MID-CENTURY SUBURBS
As early as 1950, suburban growth rates were ten times that of the central city, and by 1954, 9 million lost souls had moved to the suburbs. The 20 years following war’s end were truly the breakout years of suburbia. Kenneth Jackson estimated that between 1950 and 1970 the suburban population more than doubled, from 36 million to 70 million—74 percent of the nation’s population growth (Jackson, 1985, p. 238). Average 1950–70 population growth for 17 metropolitan areas of the Northeast was 46 percent; their central cities declined by an average of 2 percent, meaning that average suburban population growth for these metros was 107 percent. Boston’s low of 35 percent suburban growth was dwarfed by Minneapolis-St. Paul’s 281 percent. New York’s suburbs increased by 4.26 million, Chicago 1.77 million, Philadelphia 1.33 million and Detroit by 1.82 million. Suburban homeownership left central cities with dramatically increased renter populations (McDonald, 2008, pp. 85–7). Contrary to the truism, Big Cities couldn’t chase their population. Milwaukee, Kansas City, Indianapolis and Columbus successfully annexed large amounts of land. For all the good it did—they still suburbanized.
Echoing James F. McDonald’s “suburbanization is the most important economic and social trend of the second half of the twentieth century” (2008, p. 85), our principal focus is the suburb’s effect on sub-state economic development. Also, incorporating the Big City suburban exodus into our perspective makes it easier to understand the sky-rocketing concern with decentralization. The massive population flow after 1946 electrified postwar Big City census figures and awakened not unreasonable fears for viability of central city hinterland dominance.
Our suburb starting point is that there is no “typical” suburb. Suburbs are not alike—they never have been, and we don’t intend to start here. Postwar/pre-1970 suburbs—labeled by Hayden as “sit-com suburbs,” Hanlon as suburban homogeneity and Jackson as the “cultural home of the white middle-class family”—have been well described by zillions of academic studies and intellectual critiques. There is no doubt a race/class dimension between city and suburb exists during these years—but income/ class can obscure a lot of internal diversity. First-ring suburbs captured the lion’s share of expansion; they often reflected the spilling over of ethnic lower/middle-class periphery neighborhoods across city boundaries and conforming to conventional neighborhood succession patterns. They may have looked much the same in the 1950s, but their subsequent evolution and political/policy development produced notable variation.
Levittown
Postwar suburbanization symbolically began on May 7, 1947, the opening day sale of Levittown New York. By May 9, developers had sold over 1000 housing units. Levittown built a variant of Wright’s rambler, and modeled its subdivision on Broadacre. Built by non-union labor, with restrictive covenants, it included for the first time kitchen appliances. Using Ford’s assembly line technique, Levittown added 30 units daily, selling 4000 units by year’s end. Ultimately, the Levitt Brothers sold over 17,000 homes in the subdivision (1951). Levittown’s suburban business model spread through the East by the early 1960s.
Ticky-tacky Levittown “little boxes” (coined in 1962 by Malvina Reynolds and made famous by Pete Seeger’s 1963 ditty) provided grist for academics and writers (John Updike, for example). TV shows Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet imparted a visual image to the aspirational “American dream.” Despite their inaccurate characterization of postwar families, they became the avatar for suburbs.
The suburban residential complex threw off substantial profits, created new occupations and redefined the BLS-FIRE sector classification. In short, a “subdivision developer” suburban real estate industry exploded after the late 1940s. This new sector reflected, and created, consumer demand through its understanding of the American dream and by recognizing links between housing, car and employment. Separating housing finance from housing construction, the subdivision-industry complex built cheap, small capes outside a Big City unable to annex. The inability to annex differentiated western from eastern cities in this era (McDonald, 2008, p. 90).
The Litany and the Dilemma
There was a litany of explanations for the postwar suburban explosion. It is helpful, if not important, for the reader appreciate this litany; it is critical to an understanding of suburbs and the “suburban paradigm” that emerged in future years. Suburbanization’s immediate postwar driver was a housing shortage of GI new households and obsolescence, and probably blight/racial change as well. The rapid household formation that followed demobilization left the greatest generation and their newborn baby boomers sleeping (or not) in the bedrooms of their less than delighted grandparents’ homes/ apartments. Deluded by (1944) GI Bill mortgages,3 recent car purchases and newly built freeways, millions of WWII veterans fled central cities (and their parents). The latest version of the American Dream, suburbs, had commenced—to the relief of all three generations. Other reasons have been advanced as well.
Perhaps the most damning has been suburban linkage to racism. Suburban in-migration was driven by racial change in the central city—which, at some level, is obviously accurate. Once there, white suburban residents closed the door to African-American in-migration through a variety of techniques, including racially restrictive covenants, real estate steering and exclusionary zoning. Income and racial segregation were seen as two sides of the same coin. The Supreme Court, in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)—successfully argued by NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall—outlawed such covenants, but real estate practices circumvented much of the ruling. Exclusionary zoning persisted until checked by the 1975 Mount Laurel (New Jersey) decision.
It is also asserted that the federal government stimulated/facilitated suburbanization in general, and postwar AHA suburbanization in particular. New Deal residential mortgages (FHA), banking reforms, housing tax incentives and the GI Bill rendered the federal government complicit in racial discrimination. Highways built since World War I with federal encouragement picked up considerable momentum in the postwar era. Most highways were state funded and freeways locally funded, however. Highways certainly facilitated residential mobility and the relocation of manufacturing; the decline of the CBD during this era was attributed to highways, which dispersed the city population while congesting the downtown. The trouble is that Big Cities were building freeways and expressways to counter perceived decentralization problems. Highways reaching out to the farthest suburbs had been a longstanding component of Big City and metropolitan planning; indeed, suburban highways were a central feature of Burnham’s 1909 Chicago Plan and the City Beautiful. If so, then planner/economic developer paradigms were incorrect. In building highways, they thought they were helping to mitigate suburbanization. The federal government had its own agenda for its actions.
There is, one supposes, “blame” for suburbanization (i.e. many judge it “bad”). Maybe we shouldn’t be a polycentric metropolitan area—but we live in one today. Two factors suggest strongly that it is time to move on. Firstly, at the time of this writing we are a majority suburban nation and have been for almost a half-century. Secondly, there is an inherent “dilemma” that complicates, frustrates and distorts our normative images of suburbia. Many of us want to live there, even if we “shouldn’t.” This dilemma was evident from the beginning and is expressed in Robert C. Wood’s pioneering work Suburbia (1958). Wood, a Harvard–MIT scholar at the time, later served as HUD undersecretary (1965–69) and (temporary) secretary.4 He is a principal author of LBJ’s Model Cities.
A final word is due my friends and neighbors in my suburb, Lincoln [Massachusetts]. On balance the judgment of this book is not favorable to suburbia and they may wonder why I choose to live to live in a place I criticize so strongly. The answer is simply that my professional opinion should never be confused with my personal tastes, and the fact that I recommend a general philosophy and outlook as desirable does not mean that I have succeeded in living by it. Lincoln is undoubtedly an anachronism and it is probably obstructive to the larger purposes of the Boston region. But it is a very pleasant and hospitable anachronism, and while it exists, I am quite happy to indict myself. (Wood, 1958, pp. vii–viii)
I might add, Wood not only lived in a suburb, he also worked in one—Cambridge.
Suburbs exist; they are not going away in my lifetime, and some of them are active in ED policy-making. Suburbs have impacted our history greatly, and they form a prominent element of our contemporary physical landscape. They deserve a place in our history—and to the extent there is something distinctive about suburban ED should be noted.
The Selling of Suburbs
The South wasn’t the only product sold in the postwar era. Suburbs were sold as well. Many believe the “selling of the suburbs” by subdivision and mall developers is an important explanation for postwar suburbanization. Postwar suburbs, often unincorporated areas, developed around subdivisions and malls. Unlike the central city, suburbs did not grow outward from a core area (CBD), but instead reversed the pattern by developing a CBD after initial subdivisions were in place—or never built one at all (unless a city hall/government office with a post office next door is a CBD). Suburbs often develop around independent and semi-autonomous neighborhoods.
In one of this history’s more outlandish misadventures, I propose we consider subdivisions/shopping centers/malls and industrial/office/technology parks as specific economic development strategies characteristic of suburban economic development, at least in this era. If we do so, then real estate developers once again return to their role as private economic developers—a role they had played since the 1890s (and, ironically, were playing in the halls of Congress engaged in public housing, slum clearance and CBD urban renewal policy-making). Suburban private developers, however, were only half of a hybrid growth strategy, the other half being suburban municipal (county) planners/city managers. While not exactly the “odd couple” of public/private partnerships, this hybrid coalition was pervasive in early (especially) suburban economic development.
Weiss (1987) has constructed such a hybrid model, observing a post-World War I “working relationship” with the comprehensive planning movement. J.C. Nichols (our first suburban mall developer in the 1920s), Weiss contends, convinced professional planners that substantial public involvement was required if suburban real estate developers, Weiss’s community builders, were to successfully develop a large subdivision. The nub of the problem was that the cost of land and length of time required to sell units constructed on that land rendered financing either expensive or impossible. Lenders needed assurances beyond the security offered by the subdivision’s assets. Moreover, prospective owners purchasing units on newly developed subdivisions required assurances that subsequent owners/builders would not cheapen (undesirable uses) or adversely affect their property values. Such assurances were originally provided through a variety of restrictive covenants administered by a subdivision homeowners’ association.
But these covenants, discriminatory or otherwise, were only a partial solution: they could not, for instance, carry over to adjacent parcels of land outside the subdivision; nor could they ensure the necessary infrastructure, particularly streets and public services, was available. For this set of assurances, public sector participation was required. Public participation also came in the form of the subdivision’s inclusion in the community’s comprehensive master plan, and critical specifications (lot size, setbacks, building codes, fire/safety regulations) included in zoning ordinances, codes and other regulations approved by the jurisdiction. Infrastructure required additional commitments in the community capital budget, and street construction/maintenance countenanced sustained public involvement. To be successful, subdivisions (malls, industrial/office parks) required detailed and sustained partnership between public and private actors. If so, subdivision and mall development was a public/private ED strategy long before Levittown put its first shovel into the ground.
In any case, subdivision and shopping center construction took off after the war; by 1957 the ULI was publishing guidelines on shopping center development. During these years, retail matured into a pillar of the suburban economic base. Planned retail centers (all sizes) grew from fewer than 1000 in 1950 to over 25,000 in 1984 (40 percent of all retail sales) (McKeever, 1977, p. 13). Eye-catching regional shopping centers became the skyscrapers of a suburban low-rise downtown. They sprang up across the nation: Northgate near Seattle, Shoppers’ World in Framingham near Boston, Northland near Detroit and in 1962 the Randhurst Center (“the largest shopping center under one roof”) near Chicago.
Shopping centers were designed to “tame the automobile,” accommodating its use through easy access to highways and an internal road system that compelled customers to park their cars and walk to pedestrian-only buildings.5 “Anchors” for larger suburban retail centers were department stores and grocery stores for the smaller centers. By 1960 shopping centers included such diverse and varied uses as adjoining office parks and apartments, medical centers, movie theaters, food courts and even light entertainment, fountains and mini-landmarks under their weather-controlled roof. The ubiquitous role of the car, however, created a “cycle of dependence”: the car was how one got to the shopping center, and the truck how it was supplied; suburbs as initially built rested on the car and streets, requiring future users to travel by auto. The cycle of dependence became a built-in feature of suburban lifestyle.
Subdivision/mall growth strategy created occupations and businesses to service suburban housing and commercial/industrial development. This in turn drove suburban demographic and economic growth. Aside from conventional real estate sales practices and a “you build it, we will come mentality,” no municipal government promotion (“boosterism”) was required. Real estate, housing, commercial trade, personal services and residential banking developed into key elements of its emerging economic base. Housing proved an excellent generator of small business, with its network of supplier/ contractor/logistics and consumer/service businesses. Personal services (restaurants and entertainment) added diversity—at a time of incipient deindustrialization, suburbs instinctively diversified.
One does not need public economic development in this environment. Accordingly, early growth-oriented suburban planning departments served a double duty (working with local chambers that fostered small business growth and entrepreneurial social integration) to handle run-of-the-mill economic development demands (liaison, regulation compliance). Economic development was handled by the subdivision/mall/ planner nexus, supplemented by small business, social networking and occasional advocacy, chambers. There was such a thing as “suburban economic development” after all.
A final suggestive thought. This section applies to “Big City suburbanization,” the residential suburb and not the shopping mall suburb; and, given it centers on subdivisions, not manufacturing decentralization, applies more to East Coast and middle Atlantic suburb formation than Midwest, where manufacturing decentralization played a prominent role. Implied in this ED policy-making scenario is the policy system that it is encased within. East Coast Big City suburbs (upstate New York, New England) derived their origins from the Yankee Diaspora; formed towns where states played a strong role in ED, the heart of the American Progressive Movement; and grew up with “structural reform and City Efficient” business elite values. In this cultural atmosphere one can expect community development rather than mainstream economic development to develop. These are the CBD and central city commuters whose principal goals were home and hearth, low taxes and minimum public services—not growth. ED policy was not likely to be important or highly valued, or concerned with the suburb’s jurisdictional economic base. Housing, traffic, education and other “people” services were highly valued. What ED there was focused on neighborhoods, people, and in this culture was often expressed through planning. In these communities/ towns ED’s overlap with planning is most visible.
Conversely, some suburbs—through planned attraction, war production decentralization or simply because of innate location advantages—developed a manufacturing economic base. As John F. McDonald asserted:
The change in location pattern was the result of deaths of firms in the central city, births of firms in the suburbs, employment declines in firms in the city, and growth of firms in the suburbs. Only a relatively small amount of the net change can be explained by the direct relocation of firms from the central city to the suburbs. (McDonald, 1984)
Manufacturing firms increased suburban production by taking advantage of new, single-story, spread-out facilities near cheap, highway-accessible land—while their land-locked central city facilities produced as best they could so long as long as they were profitable. When profits declined, shutdowns followed. Suburban facilities increased production; employment and population growth were sure to increase. Through the fifties and early sixties, the hard truths were evident, but hope for recovery still existed. McDonald believed the bottom fell out in 1968, when riots prompted a rush to exit the central city (McDonald, 2008, p. 97). If this scenario is accurate, change in product demand and manufacturing/logistical technology drove suburban manufacturing growth. Suburbs did not need to “steal” central city manufacturing through public or private ED attraction programs.
Industrial parks fit well into the real estate/planning-based ED policy fabric. In the 1940s and 1950s the industrial park was just that: “Following World War II, the pace of change quickened and the modern industrial park, as an outgrowth of earlier industrial districts, emerged as the major new trend in industrial development” (Beyard, 1988, p. 18). Industrial parks, both private (the overwhelming majority) and public went up by the hundred across the nation—mostly in suburbs. Industrial parks, congruent with suburban economic development policy-making dominated by comprehensive planners, however, were transitioning from manufacturing into other sectors. During the 1970s and 1980s, as the national economy shifted noticeably from manufacturing to service and technology, industrial parks became “business parks”—moving on later to science or technology parks.
This line of thought provides a context to evaluate the various suburban types that emerged. It offers an explanation why there is no single “suburban” style of ED within a metro area, or across the nation. Call it metropolitan pluralism, political fragmentation, multi-nodal nuclei or sprawl (each describes the same phenomenon), postwar suburbanization, beyond electing state legislators to defend suburban autonomy, radically revolutionized the hinterland landscape. For Abbott (1981, p. 184), the “main political actors are the central city and the suburban governments that have rapidly been developing independent economic and political resources that enable them to treat the central city as a peer.” “Political lineups tend to shift from issue to issue.” But the foundation of metropolitan pluralism rests upon what we used to call “suburban autonomy.” In several ways, the various suburban types that developed during specific time periods closely mirror our onionization of EDO structural types.
It would take more than a half-century, however, before the Policy World appreciated the enormous municipal diversity inherent in suburbanization. In the postwar world, suburbs were a stereotype—and a negative one at that. In the fifties they were Hayden’s “sitcom suburbs”—residential, family-centered, small town, “everybody knows your name” suburbs where parents live boring, Organization/Mad Men lives that drove their children away. My research strongly suggest that suburban policy systems were (and are) not “Big City writ small.” Local elites, small town democracy, absentee-commuter suburbs, parochialism and their own peculiar demographic footprint or jurisdictional economic base meant an amazing variety of policy systems developed in our Big City hinterlands.
As far as economic development was concerned, some suburbs wanted to grow; others wanted no part of growth. Some suburbs delegated economic development to the county, spending their “policy time” in other policy areas such as schools. Gated communities and “Privatopia”—a phenomenon later to be discussed—decentralized suburban policy systems. Home and family dominated many a suburb, while others exhibited such population turnover that no one took serious interest in suburban policy making. Private city-builders (mostly in the South and West) like Del Webb (retirement communities) and “corporate” Woodlands Texas (started in 1964) or Irvine California created privatized policy systems. Postwar Rouse new towns like Columbia Maryland followed in the footsteps of Tugwell’s Depression-era new towns, creating a more “progressive” policy system. Suburbs, even in the postwar years, were never pure Republican, bastions of insipid middle-class conservatism and neo-liberal Privatism. If you want diversity, you can find it in suburbs and suburban policy systems.
Describing suburban economic development is going to be a challenge in future chapters. In that 53 percent of Americans in 2015 live in suburbs—and 21 percent in rural areas—hinterland economic development cannot be ignored. Economic development cannot be discussed solely in terms of Big Cities. The page has turned in our economic development history. To capture transformation in the urban landscape that revolutionized postwar America this history expands its definition of competitive urban hierarchy to include not only the competition among Big Cities, but also competition within metropolitan areas (Florida, 2013).
Ron W. Coan 