been critiqued for producing urbanscapes that ‘discourage urbanity’ because the relevant organizational and functional dimensions of public life have been almost totally neglected: foremost among these are the provision of public goods, services to citizens, high-quality standards of construction and an infrastructure allowing for spatial mobility. The main argument for urbanity emphasizes ‘the way of using the space of the city’ in combination with spontaneous forms of interaction within that urban space. This argument contests the production of the contemporary suburban areas of the city and is based upon a sort of nostalgia for the urbanism inherited in the romantic conceptualization of the modern European city, made visible in the celebrations of historical city places. It gives rise to dissatisfaction with the recently built environment which has been critiqued for its ‘absence of urbanity’.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the ascent of Metropolitan Washington from an area with low levels of immigration to a major U.S. destination.

Methodology/approach – Drawing on a growing body of research on immigration to Washington, DC, and data from the American Community Survey (ACS), trends are examined in detail to illustrate how this immigrant gateway fits into the national historical picture.

Findings – The findings analyze the historical comparative settlement patterns of immigrants to the United States to demonstrate how Washington has emerged as the seventh largest immigrant gateway. The paper further analyzes metropolitan-level data on country of origin and residence to show the diversity of the immigrant population and their disbursal to suburban areas from the central core over the past four decades.

Social implications – The paper also highlights some conflict in new suburban destinations within metropolitan Washington, which experienced fast and recent growth. But immigrant incorporation has worked well in the past and Washington can continue to work to be a model of immigrant integration as local organizations, governments, and communities continue to confront the challenges of immigration in productive and sustainable ways.

Originality/value of paper – This paper combines the historical settlement of immigrants across the United States with the in-depth examination of one of the newest and largest immigrant gateways, the U.S. capitol region, Washington, DC.

When immigrants arrive in the United States, their search for a new home represents a transformative personal and cultural journey. This paper investigates this transformative process in relation to Smart Growth principles around walk-ability promoted by a suburban county in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. This survey of immigrants from various countries in Asia and Latin America, finds that seventy percent of those who emigrated from urban environments prefer to live in single-family detached houses. Survey participants from Latin American countries prefer these homes in compact urban locations more than Asian immigrants and native-born Americans, while Asians prefer suburban neighborhoods with pedestrian amenities. Their preferences represent a hybrid version of the American dream which combines both the urban and suburban imaginary, or what this article terms “sub-urban” preferences. This study emphasizes that walkability is critical to immigrant sub-urban preferences and ought to influence the way professionals design and plan neighborhoods and housing.

One cannot think about suburbia without considering at the same time its intrinsic point of reference, namely the modern capitalist industrial city of the 19th century. As is generally known, disastrous social, sanitary, and hygienic conditions prevailed especially in the growing working class neighborhoods. These quarters were regarded as places from which considerable dangers for public order, health, safety, and morals emanated. At the same time, large parts of the middle classes interpreted the growing social meaning of the industrial city, in comparison to that of the countryside, as a menacing omen of the working classes gaining political power.

The nature of immigration to the United States has varied tremendously over the course of the last 100 years. While the rate of immigrants in comparison to the total population was as high as 14% in the early 1900s, it steadily declined due to regulations passed at the beginning of the First World War reaching its lowest point in 1970 at less than 5% (Bernard, 1998). Yet, ever since the early 1970s, in response to the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments that replaced national-origin quotas with a single annual worldwide ceiling for all other immigrants while eliminating any numerical limitations for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, the number of immigrants has been continuously on the rise. In 1996, about 1 of every 10 residents in the United States was foreign born. This is exemplified by the fact that more than one fourth of the present foreign-born population of the United States arrived after 1990 (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2004).

Taking as a case study the city of San Carlos de Bariloche – in northern Patagonia, Argentina – this paper aims to compare its urban structure with previous urbanization models and identify some characteristics of this tourist city that could inspire the construction of an adapted urban model for Latin American tourist cities, particularly those based on natural attractions.

Based on multivariate analysis of population census data and local economic statistics, this paper compares the residential location of different social groups and the location of main economic activities in Bariloche. First, principal component analysis (PCA) is combined with cluster analysis to classify Bariloche’s neighborhoods. Second, different maps are analyzed to study the location of economic activities, in comparison with previous clusters.

The results of this paper show that Bariloche partially adjusts to previous urbanization models, as the landscape and physical environment determine the characteristics of its urban growth, as well as the development of tourist activities. Therefore, this paper then proposes an adapted urban model for the case of Bariloche, which could be also contrasted with other Latin American tourist cities in the future.

Bearing in mind that there is no model of Latin American tourist cities so far, this paper tries to analyze to what extent the assumptions and patterns of previous urban models could be adapted to Latin American tourist cities, such as Bariloche, which base their attractiveness and economic dynamism on its natural physical environment.

Wangjing is a large residential cluster located at the intersection of the Fourth Ring Road and the airport expressway in the northeast part of Beijing. The area is a “suburb” according to official statistics and academic accounts, which often classify urban areas beyond the historical old city as suburbs. Due to its proximity to the airport and major expressways, Wangjing has developed quickly since the late 1990s. As more high-rise luxury apartment buildings get built, the area's population has reached 150,000 as of 2010, including more than 30,000 foreign expatriates living here amid Chinese urban professionals. Across the airport expressway from Wangjing is the 798 Factory, a hip arts quarter developed within a former electronics factory built in the 1950s. Looking for large studio space, a few artists moved into the Bauhaus-style workshops here in the late 1990s, and quickly bookstores, coffee shops, and galleries followed suit. By 2005, the 798 Factory had become the center of the contemporary Chinese art scene and home to many prestigious international galleries. Outside the factory compound is a working-class neighborhood developed in the 1950s to house workers at the nearby factories and their families. The living conditions here have not changed much for decades, with some families still sharing common kitchens and bathrooms with their neighbors in dilapidated apartment buildings. To the west side of Wangjing, after about a 15-minute drive along the Fourth Ring Road, one reaches the Olympic Park, a brand-new area of parks, stadiums, five-star hotels, golf courses, and exclusive gated communities of villas – all developed in the short period before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Beyond the Fifth Ring Road, one can see many “urban villages,” former agricultural villages that have become populated by migrant workers with low-paid jobs – taxi drivers, construction workers, waiters, nannies, security guards, and street vendors. Unable to afford to live in the central city, migrant workers rent rooms from local peasants at the city's edge. Many of these villages are to be demolished soon to make space for commercial property development, and the migrant worker tenants will have to move to another village farther away from the city.