The suburban ‘community question’.

In academic debates on neighbourhoods and social cohesion, there has been ample attention paid to processes in old urban residential districts as well as in the massive housing estates built from the 1960s until the 1980s. Newly developed suburban districts have always been in question, maybe even more so than inner-city areas, yet they have never had a prominent place on the research agenda. This article focuses on what we actually know about social cohesion and territorial ties in newly built suburban settlements, and is based on a literature survey and two recent empirical studies carried out in the Netherlands. Paraphrasing the ‘classic community question’, which referred to urban contexts, this paper's focus is on whether social cohesion in suburban areas is indeed causing a ‘suburban community question’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]