History Main / CutAndPasteSuburb

* Lampshaded in ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}.'' When in Britain, Asterix and Obelix walk down an endless row of absolutely identical houses, and Asterix says, "Good thing we have the house number. Its description might not have been enough."

* ''WesternAnimation/OggyAndTheCockroaches'' - Oggy and company live in such a suburb. Oggy's house has its roof of a different color.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'': Similar cars in the driveways as well.

* Gru's lair in ''WesternAnimation/DespicableMe'' is located under a spooky-looking manor house incongruously located in the middle of one of these. With its dark colors, looming architecture, and dead lawn, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

* The abandoned house in the "Valse Triste" segment of ''WesternAnimation/AllegroNonTroppo'' is surrounded by featureless pre-fab houses.

* The Music/{{Rush}} song "Subdivisions" deals with the conformity of suburban life.

In fiction, especially animation and comics, the similarity will get [[UpToEleven ramped up]]: The houses, gardens, and cars will be identical. The lives of the residents may also be identical, or the point may be that their lives are different, even if their houses are the same.

After UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, American veterans came home, married, and had children, creating the "Baby Boom" in the United States. Lots and lots of houses were needed to accommodate the rising population, and entire [[{{Suburbia}} suburban neighborhoods]] were built where the houses varied only slightly from each other. Even minor variations in detail only accentuated the these similarities and made each neighborhood look hopelessly dull. The yards were also uniform, and one common tactic to make them look different was flipping the blueprint, as if having the garage on the left instead of the right would create visual interest.

After UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, the veterans came home, married, and bred, creating the Baby Boom in the United States. Houses were needed. Lots and lots of houses. Entire [[{{Suburbia}} neighborhoods]] were built with houses only slightly different from each other. Minor variation in detail from house to house only accentuated the similarities and made each neighborhood hopelessly dull. The yards are also uniform. One common tactic to make them look different is flipping the blueprint, as if having the garage on the left instead of the right would create visual interest.

In fiction, especially animation and comics, the similarity will get ramped up. The houses, gardens, cars will be identical. The lives of the residents may be identical or the point may be that their lives are different, even if their houses are the same.

Some call these Levittowns after UsefulNotes/WilliamLevitt, who innovated several improvements in planned communities. To this day there are many cities named (officially or unofficially) Levittown (list at Wikipedia [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown here]]), the presence of one in UsefulNotes/PuertoRico shows how far William Levitt's influence extended.

Website/{{Wikipedia}} uses the term "tract housing" because a whole line of them is built at once while recognizing the American and Canadian slang term "cookie-cutter housing". "Development" is a more general term, used when things beyond just the houses are planned out at the start. Often this includes more complicated street patterns, gated communities, and usually a little bit more variety in house design (but not by much).

Similar communities exist throughout North America, [[UsefulNotes/CouncilEstate Great Britain]] and the rest of Europe, but the degree of conformity may differ.

Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} uses the term "tract housing" because a whole line of them is built at once while recognizing the American and Canadian slang term "cookie-cutter housing". "Development" is a more general term, used when things beyond just the houses are planned out at the start. Often this includes more complicated street patterns, gated communities, and usually a little bit more variety in house design (but not by much).

[[caption-width-right:350:Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V...]]

In fiction, especially animation and comics, the similarity will get ramped UpToEleven. The houses, gardens, cars will be identical. The lives of the residents may be identical or the point may be that their lives are different, even if their houses are the same.

* ''Literature/ReadyPlayerOne'': Being mostly set in a VR multiplayer game, takes this UpToEleven, with entire planets that contain hundreds of copies of a single area, repeated over every inch of them. One example being "Middletown", which has 256 identical copies of James Halliday's hometown, complete with NPC citizens and a flawless mock-up of Halliday's family house.

** exceptions are the local governments have set up "welstandsvrije" areas, where you are free to build whatever you like, and the ones that did away completely with the "Welstandsnota".

* In the ''Literature/HomerPrice'' story "Wheels of Progress" by Robert [=McCloskey=], the local millionaire decides on a whim to build a new suburb for Centersburg. One hundred identical houses, with her mansion in the center. HilarityEnsues when said mansion is moved away accidentally, and the hundred-and-first house put in its place. And it turns out the guy hired to put up the road signs got into the hooch buried under said mansion and has yet to start putting up the signs, leading to some serious confusion.
* ''Magazine/{{MAD}}'' once had an article about road signs they'd like to see, and one of them was "Ugly Tract Housing Development Ahead." It showed a picture of a driver asleep at the wheel driving past identical houses.
* An early ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' book has an alien getting confused at the sight of two identical houses. His human companions must explain the concept to him.
* The chillingly homogenous neighborhood in Camazotz, used to great effect in ''Literature/AWrinkleInTime''. All the houses are the same, as are the yards, [[IndividualityIsIllegal everyone does everything exactly the same or else they are penalized...]]
* Lampshaded in ''Literature/InCryptid'', as many humanoid cryptids support this by design, so they can stay HiddenInPlainSight.
-->'''Alex''' (narrating): A lot of homeowner's associations have cryptids on their boards helping to set standardized rules that will make individual homes more difficult to target from a distance. "The monsters live in the beige house" isn't a very helpful description when half the houses in the neighborhood are beige.
* Trude in ''Literature/InvisibleCities'' is a Cut and Paste ''city'' which is implied to have covered the Earth. [[ClosedCircle You can't leave]].
* Where Pete lives in ''Literature/TheLostThing'', right down to the oddly-shaped chimneys.

* In Creator/JackCampbell's ''Literature/TheLostFleet'' novel ''Invincible'', they find such a planet, inhabited by sentient herbivores that have annihilated the entire ecology except for what they need and built undifferentiated homes, like a vast planet-covering herd.
* ''Literature/ReadyPlayerOne'', being mostly set in a VR multiplayer game, takes this UpToEleven, with entire planets that contain hundreds of copies of a single area, repeated over every inch of them. One example being "Middletown", which has 256 identical copies of James Halliday's hometown, complete with NPC citizens and a flawless mock-up of Halliday's family house.
* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' spin-off ''Mrs Bradshaw's Guidebook to the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway'' illustrates the Morporkian suburb of Suffink with a row of identical houses, from which a row of identical men with briefcases are emerging to catch the train into the city.
* Eagle Hills in ''Literature/UltraFuckers'' is the epitome of this trope, with every house and street looking exactly the same with minor variations that just drive home how soulless it all is.
* The children's book ''Literature/{{Weslandia}}'' is set in a suburb in which the only variation between the houses is whether the garage is on the right or the left.

[[caption-width-right:350:Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-V...]]

-->'''Alex''' (narrating): A lot of homeowner's associations have cryptids on their boards helping to set standardized rules that will make individual homes more difficult to target from a distance. 'The monsters live in the beige house' isn't a very helpful description when half the houses in the neighborhood are beige.

* In the ''Homer Price'' story "Wheels of Progress" by Robert [=McCloskey=], the local millionaire decides on a whim to build a new suburb for Centersburg. One hundred identical houses, with her mansion in the center. HilarityEnsues when said mansion is moved away accidentally, and the hundred-and-first house put in its place. And it turns out the guy hired to put up the road signs got into the hooch buried under said mansion and has yet to start putting up the signs, leading to some serious confusion.

->''"The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house."''

After UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, the veterans came home, married and bred creating the Baby Boom in the United States. Houses were needed. Lots and lots of houses. Entire [[{{Suburbia}} neighborhoods]] were built with houses only slightly different from each other. Minor variation in detail from house to house only accentuated the similarities and made each neighborhood hopelessly dull. The yards are also uniform. One common tactic to make them look different is flipping the blueprint, as if having the garage on the left instead of the right would create visual interest.

Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} uses the term "tract housing" because a whole line of them is built at once, while recognizing the American and Canadian slang term "cookie-cutter housing". "Development" is a more general term, used when things beyond just the houses are planned out at the start. Often this includes more complicated street patterns, gated communities, and usually a little bit more variety in house design (but not by much).

Similar communities exist in throughout North America, [[UsefulNotes/CouncilEstate Great Britain]] and the rest of Europe, but the degree of conformity may differ.

* ''Film/EdwardScissorhands'' also contains one of these, in a bright, sunlit neighborhood where everything is pastel colored -- and where assymmetrical, midnight-and-candlewax colored Edward sticks out like a sore thumb.

* ''Series/{{Vera}}'': Vera gets lost while trying to navigate her way through a maze like suburb of identical houses to a crime scene at the start of "Home".

-->It's just a day dream of mine. A little development I dream of. Just off the interstate. Not fancy like Levittown. Just a little street in a little suburb. Far, far from urban Skid Row. The sweetest, greenest place where everybody has the same little lawn out front and the same little flagstone patio out back. And all the houses are so neat and pretty, 'cause they all look just alike.

* Inevitably the case in the ''VideoGame/CityBuildingSeries'', since housing has one or two models of per level of evolution and they all have the same requirements to evolve. Having an area of housing all at the same level is actually beneficial, since higher-level housing provides more space and taxes, and too strong a housing disparity affects your citizen's happiness.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/SchoolhouseRock'' short "Energy Blues" the sameness of the houses even extend to the identical puffs of smoke coming out of the chimneys.

* ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory'' is set in one such suburb. Dexter's home is identical to the others on the outside, since his laboratory is underground, but his neighbor and archnemesis Mandark has a massive above-ground lab that looms over his house.

* There are some housing projects that will have anywhere from 4 to 30 of the same style house, apartment complex or townhouse in the same area. This is because the land owners had sold the rights to one contractor, and the contractor can get the materials pre-cut in bulk at a cheaper cost for one floor plan as opposed to three or four various plans. This also means they can do things in "waves": They can pour all the foundations at once, then put in the foundation timbers, etc.

* The concept of tract housing is actually [[OlderThanTheyThink much older than even the 1920's example]] listed above, dating back at least to the Gilded Era of industrialists and robber-barons. As industrial cities exploded in population and wealth, new houses were needed in large numbers. With mass production and standardization just coming into their own, the obvious solution was standardized housing. Tracts of housing from the mid-to-late 1800's can be found in many places across the North-Eastern United States.

* TruthInTelevision : Homeowners societies can often times enforce this trope in the real world by putting restrictions on what can be done to the outside of a home. This is usually done with the intent of keeping property values up, but in especially high-end neighborhoods the rules can seem quite draconian.
* Another TruthInTelevision : There are some housing projects that will have anywhere from 4 to 30 of the same style house, apartment complex or townhouse in the same area. This is because the land owners had sold the rights to one contractor, and the contractor can get the materials pre-cut in bulk at a cheaper cost for one floor plan as opposed to three or four various plans. This also means they can do things in "waves": They can pour all the foundations at once, then put in the foundation timbers, etc.

* OlderThanTheyThink : The concept of tract housing is actually much older than even the 1920s example listed above, dating back at least to the Gilded Era of industrialists and robber-barons. As industrial cities exploded in population and wealth, new houses were needed in large numbers. With mass production and standardization just coming into their own, the obvious solution was standardized housing. Tracts of housing from the mid-to-late 1800s can be found in many places across the North-Eastern United States.

* ''WesternAnimation/OverTheHedge''. The homeowner association makes sure that nobody is different.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles''. Similar cars in the driveways as well.

* UsefulNotes/NorthKorea is currently (Dec 2020) boasting of a massive investment programme designed to provide all its citizens with a decent home, with priority given to those rendered homeless after natural disasters such as typhoons. It has released impressive-looking pictures of the new housing estates, with identical not-bad-looking homes set out in regimented ranks. The NK government claims these are actual photographs of the new towns and that these have already been built. Its supporters and friends outside the PRNK have redistributed these pictures -- without looking closely at them, and without realising they only exist as CGI cut-and-paste virtual images[[note]]The pictures released by NK look like a better version of this page header picture[[/note]]. As far as is known no new homes have (yet) been built to this pattern in NK. Take a close look at some of [[https://www.38north.org/2020/11/housing201118/ these pictures]] released to the West on an NK-sympathetic website.