| Sumario: | A review of three books outlining how the functional lines between cities and suburbs have all but disappeared is presented. It is argued that cities have been deconstructed over the past number of decades, with some elements having been moved out of the old core and into new settlements at the edge. It is argued that whereas it might be easy to think of this as the complete dismantling of the cities, the fact is that if any place has been lost, it is the stereotypical suburb—the cozy residential enclave for home and family set off from the pressures of commerce, noise, dirt and the psychological exigencies of work. The books explored in relation to these arguments are Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century Metropolis, by Greg Hise; Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck; and City Making: Building Communities without Building Walls, by Gerald E. Frug.
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