History Main / CutAndPasteSuburb

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.

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
* The film ''WesternAnimation/OverTheHedge''. The homeowner association makes sure that nobody is different.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* [[TruthInTelevision In the Netherlands]] this conformity is enforced by local government. Remodeling must be approved by the community.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder: Art]]

[[folder:Films-- Animated]]

[[folder:Film]]

* ''Film/HarryPotter'' - Harry's relatives the Dursleys also live in one of these neighborhoods in [[Film/HarryPotter the movies]]. Identical cars are present as well. ProductPlacement or trope emphasis?

* ''{{Film/Vivarium}}'': The neighborhood of "Yonder" is copy-pasted everything, including clouds in the sky.

-->''There's a green one and a pink one''
-->''And a blue one and a yellow one''
-->''And they're all made out of ticky-tacky''
-->''And they all look just the same''

-->''Another Pleasant Valley Sunday (Sunday)''
-->''Charcoal burning everywhere''
-->''Rows of houses that are all the same''
-->''And no one seems to care''

-->''Sprawling on the fringes of the city''
-->''In geometric order, an insulated border''
-->''In between the bright lights and the far unlit unknown''
-->''Growing up, it all seems so one-sided''
-->''Opinions all provided, the future predecided''
-->''Detached and subdivided in the mass production zone''

-->''And I like you''
-->''I love these roads where the houses don't change''
-->''And I like you''
-->''Where we can talk like there's something to say''

-->''And all the houses in the street have got a name''
-->'''Cause all the houses in the street all look the same''

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* Richard Thompson's ''ComicStrip/CulDeSac'' takes place in such a neighborhood in a Washington DC suburb.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* Parodied in ''Website/TheOnion'''s ''Our Dumb Century'', with an article about post-war housing headlined "Ant-like Conformity Now Affordable".

* 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.

* WesternAnimation/ClassicDisneyShorts are full of these neighborhoods. DonaldDuck and Goofy in particular enjoy the lifestyle.

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* 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 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.

* UsefulNotes/NorthKorea is currently 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 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.

* UsefulNotes/NorthKorea is currently 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 realising they only exist as CGI cut-and-paste virtual images. As far as is known no new homes have been built to this pattern in NK.

** An EnforcedTrope in Britain from the immediate aftermath of the Second World War until well into the 1960s; faced with a desperate shortage of housing [[TheBlitz courtesy of the Luftwaffe]] and an equally desperate shortage of money after half a decade of all-out war, aesthetics had to take a back seat to getting houses built as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

** An EnforcedTrope in Britain from the immediate aftermath of the Second World War until well into the 1960s; faced with a desperate shortage of housing courtesy of the Luftwaffe and an equally desperate shortage of money after half a decade of all-out war, aesthetics had to take a back seat to getting houses built as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

* "400 Lux" by [[Music/Lorde]]:

* The chillingly homogenous neighborhood in Kamazotz, 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...]]

* "400 Lux" by Music/Lorde:

* The film ''WesternAnimation/OverTheHedge''. The homeowner association makes sure that nobody is different.
* ''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 town of Perfection in ''WesternAnimation/{{Uglydolls}}'' has the citizens living in identical white houses with grey roofing. The symmetry nearly causes Babo, one of the Uglydolls, to have a panic attack. The visiting Uglydolls themselves are given a lopsided storage shed to stay in instead, something they find pleasant.

After World War II 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.

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 PuertoRico shows how far William Levitt's influence extended.