Cliches Explored: "Leafy suburb"

it means you in DANGER gurl

To me it means many trees and parks. Ahh Autumn is nearly here y'all.

What Leafy Suburbs Mean to Me

An Essay by DJT

Beautiful leaves. Leaves grow on all kinds of things. Trees. Salads. Money. Beautiful. I know more about leaves than a botanicyst. It comes naturally to me. My great-uncle invented chloroform. It's in my blood. Chloroform in my blood, okay? They come to me all the time. They come to me crying like little bitches. They say, "Mr. President, sir. Mr. Sir President, we're hearing that under Sleepy Joe..." That's what I call him. Sleeeeeepy Joe. You don't have to applaud. Okay. Okay. You can applaud a little. Sleepy Joe, okay? In his basement. Never comes out.

They say to me, "Sir, Mr. President, sir, we're hearing that Sleepy Joe will put Cory Booker in charge, sir..." Cory Booker. Black Booker, I call him. Very black. Likes books. Reads. Loser, okay? I know all about guys like him. Okay? Okay? You know what I'm saying? Not good. And they say, "Mr. President, sir, we're hearing that Cory Booker will send people to our leafy suburbs, sir, and our green leafies will wither and turn black and brown, Mr. President, sir. Please, sir, say it isn't true!"

What the fuck do they want from me? I've heard the same thing. Black Booker. Bad brother. Not good. Turning leaves black. Brown. Black. Not good, Wake up, white women. Beautiful green leaves. Buh-bye, okay? All gone. All gone. Wake the hell up.

I've never encountered the expression "leafy suburb," OP.

Are you not located in the US R4?

Yes, I am. Never heard it or read it. Not anywhere.

Where are you getting it?

From the comments:

[quote]"Leafy" does appear in AmE, frequently associated with the concept of "suburb," if not the word. And it connotes "expensive" and "genteel" (and often "white") over here, too.

[quote]A quick search of recent NY Times articles brings up "leafy refuge" (in Los Angeles), "leafy and upscale enclave" (Staten Island), "leafy backyard" (Paris), "leafy Fifth Avenue" (New York), "leafy Cairo suburb," and "leafy Chicago suburb" -- all since May.

[quote]In U.S. journalese, the converse of "leafy" in city descriptions is "gritty." Today's news stories have many references to Nice being a "gritty metropolis." My city, Oakland (California), is also frequently described as "gritty," which sometimes means something about poor people and other times means something about brown people.

Oh good to know for future reference r7

I'm not American but that's also how I've understood it, R8. When I was in Boston I remember being told that the Green Line had been called that because it went to the leafy green, i.e., white and affluent, areas of Brookline and Newton.

I'm certainly aware that the term became a sort of code for "nice, white suburbs," so I consider whether the use is in that context or in the historical context of early planned suburbs from the latter half of the 19thC to, say, the 1930s.

Once at the edge of cities, these "leafy suburbs" in the U.S. grew out of the City Beautiful Movement, the designs of Frederick Law Olmsted and his sons, from British "Garden Suburbs" like Bedford Park at the then edge of London (from 1875 to about 1905) and early 19th suburban movements on both sides of the Atlantic, the railroad towns of Philadelphia's Mainline, etc.

They are now "close-in suburbs" with some age, sometimes with a grid plan but often with curvilinear streets to break from the urban grid and mark a solidly residential area with middle class, upper middle class, and sometimes houses of elite classes: mostly free-standing houses set back from the street with deep rear gardens, the houses were usually built in a variety of styles of a period of one- to three-decades that the area developed, and yes, they are leafy and green, with sycamores and elms and oaks and maples (common street names for these neighborhoods), and shrubs and hedges, and a patch of front lawn. Larger planned suburbs like Roland Park in Baltimore (in part by the Olmsted Brothers) and SHaker Heights in Cleveland had separate provision for shops for everyday needs like grocers and butchers and bakeries, usually tucked away at an edge of the suburb or separated from the streets of single family houses. Sometimes there are apartment buildings of the same period incorporated into the schemes but that's a bit unusual.

To me they are the good suburbs, because they are handsome historic houses, in a beautiful setting with canopies of mature trees, in or immediately adjacent to the city center. Even on "small" lots (which I prefer but many Americans do not) they make for very attractive neighborhoods and provide a good measure of privacy, the greenery itself often contributing in no small measure.

The photo is of Schenley Farms, a small suburban corner of the Oakland neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, begun about 1905 as a "model city" incorporating elements of CIty Beautiful Movement planning. It has free-standing houses, terraced houses, and I think some apartment buildings in a range of Tudor Revival and Colonial Revival and Eclectic Period styles. The overall planning of the neighborhood elevates the appeal of individual elements which range considerably in forms, size and, decorative detailing and were meant to appea to people of different budgets and needs. Very different from modern "cookie-cutter suburban houses" where the choice is of three sizes of houses in three different sectors of a development, choice for early buyers of a snout garage door on the left or right, and scarcely a tree in sight.

It's possible to have a new built "leafy suburb" but the implication is of a place established for many years and with a richer variety of architecture than in a modern development. So leafy can be "code" or just descriptive of a physical type of neighborhood.

Thanks for the back-up R7 and for the most excellent explanation R10

To me the word "leafy suburbs" seems to be a shorthand for a certain type of upper middle class suburb with all the physical characteristics described by R10-- closer in, built around 100 years ago (definitely before WW 2), smaller lots, often hilly, winding streets and lots of lots of very tall older trees.

"Leafy suburbs" are populated by more educated and liberal-leaning denizens of the upper middle class, BigLaw partners, bankers, media executives, and seem to stand in contrast in the popular imagine with the McMansion suburbs which are generally a big further away from the city and notable for their lack of trees other than topiary, the trees mostly having been cut down to make way for the McMansions or never having been there since The Estates at Pheasant Ridge had been a cornfield prior to becoming a gated community.

And of course the McMansion suburb dwellers tend to be more conservative and less educated though often equally affluent. (Small business owners, upscale blue collar)

To add to R10, a lot of the "leafy suburbs" of the Northeast were "railroad suburbs" that sprung up along the suburban rail lines that were build early last century and thus often have small downtowns built around the train station rather than the strip malls common to McMansion suburbs.

I am not aware of a commonly used shorthand for McMansion suburbs.

Lyme disease.

"Leafy" has a heavy subtext: for a place to be leafy, you need lots of old trees. Therefore, it's a well-established town reliant on -- or certainly attractive to -- certain groups. I don't think it's racist or exclusionary necessarily, but I think it's a marketing term aimed at those whose idea of "making it" is a home in the suburbs surrounded by people like oneself.

I minored in Urban Studies and did a lot of work with city and suburban studies and can tell you that R10 knows her shit.

From a very practical point, a "leafy" area implies that it has that pastoral charm and that the land, air and surroundings - and the people - are of such quality that those trees and plants will thrive and flourish. A gritty city, with its smog, concrete and overpopulation, implies the opposite.

R10 your post makes me wish there was direct messaging on the DL. We'd have a fun chat.

Here's an nGram of "leafy suburb" in English fiction. Graphs for English, American English, British English all follow more or less the same pattern, appearing first about 1870, rising at the end of WWII, rising again in the early 1970s, and then rising sharply from 1980-2011 before a decline.

Since suburbs of the 19thC and early 20thC were often promoted as healthy—against a backdrop of industrial pollution and disease—the early instances make sense, even if in the early 20thC street trees in the very centers of cities were widely popular so the distinction between green suburbs and green cities was maybe more nuanced; and the language describing developments like Bedford Park in/adjacent Ealing, London was similar.

Of curiosity, an nGram of "white flight" doesn't make for an obvious overlay (it rose sharply 1965-1978 and then dropped sharply. I expect that "leafy suburb" already meant something that the "white flight" suburban movement that was tied to school desegregation of 1971.

PS as R10 said, the "leafy suburb" is more likely an older suburb.

Suburbs earned a lot of their negative connotations, but earlier suburbs were intended more as a way to have more planned areas, taking some of the ideas of city planning (Olmstead plans were in many big cities) and testing them for a smaller scale. Olmstead was a master at planning parks so his plans would always take trees/vegetation into consideration.

The post WWII iterations of suburbia had two main focuses: to house an enormous wave of soldiers coming back from war and their growing families, and a bit later, to accommodate the "white flight" from cities.

But many of the suburbs you see in response to those needs/focuses weren't very leafy. As new builds they were rather barren. And the plans were nearly as crowded as the city buildings the owners left. The various Levittowns are a great example of that.

many of the newer suburbs are not methodically planted with street trees, more of a haphazard approach . Back in the day same species allees(alleys) were created particularly with the use of the American elm with created cathedral type spaces. New thinking about monoculture has prevented some of this and alternating species are planted that DONT create a feeling of "leafy space"

My impression is that many of the post-WW2 suburbs (the non-leafy ones) were built on farm fields where there had been no trees or that the developers cut down whatever trees there were because it was cheaper than building around them, plus McMansionites don't seem to want them.

That said, I'd be curious to look at the Levittown suburb in R16 today.

I'm sure many saplings were planted by the new homeowners and those trees would be around 70 years old today so I wonder if that barren neighborhood had become much leafier.

There was just NO planning with the post WWII plans. The demand was so great that developers would just buy land randomly, slap houses on them and move on to the next project. The only "plan" was "how many fucking houses can we fit in here?"

I doubt any sort of long term planning re roads, traffic etc were undertaken.....and we are paying for that now.

The housing plan where I grew up in PA was built on an old strip mine. Apparently, when it was first built (a few years before I was born) residents could still see some of the big open ditches/channels from mining on the outside edges of the plan. Two developers bought most of the land around - one did the sort of upper middle class houses and ours did the regular middle class ones.

These days, it means pot-farm-adjascent.

I always thought it was code for “white” and wealthy

I think the "leafy suburbs" - the older ones - were also often near colleges/universities and so they also got the reputation of being areas where the smart folks, academics, scientists, etc. would live in a city.

And while there have been some affluent black suburban areas, it usually was white and wealthy-ish.

This is a community not far from where I grew up.

It was a planned community - interesting that in this case it was intended for mill workers, but they were using some of the same ideas as the early leafy suburbs - that is, how does having pleasant surroundings and planned areas that have form, function and beauty impact the lives of those that live there? And this, too, was Olmstead (or his firm, anyway).

WE SEE YOU WHITE LEAFY SUBURBS.

I prefer to stay in the leafy parts, and stay far away from the gritty parts. Those gritty parts are not good for me parading down in my exclusive Dress Barn Caftain and studded earrings! OH DEAR those gritty folk will rob me blind!

Well, Marty, ya are in Filthadelphia, so.....

To me, it means mature trees. Tall, older trees providing shade to an established, older-money suburb. Think Bronxville, or Larchmont (NY), Summit or Montclair (NJ), Evanston, Wilmette, or Winnetka (IL).

I grew up in a "leafy" New Jersey suburb of New York / Newark. I brought a friend home and he was taken with the fact that the treetops almost met and occluded the sky, something I guess he'd not seen before, and which I'd always taken for granted.

Oak Park and River Forest (IL), too.

Can we turn this into another "Old Money" thread?

Pleeeeeze.

R30 I NEED TO resubscribe to the Town & Country issues. Do they have back issues available? It is a BEAUTIFUL Sunday afternoon outside, nothing would make it better than perusing through Town & Country in my Dress Barn Caftan!

Yes R30, DL's notions about "old money" are delusional and seem to be based equal parts in that 40 year old Preppy Handbook (written by a Jewish woman from Manhattan as satire) and old movies like "Philadelphia Story" (the original)

Leafy to me means tree lined streets and yards. An older neighborhood perhaps. I've seen those developments where they clear-cut everything and there isn't a shady spot to be seen anywhere. It can take decades for any newly planted trees to grow back.

The New York Times definitely uses it as a euphemism for "places populated by our liberal Democratic readers who lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn before decamping to the suburbs, buy their groceries at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and will send their lacrosse and field hockey playing offspring to colleges whose names mean something in those leafy suburbs when displayed on a bumper sticker."

I think leafy vaguely connotes WASPy. Does anyone ever say "leafy Great Neck" or "leafy Roslyn, NY"?

Scarsdale. Chappaqua and Short Hills are most definitely referred to as "leafy suburbs" R35

I would think Great Neck would be too.

^^Ditto Westport, Newton, Bethesda, Highland Park, Lexington, et al

In fact, R35, in testing your theory, the first article that came up in Google when I put in "leafy suburbs" is from the NYT and is about Millburn (Short Hills)

Sewickley.

Fox Chapel.

Caftans.

Earrings.

Leafy suburbs are "a great place to raise a family".

So "wealthy Jews" and "leafy suburbs" are not at all contradictions in terms, then?

Just want to make sure I get it.

That would be correct R41

Many wealthy Jews now live in leafy suburbs

I know many DLers have a view of turn of the century ethnics (Jews, Italians, Irish) that's rooted in 1950s prejudices (hence the "are Italians white?" threads) but yes, all three live in "leafy suburbs"

In the Midwest, after Dutch Elm, better suburbs replanted and poorer suburbs did not.

Trees are a sign of wealth. Poor people don’t deal with cicadas.

"Leafy suburb" means, IMO:

1. Planned (designed) landscaping in the front yards. I.e., some thought went into how the front yard looked.

2. "Mature" trees vs. newly-planted trees that don't yet offer shade, etc.

3. Actual cement sidewalks where you can walk, run, push a stroller, and look at these leafy trees.

4. House / structures not built all the way up to the property lines. I.e., room to actually have trees and leaves, etc.

This house is available in Great Neck.

IMO "leafy" tends to mean more upscale/upper class. Obviously any suburb of any class or socioeconomic status can be "leafy" but I don't see it attached as much to "poorer" burbs.

FWIW R45/R46, Great Neck became very Persian about 20-25 years ago and has had a huge influx of Chinese over the past ten years (Great Neck is very close to Flushing Queens, which is almost exclusively Chinese at this point.)

So far more likely that the buyers of that palace are named Pahlavi or Wong than Greenberg.

That might explain a lot about that house at R46, then. Built 2010, asking price $16.5 million.

Not exactly something out of a Cheever novel.

There's always Great Neck Estates, r49. This one's from 1927, and costs not nearly as many millions.

[quote] FWIW [R45]/[R46], Great Neck became very Persian about 20-25 years ago and has had a huge influx of Chinese over the past ten years (Great Neck is very close to Flushing Queens, which is almost exclusively Chinese at this point.)

That’s New York for you. Believe all the Greenbergs just moved further out on the Island, to Roslyn etc. Still leafy, but farther from Manhattan.

there is no irony or metaphor or double meaning, dumbass OP. "Leafy suburb" means there are lots of trees - many more than in the city. stupid cunt

R52, Leaf OP alone!

Five-year maples used to be a sign you were in a crap neighborhood. They grow to be about twelve feet tall and then die or remain spindly because the root system was cut, not clawed&balled.

Mature tree lines also offer a polite boundary between neighbors and excellent sound dampeners.

The "leafy suburbs" in my city originally featured Victorian houses, with lots of houses added in later years (esp. the 20s) as "in-fill housing", where the original estates were subdivided. In most cases, you can still identify the original Victorian houses in the middle, well back from the street. I have a booklet showing the old railway and streetcar lines in my city. Mapping out the old streetcar routes really highlights the planning that went into the neighborhoods.

My own neighborhood is less affluent, so the leafy streets with Victorian houses alternate with more ordinary streets with mid-century houses. I can't afford to live in any of the fully leafy suburbs in my city.

Do they sell caftans from the leaves? Asking for a friend.

R55 My friend bought a house like that years ago.

Old Victorian farmhouse surrounded by little tract homes.

Few leafy suburbs began as such, but they were envisioned as having mature trees.

My example at R10 was farmland before it was developed, as many leafy suburbs were; they were not carved out of wooded areas. The difference is that the plan included big, (eventually) mature trees and lawns and greenery that fit in with the design of parks and landscaped parkways from the Olmsted tradition.

Early photos of gardenesque suburbs look odd with their trees in place but no extensive canopies of foliage as they would eventually have.