American Suburbs

After World War II availability of FHA loans stimulated a housing boom in American
suburbs. In the older cities of the northeast U.S., streetcar suburbs originally developed
along train or trolley lines that could shuttle worers into and out of city centers where
the !obs were located. "his practice gave rise to the term bedroom community,
meaning that most daytime business activity too place in the city, with the woring
population leaving the city at night for the purpose of going home to sleep.
White flight is a term for the demographic trend where woring# and middle#class
white people move away from racial#minority suburbs or inner#city neighborhoods to
white suburbs
In the United States
"ypically, many post#World War II American suburbs have been characteri$ed by%
&ower densities than central cities, dominated by single family homes on small
plots of land, surrounded at close 'uarters by very similar dwellings.
(oning patterns that separate residential and commercial development, as well
as different intensities and densities of development. )aily needs are not within
waling distance of most homes.
Subdivisions carved from previously rural land into multiple#home developments
built by a single real estate company. "hese subdivisions are often segregated
by minute differences in home value, creating entire communities where family
incomes and demographics are almost completely homogenous.
Shopping malls and strip malls behind large paring lots instead of a classic
downtown shopping district.
A road networ designed to conform to a hierarchy, including culs#de#sac
leading to larger residential streets, in turn leading to large collector roads, in
place of the grid pattern common to most central cities and pre#World War II
suburbs.
&imited or no access to public transit
Sometimes a lower crime rate than a comparable urban neighborhoods
Schools often considered desirable
Hating Suburbia by *im +untsler
First, we need to recogni$e its origins. ,ven the -omans had suburbs, and the wish to
inhabit the borderlands .to borrow *ohn Stilgoe/s term0 of the largest cities is not a new
thing. 1ut in America the pattern evolved to an e2tent never before imagined.
America/s cities emerged hand#in#hand with industrialism, and by the mid#3455s the
industrial city was regarded as undesirable. As soon as the convulsion of the 6ivil War
was over, railroad suburbs were created for the very well#off, and systems for
designing them were innovated by the lies of 6alvert 7au2 and Frederic &aw
8lmsted, creators of 9ew :or/s 6entral ;ar. "here were very few of these special
places, and they formed the basis of what would be nown as the American Dream.
"he idea behind these suburbs was simple and straightforward% country life as the
antidote to the horror of the industrial city, with its moiling slums, its noise, congestion,
bad air, disease, and obno2ious industrial operations. 8ne could access the city by day
for business and be bac in a rural villa for dinner thans to the railroad.
"he suburb of the streetcar era was an elaboration of this pattern for a growing
upper#middle class .and the streetcar era was relatively brief0. It allowed a finer grain of
suburban development because the stops could be much closer together.
"he <odel " Ford was introduced in 3=5> and built on assembly lines in 3=3?,
which made them cheap and affordable. When the disruption of the First World War
was over in 3=34, the automobile permitted an e2tenstion of the suburbs far beyond
.and between0 the streetcar lines. "he great boom of the 3=@5s was largely a result of
all this activity. "his pro!ect was interrupted by the Areat )epression and the Second
World War, and then furiously resumed when the war was over. Up until the 3=>5s,
suburbia was a ind of accessory to America/s manufacturing economy. 1ut as
industrial production moved overseas, the creation of suburbia itself insidiously
replaced it as the engine of the US economy.
"his brings us to where we are today, with an economy driven by a land
development pattern and a system for delivering it that is hugely destructive of terrain
and civic life. Since it depends utterly on reliable supplies of cheap oil, we can assert
that it has dubious prospects as both an economic enterprise and as a living
arrangement. "he obdurate refusal to recogni$e its limitations begins to have tragic
overtones for our society.
Having directed so much of our post#war wealth to constructing the infrastructures
of suburban everyday life, we are now trapped in a psychology of previous investment
that maes it impossible for us to imagine letting go of it. "his is e2pressed in )ic
6heney/s tragic phrase that the American way of life is non#negotiable. 9ow,
circumstances will negotiate it for us.
It is true that I hate what the suburbs have done to my country. 1ut the assualt on
our landscape and the withering of our civic life was an obvious evil before the specter
of pea oil signaled an absolute end of suburbia. What I certainly despise as much as
suburbia itself is the stupid defense of it by people who ought to now better, such as
columnists for the New York Times. I also believe that this stupid defense will continue
and spread and become a tremendous, tragic e2ercise in futility for a people who could
be putting their minds to a much better purpose in finding other means to carry on the
larger pro!ect of civili$ation.