The Growth of Suburbia

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The Growth of Suburbia
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Suburbanization

• What does suburbanization mean?
• The process of residential, commercial, and
  industrial growth and development beyond a
  central city
• The movement of people out of the cities into new
  neighborhoods surrounding the cities

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Do Now

• Listen to the song that is playing, Little Boxes
  by Malvina Reynolds, and follow along with the
  lyrics.
• When the song ends, record information about
  Reynolds views of suburbanization in the left
  hand column of Resource Sheet 2

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Factors leading to Suburbanization

• Legacy of the Depression and WWII
• Housing shortage
• Involvement of the federal government
• Growth of technology

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Legacy of the Depression and WWII

• Economic hardships of the Great Depression lead
  Americans to cut down their spending
• WWII brought a growth in available jobs, BUT
  rationing of goods limited the ability of
  Americans to spend the money they were earning

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Housing Shortages

• The Baby Boom
• Change in housing mortgages
• Before 10 year mortgages with 80 down payment
• After 30 years mortgages with 10 down payment

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G.I. Bill

• Federal legislation which was intended to help
  veterans transition from wartime service to
  peacetime life
• Subsidized
• Education tuition, fees, books, and living
  expenses
• Housing low interest loans to veterans wanting
  to buy single family homes

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Technology

• Automobiles became a necessity
• This allowed people to move out of the city and
  commute to work

• With the National Interstate and Defense Highways
  Act of 1956 road construction boomed
• Federally funded the construction of 41,000 miles
  of roads an highways

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Examining Views on Suburbia
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• Suburbia is becoming the most important single
  market in the country. It is the suburbanite who
  starts the mass fashions-for children,dungarees,
  vodka martinis, outdoor barbecues, functional
  furnitureAll suburbs are not alike, but they are
  more alike than different.
• William H. Whyte, Organization man

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• Those who lambasted suburbiatended to ignore
  several basic facts the boom in building
  energized important sectors of the economy,
  providing a good deal of employment it lessened
  the housing shortage that had diminished the
  lives of millions during the Depression and war
  and it enabled people to enjoy conveniences, such
  as modern bathrooms and kitchens, that they had
  not before.
• - James Patterson, Grand Expectations

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• Levittown represented the worst vision in
  American future bland people in bland houses
  leading bland lives. The houses were physically
  similar an entire community was being made from
  a cookie cuttera multitude of uniform,
  unidentifiable houses, lined un inflexibly, at
  uniform distances on uniform roads, in a treeless
  command waste, inhabited by people of the same
  class, the same incomes, the same age group,
  witnessing the same television performances,
  eating the same tasteless prefabricated foods,
  from the same freezers, conforming in every
  outward and inward respect to the same common
  mold.
• - Lewis Mumford, The City in History Its
  Origins, Its Transformations, and its Prospects