The suburban office park phenomenon got its start in the post-war 1940s, when white-collar workers traded city life for the'burbs and companies such as AT&T and General Electric followed suit in seeking the "pastoral ideal," according to Louise Mozingo, author of Pastoral Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes. She writes, "Corporations heralded the verdant pleasures of their new locations as substitutes for urban enticements." In their new parks, these corporations gained both privacy and prestige while widening the gap between management and manufacturing. But the grass is not always greener. Though suburban office parks-which range in program from plush corporate headquarters to sprawling research campuses-constitute over half of America's office space today, they are suffering higher vacancy rates than their urban counterparts.
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