Pastoral Capitalism - 9780262526142

By the end of the twentieth century, America's suburbs contained more office spacethan its central cities. Many of these corporate workplaces were surrounded, somewhat incongruously,by verdant vistas of broad lawns and leafy trees. In Pastoral Capitalism, Louise Mozingo describesthe evolution of these central (but often ignored) features of postwar urbanism in the context ofthe modern capitalist enterprise. These new suburban corporate landscapes emerged from a historicalmoment when corporations reconceived their management structures, the city decentralized anddispersed into low-density, auto-dependent peripheries, and the pastoral--in the form of leafyresidential suburbs--triumphed as an American ideal. Greenness, writes Mozingo, was associated withgoodness, and pastoral capitalism appropriated the suburb's aesthetics and moral code. Like thelawn-proud suburban homeowner, corporations understood a pastoral landscape's capacity tocommunicate identity, status, and right-mindedness. Mozingo distinguishes among three forms ofcorporate landscapes--the corporate campus, the corporate estate, and the office park--and examinessuburban corporate landscapes built and inhabited by such companies as Bell Labs, General Motors,Deere & Company, and Microsoft. She also considers the globalization of pastoral capitalism inEurope and the developing world including Singapore, India, and China. Mozingo argues that, even asit is proliferating, pastoral capitalism needs redesign, as do many of our metropolitan forms, forpressing social, cultural, political, and environmental reasons. Future transformations areimpossible, however, unless we understand the past. Pastoral Capitalism offers an indispensiblechapter in urban history, examining not only the design of corporate landscapes but also theeconomic, social, and cultural models that determined their form.