James and Nancy Duncan look at how the aesthetics of physical landscapes are fully enmeshed in producing the American class system. Focusing on an archetypal upper class American suburb-Bedford in Westchester County, NY-they show how the physical presentation of a place carries with it a range of markers of inclusion and exclusion.

James Duncan is a University Lecturer in Geography at Cambridge University, and Nancy Duncan is Affiliated Lecturer of Geography at Cambridge University.

1. Introduction 2. Bedford in Context 3. The Narrative Structures: The Cultural Codes of a Landscape Aesthetic 4. Anxious Pleasures: Place-Based Identity and the Look of the Land 5. Legislating Beauty: The Politics of Exclusion 6. The Taxman Cometh: The Gift of Nature in Suburbia 7. Fabricating History: The Production of Heritage in Beford Village 8. Another Country: Latino Labor and the Politics of Disappearance 9. Epilogue