Fiding Meaning In Suburbia

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Finding meanings in Suburbia Word Count 1,550 Question 1. Houses and Homes: more than ‘keeping out the rain’? Choosing where to live, build your own life or have your family can be quite difficult. Usually these decisions are made upon certain situations like the life style you have or where do you work. For the working class people looking for something different to the city, the suburbs seems to be the best option for their plans. A living area originated in the XVIII Century in London. This area provided the upper middle class merchant elite a scape from the explosive modern urban expansion, as show in Figure 1 (Fishman, 1987, p21). In the same way as London, this contemporaneous way of living became a strong part in the Australian society. This tutorial paper intends to explain how this ‘new’ type of housing in Australia gave meaning and provide structure to a society and did much more than just keeping out the rain. Figure 1. Discussed in Lecture 4 how the growth in London forced the people to live outside the city 9 (Greenop, 2011). Acquiring a home or having a property for many people represents the highest achievement in their lives. Suburbia seemed to be the best option to conquer and consolidate this dream, as Dovey (1994, p128) calls it the “Australian Dream” (Figure 2). This Australia Dream generates different opinions about the true meaning behind it. On the one hand Suburbia brings to the society stereotypes they could be good as Kenna (2006, p310) defines housing of middle class, house-proud people with a very determine sense of family values. Because most Australian housing is found in the suburbs, it is this type of housing that contributes the most in giving meaning to the society. This relaxed and chilled type of living is praise by Hugh Stretton in Fiske et al (1987,p27) saying the majority of educated people like painters and

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