Amanda Kolson Hurley says suburbs were sites of experimentation — and could be again

Wide lawns and narrow minds. That is how suburbs often are depicted in popular culture: places of repressed, putty-colored respectability where the population is white; the houses, cookie-cutter; and the housewives, incredibly desperate.

Urbanism writer Amanda Kolson Hurley seeks to challenge that view in her new book, "Radical Suburbs: Experimental Living on the Fringes of the American City," released by Belt Publishing in the spring. Not only are suburbs more representative than they might get credit for - "minorities account for 35% of suburban residents, in line with their share of the total U.S. population," she notes early on - in many cases, their roots