The historiography of American metropolitan areas has in important respects replicated the developmental trajectory of its subject matter. With the growth of the New Suburban History, the field has sprawled, with new nodes and growth centers of scholarship highlighting the diversity of suburban communities and their complex economic, political, and social histories and decentering large cities. At this point it is worth asking whether, like historical suburbs, these histories are supporting fragmentation and whether the recognition of so many particular suburban histories may threaten to overwhelm our ability to grasp or preserve connections between places in metropolitan systems of economy, culture, or politics. This panel will take its cue from New Regionalist and Regional Equity discussions in the social sciences to assess the prospects of a smarter, more sustainable, and more integrated way of thinking about metropolitan places in historical perspective. Acting as historians, may we pursue “smart growth” in our fields by strategically adopting a metropolitan or regional framing for our studies? May we enrich both urban and suburban studies by understanding the connections between these fields as parts of regional or metropolitan systems? And, like advocates of mixed-use development as an antidote to thoughtless sprawl, may we in scholarly practice benefit from the densification or juxtaposition of methods, theories, and approaches that integrate analyses from multiple disciplines into historical research?

This panel seeks papers or talks that: