On Saturday I gave a lecture at the American Home. Each teacher is supposed to give one lecture during the school year about some topic connected with American culture. I decided to indulge my city planning interests and gave my lecture about American suburbia. Russia just doesn't have the same kind of suburban sprawl that America does, and the suburbs are a huge part of the modern American experience (the majority of us call the suburbs home).

I started off my lecture by giving a simple definition of a suburb, and then I briefly talked about the history of suburbanization (a bunch of people in Vladimir, Russia, now know about Shaker Heights, Ohio, which I used as an example of early suburbs). After I gave my little description of what an American suburb looks like (complete with lots of pictures), I talked about what it is like to live in suburbia. This I boiled down to three things: cars, schools, and shopping. Everything depends on the car; schools are often the most important places in the community; and big-box and chain retail dominates. I then showed a lovely shot of some bland suburban strip and asked the other American teachers to guess where it was, underlining the point that the suburbs really are Anywhere, USA. I wrapped up by talking about the future of suburbia, which includes more diversity, minority-majority suburbs, increasing density, and less demand for energy-and -space hogging housing types.

I really had fun with the lecture, and I got a lot of good feedback from my students who were there, and that was my goal. I wanted to avoid a dry lecture, and I knew I had to keep my language understandable and not use jargon that would be incomprehensible even to the most advanced student. So I'm very happy with how it went. Here are a few pictures from my lecture. 

I also played this music video in the very beginning of the presentation to show a little slice of suburban life (and also because it's a great song):