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Some critics of the suburbs argue that they’re not a place at all. “The anthropologist Marc Augé coined the term non-places to describe interchangeable, impersonal spaces lacking in history and culture that people pass through quickly and anonymously,” Julie Beck wrote last year. The highways and chain stores of suburbs such as the ones Beck grew up in can often feel that way. But suburbs have identities, and they leave their mark on people’s lives, Beck notes: “Where there is life, there is connection and emotion. Where there is connection and emotion, nostalgia follows.”

America’s suburbs

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