Confederates on the Fairway: A Civil War Themed Subdivision in Rural Ohio

Abstract

Union Station, a recent Civil-War-themed subdivision in rural Ohio, challenges landscape conventions by referencing local identities and history as creative compensation for the devastation of an increasingly exurban town. In seeing themed development as an increasingly widespread practice, this paper examines its social costs, the relative critical neglect of it, and the public appetite for it. It extends the work of Gwendolyn Wright on suburbia and Michael Sorkin's critique of themed environments, arguing for a more distant patrimony for theming, showing how far-reaching it can be, especially in its more subtle manifestations, and finally rooting it in the structural conditions of post-industrial capitalism and globalization.