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An essay exploring the ideas set out in Redesigning The American Dream by Delores Hayden, and the definition of, and the role of the urban designer in the current procurement process of new urban construction.

Hayden’s book is a critical examination of the single unit plot suburban house typology and its impact on gender roles, in particularly women. It also examines in detail, the wider impact of the model, as it was implemented across America in the second half of the twentieth century, on its existing cities’ urban fabric.

The book examines why the single unit plot suburban house became so successful as a housing model in America and how its success was dependant on a social, political and economic orthodoxy of rigid gender roles, self determination and private enterprise.