Mobilizing Suburban Stereotypes: The Case of Ville d’Anjou (1956-1973)

Abstract

In this article, we examine how in the 1960s the political leadership in Anjou, a suburban community in the Greater Montreal region, cultivated the stereotypical ideal of a bourgeois residential suburb in contrast with its actual dynamics of development in the metropolitan region. Our analysis focuses on three dimensions of the suburban ideal: residential monofunctionalism, political autonomy, and an exclusive and apolitical community. For each of these dimensions, we show how Anjou’s political leadership grappled with a complex reality and adapted the suburban ideal to ensure that their community, dependent as it was on metropolitan infrastructure and a host to heavy industry, could still be considered an ideal suburb. Our contribution speaks to the material and political impacts of such representation in a more complex set of processes of suburban and metropolitan development.