Suburbs, Rise of

SUBURBS, RISE OF

The growth of U.S. cities in the nineteenth century was integrally linked with expanding industrialization and economic development. This process of urbanization led to the formation of a "classic" pattern for U.S. cities by the 1930s. Commercial centers that included banking districts and retail establishments were located in downtown areas. Enclaves of working-class neighborhoods were often distinguished by a predominance of ethnic or minority populations circling the downtown. There were industrial and manufacturing pockets, and a growing white middle class concentrated in residential developments toward the ever-expanding city boundaries. Bus and trolley lines radiated outward from the city center to provide a transportation network. The city was a socioeconomic mosaic.

Immediately following World War II (1939–1945), urbanization quickly transitioned into suburbanization. Suburbs are largely independent communities located in close proximity to large central cities. Many suburbs have their own local governments with mayors or city managers and police departments; county governments govern others. Federal investment in economic development immediately following the war included low-cost mortgages for veterans and highway construction programs. Reorganization of American life resulted. The average white middle class family moved to newly created communities on less expensive land outside the city boundaries. Suburbs offered yards, lower density single-family housing, less noise and air pollution, and relief from declining city neighborhoods with their escalating social ills. Millions of farmland acres were converted into bedroom communities. The exodus left cities with declining property values, significant loss of tax revenue, and diminished political and social importance.

Just as urban areas were experiencing a new wave of Southern African Americans migrating to cities in search of employment, white taxpayers, jobs, and capital were migrating in mass to the suburbs, leaving the cramped ghettos and industrial areas behind. Suburbs replaced cities as the place of upward class mobility and economic prosperity. In contrast to urban social mosaics of the early twentieth century city, suburbanites most valued racial, religious, and social class homogeneity. The African American middle class and other minorities ran into social barriers in this resettlement movement, spawned by racism.

By the late twentieth century the United States had fully transitioned from the urbanization of a century earlier to a suburbanized nation. By the 1960s urban factories, office complexes, and shopping centers had followed the population. Telecommunications developments in the 1980s further stimulated suburban growth. Businesses enjoyed more flexibility, locating in desirable settings as suburban business complexes increasingly linked to international economic markets. Suburbs developed their own economic bases independent of the earlier central-city business districts. Suburban "downtowns," known as edge cities, developed on the fringes of metropolitan areas by the mid-1980s. New regional shopping malls replaced city center retail areas and neighborhood shopping centers. By the mid-1980s more Americans lived in suburbs than in central cities.

With the original inner cities in continuing socioeconomic crisis, efforts by cities to annex suburbs were normally resisted by suburban residents wishing to maintain their governmental independence. Planners also explored options of consolidating regional metropolitan tax bases and redistributing suburban revenues. Regional governments advocated "fair share" policies in proposing to locate industrial areas and low-income housing in suburban areas, rather than concentrating them in inner cities.

Suburban sprawl became a key issue with the proliferation and growth of suburbs. New suburbs ringed earlier ones. The rise of suburbia lead to the formation of metropolitan areas with the central city at their core. By the late 1980s about 75 percent of the U.S. population lived in metropolitan areas. Planners predicted the coming of the megalopolis representing the consolidation of multiple metropolitan areas spatially merging together.

As sprawl continued in the 1990s, the inner suburbs faced the same socioeconomic problems as the cities, including declining property values. In an endless cycle, lower values prompted higher property taxes, which forced more movement out to newer suburbs. With suburban residents frustrated over traffic congestion and sprawling commercial development, the growth of suburban populations began to slow in the 1980s. Rising gasoline prices and urban renewal attracted some back to the city. Urbanization of the suburbs was occurring, and urban renewal was becoming suburban renewal. Ever-expanding suburbs faced the same issues encountered earlier by cities. Revenue to provide water, sewer lines, fire protection, road maintenance, police, and new schools for the fast growing suburbs became issues as the cost of government services proved to be higher for low-density tract development.

Through the later decades of the twentieth century, areas of land development increased substantially faster than population growth. Regional governments in some areas adopted urban growth boundaries in an attempt to control the rapid loss of surrounding rural lands. Many attributed metropolitan air pollution problems to urban sprawl, low density housing patterns, and greater dependency on automobiles. The number of automobiles had grown several times faster during this time period than had the actual population. In total, the rise of suburbs in the late twentieth century was one of the more profound socioeconomic transformations in U.S. history.

See also: Industrialization, Urban Renewal, Urbanization

FURTHER READING

Angotti, Thomas. Metropolis 2000: Planning, Poverty, and Politics. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Dobriner, William M., ed. The Suburban Community. New York: Putnam, 1958.

Orfield, Myron. Metropolitics: A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1996.

Rusk, David. Cities Without Suburbs. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Whitehand, J.W.R. The Making of the Urban Landscape. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992.