Movie Towns and Sitcom Suburbs ― Building Hollywood's Ideal Communities

Media depictions of community are enormously influential on wider popular opinion about how people would like to live. In this study, Rowley examines depictions of ideal communities in Hollywood films and television and explores the implications of attempts to build real-world counterparts to such imagined places. He focuses on the ideals of small towns and suburbs featured during and shortly after World War II, tracking how these were an inspiration for post-World War II suburban development.

Stephen Rowley is Lecturer of Urban and Social Studies at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia.