In 2009, Ed Verner, a resident and business owner in Plant City, Florida, wrote to The Tampa Tribune to complain about a label that was frequently becoming associated with his town. “More often than I’d like, I hear Plant City being referred to as a ‘bedroom community,’ ” he said. “We are much more than this tag would imply.” But what is a bedroom community—and where did the term come from?
- What’s a Bedroom Community?
- Where Did the Phrase Come From?
What’s a Bedroom Community?
According to Merriam-Webster, a bedroom community is a community of people—often based in a small satellite town or suburb of a larger city, and with little to no industrial areas of its own—that serves as a residential base for workers who are employed elsewhere.
Where Did the Phrase Come From?
Bedroom community has been in recorded use since the 20th century. The term alludes to the fact that although the workers who live in these communities call them home, they do little when they’re there except sleep before heading off to work again the following morning. (They’re also sometimes called “commuter towns,” “bedroom towns,” or, if you’re in the UK, “dormitory towns.”)
Bedroom communities emerged at the tail end of the industrial era, when large residential areas and suburbs began to be specially built far away from the crime and grime of the city to provide housing for the local workforce. According to Karen Christensen and David Levinson in their book Encyclopedia of Community, these communities took off in the U.S. after World War II, and the workforce was more white collar than blue: “As parts of the industrial economy grew and many cities became increasingly dense and polluted, the middle- and upper-income classes sought to separate their work lives from their home lives.”
These outlying communities were easily reachable and commutable from city centers and industrial areas, and they became a clean and welcome choice of living space for workers looking to lay down roots or start a family. (And, as Levinson and Christensen note, “bedroom communities supported the societal ideal of further segregating gender roles. The wife stayed home and kept house while her husband traveled a significant distance away from home to earn the household income.”) But with so many workers installed into a single area—all of whom left first thing in the morning, and only returned home in the evening—these outlying commuter areas soon became little more than suburban “bedrooms,” hence their name…