WESTERN POSTWAR SUBURBANIZATION
A New Urban Hierarchy
Western suburbs developed in a different time and place than their eastern predecessors. Carl Abbott makes the case that western central cities and suburbs were different from their eastern counterparts. They were characterized by different land use and settlement patterns; they developed different central city–suburb relationships. In broad strokes he observes that:
Over the last half-century [writing in 1990], we have slowly come to realize that Western cities can best be understood as characteristic products of twentieth-century America … as clear expressions of new technologies of movement and communication. They cluster straight-forwardly along their highways. (Abbott, 1998, pp. 123–6)
According to Abbott, the fundamental dynamic that shaped western economic development was the suburban–central city interrelationship that evolved between 1940 and 1970.
The simplest and most basic difference between West and North/Midwest suburbs is that each developed in different time periods, reflecting different transportation modes and different demographics. Suburban autonomy in the eastern United States was apparent after the turn of the twentieth century, and well developed by the twenties. Few western suburbs were major population centers at this time—excepting California coastal cities, which did resemble eastern patterns. Western central cities were located at distances far apart from other competing central cities—and suburbs further away. Close by competing central cities did not inhibit the West’s sprawling, horizontal expansion. Greater distances between central cities and suburbs allowed, if not required, more suburban self-government and autonomy.
Ignoring a few manufacturing suburbs, the typical eastern suburb developed as the more affluent classes wandered across city limits into peripheries to enjoy better housing and live lifestyles reflective of their wealth—leaving behind poorer residents. Not necessarily so with western suburbs. Many got their start from war production housing spilling over city boundaries. The migration of African-Americans to the West was noticeably less (and later) than to the Midwest/Mid-Atlantic. In their place Hispanic minorities, unevenly distributed, settled in great numbers in suburbs (Tucson and Albuquerque, for example). War production factories were built in the suburbs; they never fled from the central city—they were never there. Migrants from the Northeast and Midwest, already accustomed to suburban living and lifestyle, moved directly to suburbs (Abbott, 1981, pp. 35–6). As the population expanded in western states, it was as likely, in some states more likely, to settle in suburbs (often unincorporated) as central cities.
Western suburbs in the period of the West’s greatest growth grew more or less simultaneously alongside their central cities—the former attracting extra-regional/ metropolitan migrants who consciously chose to live in a suburb. Suburban autonomy in this context holds different meaning than found in New York City, Newark, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago, Minneapolis and Detroit. Southwestern and western growth was more or less simultaneous metropolitan-wide growth, not growth flowing from the central city. The different relationship of central city and suburb in western states set a different tone and style to the practice of economic development in these geographies. The central city–suburban relationship was characterized by “metropolitan independence,” corresponding closely to multi-nucleated metropolitan areas dominated by economically and politically independent, largely self-absorbed suburbs resistant to central cities and many forms of regionalism.
Because of “simultaneous growth” western metros developed along polycentric paths—compared to the East. Lots of tension between western central cities and suburbs existed, but after the 1960s it will take on a different character than in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. Western central cities were not “abandoned” to their fate by a feckless sprawl of the affluent, leaving behind “legacy” costs.
The new resident of a suburban ring is typically a migrant from the suburbs of another metropolis, not a refugee from the central city … Has no ties to the core city, no sense of responsibility for its problems, and little need for its services that are duplicated in ‘main street’ of the regional shopping malls. (Abbott, 1981, p. 184)
Instead, Western suburbs developed as cities in their own right, with less tradition, legacy or loyalty to the big-name central city. Suburbs developed institutions, economic bases duplicative of central city institutions; their growth styles (goals and programs) suited their location and electoral personality. “Don’t cry for me,” say Scottsdale, chip-clustered Chandler and university-focused Tempe. I don’t even have to tell the reader where they are—they enjoy their own identity. Most western suburbs did not acquire their critical mass from former central city residents.
Western-style suburbanization did not develop overnight—or easily. During the period presently under discussion (postwar to 1960ish), the reader will see little evidence of it. In fact, just the opposite. At war’s end, suburbs were as likely to be incorporated as unincorporated. But they were populated areas characterized by subdivisions, trailer camps and complexes of cheap bungalows; with unpaved streets, traffic jams, patchy services and cobbled together infrastructure, often with large war production factories nearby. If incorporated, these suburban geographies lacked capacity, and in these years counties, for good and bad reasons, failed to respond. Central cities were the only game in town in the immediate postwar period.
War Production, Public Housing and Western Suburbanization
Wartime growth and new war-related facilities altered the physical landscape of most western cities. Using Portland as an example, the reader can see how one city, overwhelmed by war production dynamics, pushed across its peripheries and turned to private sector “urban renewal” more than a decade previous to the 1954 Housing Act to build, of all things, public housing—beyond its legal jurisdiction. Nobody was clearing slums in Portland’s Vanport—they were creating them. Whatever else, this vividly demonstrates the chaos of war production suburbanization that, in some form (and to some degree), hit all western cities.
Only after growing an estimated 20 percent between 1940 and 1943 (versus 1 percent during the 1930s) did Portland reluctantly recognize the tie between ED and housing. A sustained worker housing crisis badly affected Portland’s shipyard war production, so in September 1942 Henry Kaiser brokered a deal with the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) to build housing on a flood plain outside the city limits. A few short months later (December 1942), a massive housing complex—Vanport (aka Kaiserville)—opened. By 1944 over 9000 units had been built and the title transferred to the federal Public Housing Authority. Vanport was built by a private businessman in partnership with the federal government—bypassing local political authorities and constructing a new suburban municipality.
At its height in 1945 (the complex was flooded and destroyed in 1948) Vanport housed over 40,000 (the nation’s largest public housing project), 40 percent of whom were black—becoming in effect Oregon’s second largest city. At its death in 1948, Vanport was a suburban public housing complex managed by the Portland Housing Authority (Abbott, 1981, pp. 108–9). The 1948 post-flood displacement of black families (over 1000) greatly impacted predominantly black city neighborhoods (North Portland). Today the site is a golf course, public park and home to the Portland International Raceway; it remains outside Portland’s boundaries. Vanport is a dramatic example of a situation that confronted most western cities during the war years. Most cities weren’t as fortunate as Portland, as no flood wiped out the horrendous effects of too-rapid growth.
The core problem created by rapid population and job growth was the ability of the existing governments and institutions to respond quickly. Kansas City’s city manager said: “the essential problem of boom towns was to stretch limited resources to serve an exploding population with almost no lead time for preparation” (Abbott, 1981, p. 101). Housing was an obvious crisis area. Connecting people to jobs, shopping and recreation (roads) was a close second. “Pipes and wires” and fire and police, not to mention public education, were quickly stressed—and when stressed proved to be very expensive to fix. Where would the money come from to deal with all this? Bond referendums were required in most cities, and that usually generated fear of future tax increases. A city could plan all it wanted; installing infrastructure, service delivery and solvent finances were crisis issues of the day. In this atmosphere, ED strategies like attraction and retention got lost in the shuffle. Annexation was the primary strategy response, but it was expensive and, in its own way, disruptive.
Demographics of In-Migration
Population in-migration was a major issue for both Big Cities and Sunbelt cities, but “who” was in-migrating also played a huge role in creating a different policy environment. Great Migration paths certainly reached into southern cities, and a few western cities (Los Angeles in particular). The big spurt in black migration to LA (and Portland) was during the war. Hispanic migration, however, which had been mostly rural before the war, turned decidedly urban after. Again, Los Angeles was the principal magnet, although cities close to the Mexican border also attracted many Hispanic in-migrants. Low-income blacks and Hispanics clustered in low-rent, older neighborhoods, usually (but not always) close to the CBD, as Great Migration newcomers did in eastern Big Cities. When urban renewal came into play, these neighborhoods felt its destructive impact the most.
Outside of LA and other border cities the initial black population base was low, and no matter how spectacular the rate of increase was, absolute numbers and percent of total population remained low—especially compared to cities on the Great Migration path. Race, always an issue, was not the defining characteristic of postwar western population growth. Most in-migrants were white Anglos. The defining characteristics of the Anglo Age of UR in-migration were their youth and unbelievable mobility. The Chapter 1 model introduced “generational cohort” as a dynamic factor driving ED. From the fifties onward, certainly as baby boomers attained what passed for maturity in those years, large numbers left home or went on western summer trips (like studying abroad today). Many stayed and lots eventually came back. In any case, they were constantly on the move.
Studies of individual cities during this time revealed that one-third (or so) of in-migrants stayed at one location less than a year, moving from city to city, city to suburb. Phoenix during the late 1950s had over one-quarter of its population in residence for less than two years, another third less than ten years: “Westerners moved restlessly about their cities, exchanging one home for another almost as easily as they sold and bought cars.” Between 1955 and 1960 about a third of the populations of Seattle and Los Angeles changed homes within their county; between 1965 and 1970 40 percent of San Jose’s population moved within their county (Findlay, 1992, pp. 35–6). As the young moved about, new in-migrants took their places—cities and suburbs pressured by generational cohort in-migration were a perpetual motion machine with large swathes of population essentially rootless without special attachment to home, neighborhood or cities.
Planning proved fruitless in this environment; growth occurred no matter what was or was not done. Western urbanization in this period was described as “arbitrary,” “confused,” “uncontrolled,” “a “random kind of disorder that ‘blighted’ the land and ignored the accepted wisdom about how cities should develop” (Findlay, 1992, p. 46). A Los Angeles planner apparently threw up his hands and simply called it “chaos.” The Policy World and intelligentsia labeled it “sprawl,” blaming it on growth coalitions, real estate developers, the federal government, cars and highways. But, sprawl was more a simple, multigenerational, young adult population boom that overwhelmed local capacity than a deficiency of planners or political decision-makers. Until young in-migrants settled down, order, in the 1960s’ turbulent years, was an uphill struggle.
Moreover, these criticisms ignored the psychological impact of sustained growth and prosperity—at first, people wanted more of it. In the 1950s lots of city councils and mayors echoed the feelings of San Jose’s city manager, who said he wanted his town to be another Los Angeles. This is because of a widespread change in municipal policy systems in both South and West that had commenced in the immediate postwar years. In those early years, city after city was taken over by a business-led coalition of what Abbott calls “neo-progressives” (see below). They stayed in power until the seventies.
Growth and Simultaneous Suburbanization
Between 1940 and 1970 Sunbelt population growth was “explosive.” San Diego increased by 400 percent, Oxnard and Albuquerque 500 percent, Phoenix 800 percent, but Maricopa County only 421 percent. California was the place to go: San Jose shot up by 600 percent, San Bernardino 700 percent and Orange County 1100 percent. Western population growth was uneven. On the low end of the scale, Portland and San Francisco merely doubled. The growth machine, Los Angeles, grew only by 250 percent. Denver grew by 300 percent; the City of Seattle only 44 percent and King County only 129 percent. But, make no mistake, the postwar Sunbelt was in spectacular growth mode—sustained over the three decades.
How Sunbelt municipalities responded to growth varied; but central city growth was simultaneous with hinterland growth. Counties and suburbs benefited from the same growth that propelled central cities. Sunbelt suburbanization was “simultaneous suburbanization,” not the exodus suburbanization of eastern/midwestern Big Cities. It wasn’t so much “decentralization” as “polycentric suburbanization.”
Newly arrived residents … newfound prosperity required housing to accommodate the swelling population. Each major city witnessed the rapid rise of outlying residential subdivision where the homes were newer and the families younger and more affluent … As suburbs grew they attracted commerce and industry which made them less subordinate to central cities. (Findlay, 1992, p. 27)
Even the usual pattern of the poor living in inner-city neighborhoods was reversed in parts of the Sunbelt as a number of Hispanic communities (colonias) sprouted up outside city limits—and with simultaneous suburbanization low-income Hispanics were as likely to settle in suburbs and unincorporated areas as inner cities. The incredible rapidity (and costs) of growth simply made it impossible for central cities to annex on all fronts. Scottsdale, for example, incorporated in 1951 with a population of less than 2000—by 1970 it had almost reached 70,000.
Given that the era’s dominant motif stressed the monocentric central city (and few viable alternatives existed), western central cities filled the suburban vacuum with (1) chamber-led, business-dominated policy systems pursuing growth through boosterism that quickly took the form of massive annexation campaigns; and (2) metropolitan planning—which in most cases went nowhere over the next decade. Infrastructure, water, but also utilities, streets, schools and various services (garbage collection, welfare and the like) were serious problem areas. These put pressure on county government and, over this period, county government acquired a seriousness of purpose and function that exceeded their eastern counterparts. Economic development often fell chiefly to county governments, with a presence maintained at the urban level. For example, the 1956 Arizona Industrial Development Financing Act authorized taxexempt IDBs, allowing suburban municipalities to form industrial development agencies (IDAs) and define, within state law, their own policy of economic development financing. Today, nearly all Arizona municipalities of size possess an IDA. Many were initially created in the mid–late 1970s.
Deconcentrated settlement areas created serious problems in figuring how to provide (and pay for) services and infrastructure new residents required. Each city responded to this infrastructure crisis by “adapting existing governmental forms and creating new institutions within the context of state law … The most straightforward governmental response to the deconcentration of population is … annexation” (Abbott, 1981, p. 50). During the fifties and sixties western central cities annexed periphery areas as a core economic development strategy—their purpose to capture residents so as to install and finance core infrastructure. Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Phoenix, San Diego and San Jose annexed more than 100 square miles between 1950 and 1970. El Paso added over 90 (Abbott, 1981, pp. 50–51). For those who later asserted the chief difference between eastern and western central cities was the latter’s ability to “chase” their population through annexation, this was the time when the chasing was done. By the early sixties, in some cities a bit sooner, the suburbs pushed back and resisted annexation. They did so for many of the same reasons eastern suburbs had pushed back 60–70 years earlier.
By the sixties the suburbs/unincorporated areas resisted central city annexation. In several states, suburbs successfully amended state annexation legislation to allow for residential concurrence in the annexation initiative (Texas, Oregon, California, Colorado and Virginia for example). By the middle 1970s annexation had lost its importance as the central strategy of central cities to cope with growth and provision of services and infrastructure. Service districts were the next vehicle of choice. Service districts, however efficient and fiscally responsible they might be, sustained and even enhanced suburban autonomy and independence. They permitted simultaneous central city and suburban population growth. Consider the San Francisco Bay area (pre-1980 period) in which the combined population of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose (1,553,000 in 1977) was almost balanced by the 1,183,000 residents of 15 suburban cities with populations of 50,000 or more. The four large Denver suburbs of Arvada, Aurora, Boulder and Lakewood held a quarter of the population of metropolitan Denver; and the suburbs of Tempe, Mesa, Glendale and Scottsdale accounted for 30 percent of greater Phoenix (Abbott, 1981, p. 53).
By this time, western metropolitan areas, characterized by annexation-prone central cities, became quickly surrounded by an increasingly independent network of autonomous suburbs, fostered and supported by service districts and urban county government, and intent on preserving self-rule. City-county consolidations, occurring elsewhere during these years,7 did not figure prominently in the West. Moreover, pre-1900 city–county consolidators (Denver and San Francisco for example) did not limit the formation of high-growth suburban jurisdictions: Englewood, Littleton, Northglenn, Wheatridge, Boulder, Arvada, Aurora and Lakewood in Denver’s case.
When GIs returned home what they found was not always pleasing. A new demographic cohort, the Greatest Generation, entered political and economic life—their life forged upon Depression and war shaped their world view as well as future expectations. They had their own ideas about the future, and their own aspirations for economic success—and neither reflected their fathers’ and grandfathers’ images and beliefs. The western home front had changed as well. GIs left a small city and returned to an emerging Big City—of the West. The “GI cohort effect” was felt nationwide, but assumed distinctive forms in western municipalities.
Generational change is only part of the postwar policy system story, however. The infusion of so many new people during the war years, the injection of new firms and industry sectors in the economic base—combined with the stagnancy of the “old order establishment”—demanded new solutions and strategies which were counter to those of the older policy system. A new policy system, with its own goals and values, eventually overwhelmed but did not remove entirely the old policy system. This section reveals the shift from one policy system to another. The new policy system, in general, will survive into the mid-seventies, when it too will undergo its version of generational change and rapid new in-migration.
Our policy model places great reliance on political culture as a filtering and definitional driver of ED policy-making; accordingly, in the postwar West one can watch a political culture coming together, and see its visible effects on ED policy output and goals. Building on this section in future chapters, the history will delve into how these policy system changes produced a version of ED policy different than that found in Big Cities in this period.
Ron W. Coan 