Justin M. Boucher
The modern American suburb sprang from the confluence of the aspirations of Americans, the will of American corporate interests, and the policies of the American federal government. The suburbs are an experiment in urban planning that has been evolving for 60 years, leaping over the barriers to urban growth that have limited cities for thousands of years. Moreover, the suburbs represent a social and economic shift that flows, in large part, from government action.
The rise of the American suburb in the post-war period is a singular event in human history. Throughout most of urban history, cities have grown out from their center in fits and starts as opportunity and prosperity allowed. Ancient and medieval urban growth was limited by transportation, economics, and security. The need for defense was acute, given the modern nature of national defensive frameworks. Thus cities needed to be largely self-sufficient in case of attack. As a result, what urban planning there was usually focused on the inner city, leaving the fringe to fend for itself.
Most importantly, until about 200 years ago, cities rarely grew so large that people could not travel by foot from farms to city center and back in less than a day. The need for fresh food and the limited means of transporting that food to market made relatively local farms a necessity in order for cities to sustain rising populations. Even with the most advanced trade networks available, it was rare to travel eight or ten miles outside the city center and not find oneself in the countryside.
The Industrial Revolution changed the nature of cities in a fundamental way. New technologies and wealth allowed greater movement of men and material to and from urban centers. Where previously a nation's wealth was measured in commodities such as gold and grain, capital became the new measure. No longer an expensive symbol of a nation's wealth, cities became the main source of that wealth. Cities grew to accommodate that role. By 1920, for the first time in the nation's history, more Americans lived in cities than in the country. In some ways this industrial growth foretold the growth of suburbs after the Second World War, decentralizing cities and moving huge amounts of capital to the nearby countryside. But few would have predicted, looking at the streetcar suburbs of the 1910s the scale or the nature of our modern urban landscape.
When most Americans think of the suburbs, they imagine the 1950s and the post-war exodus that drove many city dwellers (usually white and working or middle class) to abandon the cities in favor of newly constructed tracts of mass produced housing. This is a popular image, one that has attained a mythic status in American memory. This image relies on the belief that suburbs as we know them are the natural result of the prosperity that came after two decades of war and depression. In some small measure, this view of history is correct, if incomplete.
To fully understand the history of the suburbs however, it is necessary to understand the major shift that occurred in consumer attitude's, personal transportation, and credit. These three forces, with the aid of government made the growth of the suburbs possible. As with most major changes in history, these forces began to chart a course toward the suburbs long before the 1950s. Trends in consumerism, transportation, road building, and credit were all well underway by the 1920s.
Popular images of late 19
th
century America included thrifty mothers who knew the value of a dollar. These notions, though popular, are hardly accurate. The late 19
th
century saw the rise of payment plans, layaway and installment buying. These innovations in credit helped a new and expanding middle class afford the wide range of new goods and services available from the industries growing up around them.
While stores and vendors were able to offer buying plans and credit to consumers, and banks were allowed to offer mortgages, usury was for the most part illegal, and thus credit was unavailable for anything other than a major purchase. This legal framework allowed illegal lending to flourish, and predatory lending was the norm. By the early 20
th
century, there was a strong political effort underway, backed by banks and Americans alike, to repeal usury laws. The effort was successful, and led to the rise of legal lending, and a boom in easy credit throughout the 1920s. This allowed a wide range of households to purchase goods that would have been previously unattainable. The rise in credit also created a booming economy based in consumerism.
The rise in consumerism, fueled by newly available credit changed more than the bottom lines of Macy's and Gimbel's. It changed the attitudes of businesses and consumers alike. Consumers saw that for a bit more than the purchase price, they could own products today that might have taken them years of saving. Businesses that had been offering payment plans for decades saw the expansion of their sales. Soon it became obvious that expanding credit to those not previously eligible would mean a substantial increase in the number of toasters, washing machines, and typewriters sold.
These new consumption realities of the 1920s came to an abrupt halt with the crash of 1929, and the bank-runs that followed it. Credit, which in the 1920s had become a necessary part of the consumer landscape, dried up. By the end of the 1920s most middle-class American households relied on credit to buy durable goods, maintaining limited savings. By the 1930s, in an age of 33% unemployment, businesses and individuals needed credit for their very survival. Unfortunately, the trauma suffered by the financial system resulted in a drastically reduced money supply and limited the ability of even the strongest institutions to lend.
While things gradually improved throughout the 1930s, it took a world war to jump-start the American economy again and breathe new life into factories and banks. Only in the 1950s would the economy return to real prosperity, fulfilling the promises made by both the Federal Government and corporations throughout World War II. These promises of space, comfort, convenience, and consumer goods constituted something of a social contract between the American people and their government. When the war ended, the American people expected this contract to be fulfilled. Post-war governmental policies reflected this expectation, expanding credit, building infrastructure, and creating jobs.
In order for millions of Americans to move to the suburbs, America needed to overcome the greatest obstacle to urban growth, transportation. Again, the seeds of the post-war suburbs had been sown decades earlier. Before Henry Ford pioneered the affordable automobile, a large-scale campaign was underway to improve American roads. The Federal government waded into the field of road building with the Federal-Aid Road Act of 1916. This act allotted $75 million for the creation and upgrading of roads throughout the country. (Lewis 8/9) Over the next 30 years, the Federal Government partnered with states to create modern, surfaced and graded roads throughout the nation. For the most part this road-building was reactive in nature, connecting existing towns, and fixing existing rights of way. Nonetheless, the building of these roads would substantially alter the character of the American city. Homes sprang up on the fringes of cities, and the automotive commute became a normal part of some American's lives. The affordable automobile, on the federally financed road led to new growth in the suburbs throughout the 1920s.
These road-building efforts set the stage for the suburban growth of the 1950s, but they also led to a series of unanticipated consequences for urban planners. Namely, by the late 1940s, it had become obvious that building new roads, bridges, and highways created more traffic than they relieved. Pre-war American cities had not been built to accommodate cars, and even if existing roads were paved and upgraded, they were faced with unanticipated usage. As Americans moved out onto these roads in massive numbers, road-building struggled to keep pace. Only a new paradigm in road-building held the promise of relieving this congestion and meeting the burgeoning consumer desires of Americans, the modern highway which offered the promise of freedom to travel, and helped to guarantee that the trucks delivering consumer necessities would reach all parts of the country.
The final shift necessary for Americans to make the leap to modern suburban life was a shift in government policy. Prior to World War I, the Federal Government's role in urban planning was severely limited. Urban growth was generally organic in nature, and while the Federal Government had always maintained a role in distributing public lands and incentivizing population movement, the layout of specific cities was generally a matter left to local authorities.
Prior to the Great Depression, most road-building efforts, even those undertaken with federal money, were local affairs. States and cities dictated the rights of way and the roads that would be improved. The Great Depression and the New Deal changed this relationship substantially. As with most other areas of Federal influence, urban planning became an issue of federal concern. In order to spur economic growth, the Federal Housing administration was formed to provide insurance against mortgage defaults. "This meant that home loans suddenly became a very safe and desirable business for America's bankers." (Hanchett) Along with road improvements, this represents both the intervention in the marketplace and the first in a series of policy decisions that would incentivize suburban construction over urban renovations.
With the end of World War II, the Veterans' Administration leapt into the mortgage insurance market as well with the G.I. Bill of 1944. Returning veterans were offered lavish benefits, while at the same time banks were offered generous insurance and programs to lower the cash down payment required to secure a mortgage. Both the V.A. and the F.H.A, however, showed a clear preference for suburban development and white males. In most cases the only homes that the V.A. or the F.H.A would underwrite were newly constructed homes in the suburbs. These new government programs helped legitimize mortgage debt from a moral standpoint, casting that debt as the entrance fee to the good life in the suburbs. Moreover, as one's home now constituted an investment capable of accruing value, and mortgages offered the possibility of leaving something to your children, paying rent became an irrational choice.
In some ways these governmental initiatives made perfect sense. Even at this early date there was great concern in and out of the halls of government about what it would mean to bring millions of servicemen home from war. The privations of the Depression were a clear and recent memory. The government was still run by the same administration that had worked for more than a decade with the almost exclusive goal of job creation. Given that the building of new homes and new towns requires a great deal more resources and a great deal more labor, a preference for suburban development also represented a preference for job creation. Furthermore, these were policies that labor, construction executives, oil companies, auto companies, and contractors could readily agree on.
The sheer scale of these efforts would substantially alter the character of the American city. Certainly Americans were on the move out of the cities throughout the 1920s and the 1930s. Good roads, cheap transportation, and credit backed by federal aid made it possible for Americans with some means to move to suburbs previously reserved for the wealthy. The change in post-war America was the seemingly democratic nature of these new efforts. Factory workers, who throughout history had been part of the working class, were elevated with the help of government to the new and expanding middle class. This shift brought with it new privileges, new opportunities, and new wealth. Of course, this shift was also largely limited to white American breadwinners who were favored by government programs, thereby offering them a substantial advantage over their African American peers.
By the 1950s the priorities of the Federal government were clear. The American people were clamoring for normalcy. They had sacrificed for a long time, and now they hoped to settle in to work, to earn a good wage, and to enjoy material prosperity. American corporate interests, who had tasted the wealth available in suburban development, lobbied hard for Federal subsidies. Oil companies, car manufacturers, homebuilders, and unions joined forces to lobby for the creation of new highways that would lead to suburban growth far from city centers all over the nation. Ultimately, the Federal Government listened, but not without great hesitation and deliberation.
The New Deal, and World War II had led to unprecedented levels of debt and federal spending. The Republican Eisenhower administration and Republicans in Congress were deeply concerned with the deficit spending. During the 1950s they campaigned to set the Federal Government's financial house in order. While Democrats sought to write ambitious highway construction legislation, deficit-wary Republicans blocked any efforts that might raise public debt.
In 1955, Senator Albert Gore proposed legislation costing 29 billion dollars, and creating a proactive system of limited access highways across the country. The measure was soundly defeated as Americans across the country joined a movement to limit tax increases and hold down Federal spending. By 1956 however, the landscape had changed. Seeing the failure of the 1955 Act, road builders, civic associations, tire companies, oil companies and homebuilders joined forces to create the "Road Gang." The Road Gang was a lobbying group that put forth enormous efforts of time and money to create the conditions necessary to pass the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.
The 1956 effort was successful, and the Federal Government entered a new phase in road construction. The chief difference between the 1956 act, and all previous efforts at road construction was that now road building would be proactive. The 1956 act provided 90% of the funding to build roads designed to meet the anticipated needs of 1972. This shift represents an attempt to battle the congestion now gripping American roads, but it also represents a substantial commitment to the creation of new towns, suburbs, and lifestyles for the American people.
Convincing the federal government to support these subsidies took little work. The benefits were obvious. Consumption, and suburban growth would provide a steady supply of good factory and construction jobs. Wealthy Americans in a position to speculate could make fortunes, and the American people could share in the prosperity of good times.
Convincing the public that suburbs were desirable places to live also turned out to be relatively simple. Building on their promises of prosperity to come throughout the war years, corporations now offered dream homes at affordable prices. Thus the demand created by years of advertising, and the efforts of the burgeoning consumer culture came to a head. When those homes were finally available, the exodus began in earnest. Advertising and opportunity led to large numbers of white middle class Americans abandoning the cities in favor of the new developments.
Even though these subsidies resulted in huge economic gains for the companies involved, maintained production levels after the war, and offered jobs to millions, these policies amounted to more than economics. Suburban development policies were social as well. They turned cities into homes of wealth and of concentrated poverty. The departure of the new, largely white, middle class accelerated as safety and educational quality in the cities deteriorated. With heavy tax subsidies for buying a home, and no tax subsidy for renting, it became cheaper to own than to rent. Moreover, draconian slum clearance policies and highway building programs made cities less and less livable, setting the stage for our modern urban environment.
