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My generation has rarely had a positive view of suburban life. I used to attribute this to the fact that my peers had all grown up within city limits, and not just A city, but ‘The City of New York’. It was my assumption that we looked down at suburbs because we had never lived there. Now, here in Chicago, nearly everyone I meet in their 20’s lives in or at least used to live in a suburb. This is quite reflective of the massive city exodus that took place between the middle to the end of the 20th century.

Like all cultural phenomena, it can never be as simple as to say: THIS IS THE REASON PEOPLE DID IT. There are of course varying factors and multiple reasons as to why people chose to leave the cities; and while I do want to discuss that in this essay, I also want to take some time to analyze the problems and the implications of the national shift from an urban nation to one of the suburbs.

When the Second World War ended, soldiers returned home to an economy revived. Many of their wives had been at work, there were more job opportunities than when they left, and the depression had finally lifted from the nation. This sudden abundance (and the subsequent baby boom) led to the need of more housing for the ever-growing middle-class, and their ever-growing families. Rent in the city was again on the rise, and lack of space and the desire to own property began prompting the post-war G.I. to move his family outward.

Meanwhile the African American population, whose migration towards the cities increased after the First World War, continued to populate the central cities in search of work. The aggregation market, in which many blacks were employed, had grown more mechanized. Fewer hands were required to do a full day’s worth of planting and plowing, forcing many poor blacks out of work. The WWII had created a surplus of jobs, and a lack of men to fill them, moving to the cities was the obviously logical choice. Mexicans began immigrating (both legally and illegally) into the United States looking for those same job opportunities.

So in the city there is a great deal of crowding, housing conditions are poor, and the middle-class Caucasians began seeing the neighborhoods fill will blacks and immigrants. The mindset for change was rife among those who longed for homogeny, home-ownership, and the ‘peace of mind’ that a safe location would promise for their families. All that was needed now was a push from a government that rapidly expanded in the wake of the Socialism of the New Deal and its mobilization after WWII.

In 1956, the State Highway Act created massive roadways that encouraged growth outside of the cities. These roadways were used primarily as bypasses around urban areas, and also as an easy access commute for anyone who had the desire to live outside the city and still use its resources of employment. This was compiled with the already expanding railroad systems, which allowed transportation in and around the metropolitan area of any city.

If one wanted to live outside of a city, then housing must be made available. Following the demand for housing that occurred in post-war America, William Levit began constructing what would soon be called Levittowns, massive rows of houses that would make up an entire town block. It was the closest to mass production that housing ever came with thousands of homes constructed each year in four basic styles. These constructions sprang up in New Jersey, outside Philadelphia, and in Long Island, New York. Levittowns were not about the diversity that a city offered, but the homogeny that future suburbanites craved. The buyers were lined up to purchase these homes, but one problem still lingered; how could they afford them?

The third significant catalyst was the founding of two organizations, the FHA (Federal Housing Administration) and the VA (Veterans Administration). The FHA began the process of subsidized housing, where the owner could pay less money up front, in exchange for monthly payments on the property while they lived there. The VA offered financial incentives for new homeowners, such as extended mortgages and loans for the down payment (Hanchett).

Both of these organizations favored newly constructed homes, as opposed to rehabs on old properties. Given that there was very little home-building going on in the city area, for it was far too expensive, this basically meant they favored suburban construction. The government would insure these loans that the bank would issue to new homebuyers. And as for the pesky little issue of ethnic diversity, the wonderful FHA and VA had a certain criteria for those that would get their services. The associations unofficially deferred racially mixed and minority communities, instead doting on white single-family homes. And thus, the so-called ‘white-flight’ and America’s transition to a nation living outside the city began.

Several problems began developing as soon as the grounds were laid for a suburban nation. The fact that there had never been a precedence for such a transition in our culture, no one could have predicted what problems would arise from the geographic switch. Some of those who have been affected most severely by the lay-out of the suburbs, have been the ‘house-wives’, children, and motorists.

The Victims of Sprawl illustrates how the car-dependant layout of a suburb has had adverse affects on the non-driving children and their parents. To the point, kids need to travel to places: for school, for recreation, for activities in general, this of course is true. However, until the age of 16, these children do not have the luxury of personal transportation; and for the most part suburban public transportation is next to none. Therefore these children are dependant upon their parents to take them even to the simplest of events. Heavily zoned neighborhoods only consist of one convenient store for a large block of houses. The commercial areas, parks, schools and shopping centers are condensed and removed from these neighborhoods.

To this end, mothers and fathers are required to shuttle children around, building there schedules (if they have the time luxury of working) around those of there kids. This creates a problem as suburbs often encourage community events and activities for youth such as sports leagues, theater, and outings. The parent becomes the full-time chauffer. I personally feel that the Suburban Nation analysis is somewhat of an exaggeration. There have been many solutions in recent years to the problem of immobile children, such as car pools. However, his regard for children stuck in a ’stage of infancy’ did strike me as particularly poignant. The kids that I know that have come from suburban communities have a tendency of dependence upon there parents for skills that my peers learned long ago, such as paying ones own rent, filing for taxes, and taking care of their administrative colligate responsibilities.

Even when the kids reach the state driving age, the solution to their immobility only creates more problems. Traffic accidents are one of the leading causes to teenage death (Victims). In addition, suburbs are faced with the problem of having teens free to travel around them, but without much entertainment focused towards their age groups. Cities offer unlimited potential for entertainment, although not always positive, but at least accessible.

The Devil is in the Details addresses traffic concerns in his article The Devil is in the Details. Everyone is forced to drive to where they need to go. Office parks, large developments that can house several office buildings for several large corporations, have become a common site on the suburban landscape. Multitudes of commuters head in the same directions towards the same parks at the same time every workday. Traffic gets backed up when they arrive and when they leave, frustration grows in rows of condensed cars (Devil). A more familiar site to us Chicagoans is the commuters who travel from Evanston, Lake Forest, and more down the expressway every morning to reach their jobs in the city.

I’ve never been one to exclude anything and say that ‘this is a bad thing’ without acknowledging some of the positive effects. For example, the amount of children that are born and raised in suburbs does create a distinctiveness to living in the city, a place of culture, diversity, and potential. The fact that so many of them have an impression of Urban America as a dangerous place is again a negative consequence of this. The suburban landscape is in need of a shift. The towns continue to grow but resist becoming urbanized, causing even larger problems over wide distances. My only prediction for the solutions is that if the cities continue to expand, the suburbs will either have to become cities themselves, or simply absorb the culture of that which they surround.

However, from a personal perspective, I was raised in a city and while I think that those who I grew up with have a greater sense of adulthood and responsibility, there is also an indifference that is unique to ‘city-kids’. We were raised on nanny’s, cocktail parties, and free time. In order to afford city costs, our parents work long hours and we were free for the majority of the night, with an apathy towards authority and the ethics that govern society. Material goods are placed high on the list of priorities. I do make so obvious generalizations, but this is only because I find it so easy to criticize the suburbs.

Duany, Andres, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck. Suburban Nations: This Rise of Sprawl and the fall of the American Dream. New York: North Point Press, 2000. Pp. xiv 290. Exerts used: The Devil in the Details and The Victims of Sprawl.

Hanchett, Thomas W. “The Other Subsidized Housing” -in From Tenements to Taylor Homes.

Pennsylvania State University Pr. August, 2000

Sierra Club, “Sprawl Costs us All”

www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/report00

Sharpe, William and Leonard Wallock. “Bold New City or Built Up Burb?” in The Making Of Urban America. Ed. Mohl, Raymond A. Scholarly Resources Inc. Washington, DE. 1997