Well, you saw the title of this post.
The problem with the suburbs is multilayered. Their rise is the reason when we say "inner city" we think of hoods and barrios, for example, and they have in general exacerbated a lot of problems related to class and race beyond just where people live. On top of that, the suburbs aren't even that great for the people fortunate enough to live there. Feelings of being disconnected and lonely are common among many young people today, but those who live in the suburbs have it the worst. So, what gives?
In this post I'll briefly summarize the historical roots of US suburbia, summarize how suburbia expanded after World War 2, mention what initially drew Americans to suburbia beyond just the promises of prosperity, and then finally explain various problems that emerged as a result. I will be drawing from books I read during graduate school for many of these sections, so there will be less links than usual to support my points, but at the end I will include a section on sources for anyone interested.
HISTORICAL ROOTS
"Way back/when America had the red and black lumber jack/with the hat to match."
One thing we take for granted today is that we have anything resembling a common culture. That was not the case when this country was founded. Sure, there were some common values, technology, and mythology about the founding of the country, but there was no mass culture or strong government process that connected people the way we have now. Historian Robert Wiebe coined the term "island communities" to describe how US towns and cities functioned largely by themselves. While I don't fully agree with the term (trade, travel, and the occasional popular book or song created some common cultural elements, along with the things I mentioned above), the basic idea behind it is correct.
Things began to change with the dawn of the 1900s, however, when industrialization led to the growth of cities, both in the sense that new cities formed and previously existing cities experienced a huge population explosion. Along with this urban growth came a new "professional" class of people such as teachers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, accountants, and other specialists who filled various needs within the city (today much of these people make up what we call the middle class). At the same time, governmental bureaucracies grew in order to meet the demands placed on the state by the expanded cities, and big businesses grew bigger than ever.
The growth of these various groups created the foundations of our current society. The professional/middle class was the foundation of the Progressive Movement, which lasted roughly from 1900 to World War 1 and demanded things from the government like social services, regulations on businesses, and even giving women the right to vote. They also, according to historian Michael McGerr, tried to mold the rest of US society to fit their values of moderation, formal organization, professional education, deference to expertise, and centralized bureaucracy.
McGerr also points out they generally weren't associated with the laborers in factories, whom many of them looked down upon as uncivilized. Though there were exceptions, Progressives believed their professional values were superior to both the greed of the rich and the barbarism of the working class. They also were generally fine with segregation, too. Those in the government went along with the Progressives for three reasons: (1) the Progressives were good at mobilizing both popular support and resources for their causes, (2)the bureaucrats saw themselves as part of the professional/middle class, and (3)those bureaucrats recognized increasing the role of the state in things like regulating industry would result in the increase of its overall scope and influence.
This was the beginning of the state as a presence in the daily life of people who didn't directly work for the government or military. And, speaking of the military, the mobilization for World War 1 helped further entrench the government's ability to organize and expand its authority far beyond what it had been even during the Progressive Movement. Everything from recruitment drives to manufacturing arms to creating a bureaucratic infrastructure big enough to organize its troops grew the size of the state exponentially.
"Come give your life for literally the most pointless war in modern history!"
In addition to the growth of the public sector, the private sector grew as well. Of the countless ways this influenced the modern United States, the most immediately relevant here is the growth of consumer culture during the 1920s. This was helped not only by industrialization creating more consumer products, but also innovations in communications technology like the radio. Mixed with billboards, newspaper advertisements, and other such avenues of advertising, the United States had more of a common culture than ever before, and it was largely based on buying stuff.
During this time there was also the creation of a limited amount of suburbs in Boston and New York City, the first of their kind. The previously mentioned information is arguably more important than these early suburbs, however, because it helped set the stage for the expansion of the suburbs after World War 2. The increased power of the state is why the US would later subsidize the creation of the suburbs; the creation of a mass consumer culture is the means through which the suburbs were marketed to people; finally, the people who bought homes in the suburbs were often (white) members of the professional class.
The explosion of consumer culture and the professional/middle class during the 1920s was slowed down by the Great Depression in 1929. Herbert Hoover, the president at the time, was an ardent believer in free markets, and did little to stop it. It was here when Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the 1932 election on his platform of using the government to help people. His New Deal policies drastically expanded the role of the state, even going beyond the scope the Progressive Era had established.
POST-WORLD WAR 2 SUBURB EXPLOSION
"Surely our victory will mean Nazis will be gone forever!"
Along with the economic boom brought along by WW2, FDR's policies helped bring the US out of the Great Depression. His policies were so popular that he won reelection in 1936, 1940, and 1944, and helped revitalize the Democratic Party. In the fifty years before FDR, the Democratic Party only held the presidency twice. It wasn't doing too hot in Congress, either.
FDR turned that around based on a platform of using the state to help organized labor, provide expanded public services like Social Security, and build an unprecedented amount of infrastructure. It should be noted, though, that a lot of these policies came about because of both popular pressure from grassroots activists and the more left elements of his cabinet, particularly his secretary of labor, Frances Perkins. Many scholars now see the New Deal as a compromise that helped prevent socialist revolution.
During World War 2 the United States experienced unprecedented growth because of the production demands placed on the wartime economy, as well as the fact that Europe had been weakened by WW1 and further weakened during WW2, which created openings in the international economy for trade that the US happily stepped into. Women in particular benefited from this wartime economy, even Mexican American women, as they were allowed to work in factories out of necessity while the men went off to fight (though they were, shamefully, essentially forced out of their jobs when WW2 ended).
When the fighting ended in 1945, the US came out stronger than ever. Because Europe was in shambles, it and the Soviet Union were now the world's economic superpowers who created their own spheres of influence through trade and diplomacy. They also mutually feared one another. The US also feared a number of domestic issues, too, especially another catastrophic depression. The consumer economy of the 1920s, after all, hadn't been enough to stop the collapse of 1929. How could the US know it was safe from another such catastrophe in the near future?
Those fears, along with pressure from organized labor and the legacy of FDR's economic policies (the man himself died in April 1945, about half a year before the end of WW2), came together to create what is often referred to as the US Economic Golden Age. The war time economy boosted the strength of both the private and public sectors of the US. Unlike after WW1, however, the new set of policies put in place made sure the wealth brought in was more equally distributed and the private sector had more oversight. There was still poverty (especially if you weren't white), but things were much better than before, even for people of color.
Here we can see Fat Joe and Lil Wayne demonstrating the effect WW2 had on the US economy.
The US was now at a crossroad: what would it look like after WW2? It not only had to worry about preventing another depression and trying to create growth, but also had to make sure it looked like a more attractive option than the Soviet Union. Socialists and communists had always existed in the US, but ever since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, they had a model to turn to in the Soviet Union (though there was plenty of debate among leftists if the Soviets were a good model, especially after Stalin came to power). The US wanted to prove itself a more attractive option for people outside of the elite in order to make sure it didn't face a Bolshevik Revolution of its own.
One of the main answers was the suburbs. The GI Bill, a bill which still provides benefits for people in the military to this day, was signed in 1944 by FDR about a year before his death. Among the many benefits returning veterans enjoyed, perhaps none were as important as those related to housing. Veterans received low interest home loans, only had to make small down payments, and received many tax credits that helped them afford homes in the suburbs, which were created in large part thanks to government investment in both the houses themselves and the infrastructure around them (think of that next time someone from the suburbs talks about the evils of big government).
The result was an influx of many (white) people into the suburbs. The GI Bill helped make sure many had the opportunity to get the house, while others afforded it thanks to their salaries as members of the professional/middle class; the booming post-war economy helped make sure both groups could afford to keep their houses. This was a huge contrast to how Americans lived before, and not just in terms of the increased amount of consumer goods available. Previously people lived in the city in apartments or small houses, in much more tightly-packed neighborhoods than those of the suburbs.
Now they had a ton of space and a ton of stuff. The American Dream had been realized.
THE ANXIOUS PROMISE OF SUBURBIA
"Gee willickers dad, I sure hope you aren't secretly a miserable booze hound!"
As mentioned above, another depression and the Soviet Union loomed large as fears in the minds of many Americans. For the former worry, a big part of why Americans embraced the suburbs wasn't just because of a desire for affluence, but also as part of a call from both the public and private sector to spend enough to prevent another depression. It wasn't just self-interest to buy a house, car, and variety of home appliances. It was your patriotic duty!
That went double for Cold War anxieties. The suburban consumer was not only doing their part to prevent another economic collapse, but was also doing their best to show the superiority of US capitalist democracy to Soviet communism. As historian Elaine Tyler May points out, this created a symbolic link between the nuclear suburban family and US capitalist democracy. This put a lot of pressure on families to buy into the suburban lifestyle.
Obviously left out of this equation was people of color, but especially black folks. Latinx, Asian American, and other non-black people of color occupied a weird social status where they sometimes counted closer to white than to black, but other times didn't. Latina/o people, for instance, often weren't formally segregated from white folks the way black people were, but were still informally discriminated against in housing practices- especially if they were brown, poor, and/or didn't speak fluent English.
Even for those inside the suburbs, however, the previously mentioned pressure to conform to suburbanized patriotism created a mess. LGBTQ folks had to live in the closet, often having to settle into a heterosexual family lifestyle that made them miserable. Suburban women, who had tasted freedom during WW2 factory jobs, now were pressured to stay in the home as housewives, with no recognition or appreciation for their domestic labor; those who did get to work were generally only allowed to do clerical or other "pink collar" work. Leftists and labor leaders had to conform out of fear for being labelled a communist/Soviet sympathizer.
Also, there were plenty of white, heterosexual people with no leftist tendencies who nevertheless just didn't want a suburban lifestyle, but didn't want to stand out in an era dominated by fear and paranoia.
"You're damn right I'm a miserable booze hound. This place sucks ass."
"Wow, dad, I didn't know you were a commie! Prepare to feel the wrath of Joe McCarthy, Soviet scum!"
Now, all that said, society pressures us to do things all the time, and that's not always a bad thing. After all, we're pressured to wash our hands after going to the bathroom, brush our teeth, and not murder people. So, even if people were pressured to go along with the suburban lifestyle, that doesn't automatically make the suburbs bad, right?
That would be correct.
The suburbs are terrible for different reasons. Let's get into why.
FRAGMENTIZATION
"David, why is there a picture of broken glass here?"
"It's supposed to be symbolic of a deeply stratified United States."
"Wow, that's some 'intro to creative writing' level corny symbolism."
"Shut up, Gary."
There are a few reasons I'm gonna explore here, but they all tie to the core problem of how fragmented the suburbs have made society. Before World War 2, almost everyone except the ultra wealthy lived in the cities. From the poor to the middle class, those who lived in the cities went downtown to get their shopping done and enjoyed leisure time in public places like parks. Because of this, people spent more time around people unlike themselves (though black folks and some other people of color were largely excluded from many of these areas thanks to segregation).
The suburbs changed that. Shopping centers outside of the downtown area sprang up in mass, thanks in large part to the new roads created by the New Deal and drastically expanded by Eisenhower in 1956 with the Federal-Aid Highway Act (again, think about this the next time a suburbanite talks about the evils of government spending). Now the middle class no longer had to associate with those filthy poor people. Instead, suburbanites lived in what historian John Teaford calls "edge cities"- enclaves where they could get their shopping done and spend time in public spaces without having to spend time with anyone unlike themselves.
If we wanted to, we could even apply the homie Robert Wiebe's term "island communities" here.
As mentioned in the intro of this post, this is why the term "inner city" now means the hood/barrio. As affluent people left the city, downtown areas lost steam. They had less customers, and those they did have were often low income. The rise of local city councils and use of local property taxes to financially support edge cities only furthered the growing divide between the city and suburbs, as now suburbanites demanded their taxes only help themselves and not the cities from which they fled.
"Oh Robert, it was awful! I actually had to come within thirty feet of a poor person today!"
The changes didn't come about by themselves, either. To backtrack to the late 1800s, laborers often fought with people who owned factories during the beginning stages of mass industrialization. As mentioned above, the cities that resulted from industrialization gave birth to the professional/middle class, who had far more people among their ranks than the rich, but also way more money, resources, and connections to people in positions of power/influence than the poor. These people took action partially because they were exposed to the lives of the poor and working class.
While they created the previously mentioned changes of the Progressive Era, working class people still fought during this time for a better world as well. This continued into the 1920s. They gained an incredible amount of ground during the 1930s thanks to the Great Depression and helped add popular support to the New Deal. The gains from the New Deal created what historians and other social scientists refer to "New Deal liberalism", which loomed large over US politics until Nixon began to challenge it after his 1968 electoral victory and Reagan finally broke it with his election in 1980.
The suburbs played a key role in the destruction of New Deal liberalism, despite the fact that the affluence of the suburbs came from New Deal liberalism. Suburbanites, now affluent and isolated from anyone unlike themselves, became increasingly fiscally conservative. As mentioned above, they fought for increasing the power of local city governments and using local property taxes to pay for things like schools. This not only exacerbated inequality, but also further isolated suburbanites from the rest of the world. Society became further fragmented.
It can't be said enough, though, that these suburban communities wouldn't have existed without the New Deal. Not only because it helped create the suburbs and surrounding infrastructure, but because it distributed wealth enough to make sure that a WW2 veteran could easily buy a home and support a family by working even a blue collar factory job. The middle class became populated not just by the professional class, but even by some people who would have previously been part of the working class. The resulting society enjoyed much prosperity, but became less connected and conscious of the fact we all depend on one another.
RACISM
"We demand to stay bland!"
Okay, so it's pretty obvious that the suburbs were racist because segregation existed during the time they were created. Even someone who isn't a historian could guess that the suburbs weren't welcoming to people of color during their invention. But, hey, everywhere was racist back then, right? Why single out the suburbs?
Part of the problem is that, because the suburbs were planned during this time, practices like redlining made sure that the suburbs were literally founded on exclusion of people of color, particularly black people. Even those who served heroically in WW2 or became educated professionals were still kept out. Confined to their own neighborhoods and kept far away from suburban shopping centers, people of color were kept to the cities.
What makes this more relevant to the present day, though, is that when the Civil Rights Movement began gaining ground, the suburbs is where segregationists retreated. As historians like Kevin Kruse and Robert Self point out, the battle against segregation occurred in public places in the city like schools, parks, pools, and public transit. Because of the previously mentioned fragmentation of society, however, these places were already increasingly neglected by affluent white people anyway. Integration gained ground not just thanks to the heroic efforts of civil rights organizers, but also because affluent white people simply felt less protective of public areas in the city.
Kruse even details in his book, which focuses on the city of Atlanta, that many suburban liberals supported urban integration. White people of means showing up in support of city integration was by no means uncommon; it was the white people in the cities, who had less money and power, who mainly opposed integration. When the latter group lost the battle for segregation, they used everything from protests to violence to try to undo integration, but it was too late. Desegregation won out.
Then civil rights activists turned their attention to the suburbs. Suddenly, white suburban liberals became indistinguishable from KKK members.
Fun fact: Joe Biden got his start as a politician by opposing integration.
The civil rights coalitions around the country began to fall apart after the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act for a variety of reasons. The discomfort of affluent white liberals, who had sometimes helped integration efforts before, was one of those reasons. Segregationists with money retreated to the suburbs. Suburban liberals, while not always actively opposed to integrating the suburbs, very rarely offered the sort of helped they offered before.
Legal challenges to suburban segregation were harder to make than legal challenges to urban segregation because the suburbs weren't explicitly segregated. Though redlining was racist in nature, there was nothing formally outlawing people of color from the suburbs the way there was in the previous form of explicit public segregation. Because of this, while there were some isolated cases of individual legal victories, as a whole suburban segregation remained in place.
Segregationist Dixiecrat George Wallace campaigned for the presidency in 1964 and found a lot of success by appealing to the racism of some working class white voters. Richard Nixon clearly took notes from George Wallace, but refined that message to be less explicitly racist and more about "freedom of association" (that is, freedom to not associate with black people). In doing so, Nixon created what we now call the "southern strategy" in politics: using culture war terminology against the "liberal elite" while using racially coded words to appeal to white voters.
The rising conservatism in the suburbs also worked wonders for Nixon. A part of Nixon's electoral strategy was appealing to what he called the "silent majority" of voters, which he framed as people who were sick of the civil rights and anti-war protestors. He campaigned on a "return to normalcy" for the US. This struck a cord among the suburbs, who wanted to be left alone and not worry about problems outside of their suburban bubbles. Ronald Reagan would go on to perfect this electoral strategy and reflect the power of the suburban conservatives as an electoral force.
LONELINESS
Why does every stock photo make loneliness look so artsy?
So, we've established that the suburbs were super exclusionary. But, hey, there are some suburbs that are pretty diverse in the present-day United States. While the racism is unfortunate, some people in affluence is better than none, right? We should be focusing on making the suburbs more diverse, not talking about how bad they are!
The thing is, aside from the fact that the suburbs perpetuate inequality today through things like property taxes to fund schools, the suburbs suck for people who live there, too.
Even after the pressures of the Cold War to conform to suburban lifestyle faded, many still saw the suburbs as the key to happiness. Many feel that way today. Some people who live there may even enjoy them. As a whole, though, we are social animals, and the suburbs aren't designed with that in mind. The isolated houses with few public spaces give suburbanites few places to socialize and interact.
Related to that, as historians Elaine Tyler May and Stephanie Coontz have talked about, the fact that we went from urban neighborhoods with strong family and community ties to nuclear families with weaker ties to both the community and extended family hurt us further. This trend has happened all across US society, but is especially bad in suburbia. While we have the myth of the isolated prairie house of the old West, the truth is that many people created communities back then to survive; many who tried to live with no help beyond their wife and kids didn't make it. As a whole, the myth of US self-reliance is just that: a myth.
"I reckon this town ain't big enough for the both of us.
Let's giddyup and toward creating bigger communities to change that, pardner!"
That matters not just for the sake of truth, but for the sake of how we live. We've always loved the myth of a self-reliant homestead, but in reality we were forced by circumstances to live interconnected lives with our communities. The fragmentation brought about by the suburbs changed this. Now, thanks to New Deal liberalism and the gains brought by an interconnected society, many people (especially affluent white people) are able to live lives isolated from the rest of society. Now, thanks to how society is structured, they don't "need" anyone else, and don't have to be around anyone else.
And even they're not sure if they're happy about it.
CONCLUSION
No sassy comment here, this actually seems like a cool idea.
Luckily, there is hope. A big topic in the field of urban planning is how to make cities less lonely; affordable housing advocates generally demand expanded public housing, which is much less isolating than the suburbs; recent teacher strikes and the unionization of service sector employees, such as retail and fast food workers, are showing a reemergence of organized labor, which means less economic inequality; on top of that, today's unions are much more diverse and willing to fight against other forms of discrimination than the unions of yesterday; the topic of loneliness itself is becoming a big issue that professionals from many disciplines are now explicit talking about.
I could go on, and I'm sure there are tons of groups of people doing great work I know nothing about, but the point is that the world is constantly changing. Those in history sometimes view the conditions they live in as permanent or unalterable, but it's important to remember that the conditions we find ourselves in today have only been this way for the last few decades. The fragmented, lonely, society we live in today is not guaranteed to exist as it is in the future. After all, the US went from the beginning of the Great Depression to the beginning of post-World War 2 prosperity in about a decade and a half. That's not a long time.
What's important is that we do what we can to make sure we work toward a better future. Sometimes that means getting involved in politics, other times that means simply getting to know your neighbors or being kind to a stranger. Not even for moral reasons, but because it's how we're built as humans. For all of our societal problems, we need one another.
Except Nazis, who should always be punched in the face.
SOURCES
Here are the books that I referenced in this post:
"The Search for Order" by Robert Wiebe
"A Fierce Discontent" by Michael McGerr
"Homeward Bound" by Elaine Tyler May
"The Metropolitan Revolution" by Jon Teaford
"White Flight" by Kevin Kruse
"American Babylon" by Robert Self
"The Way We Never Were" by Stephanie Coontz
