Essay 3

740 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: What population growth grew after world war 2

In the essay, The Baby Boom and the Age of the Subdivision, author Kenneth Jackson tells about the changes in the nation after World War II ended, and there was a spike in baby births. He talks about the creation of the Levittown suburbs to accommodate families in need of housing because of this. While the new rise of suburbs created a new kind of community and family, it also proved to have a changing effect on inner city areas and certain people. At the end of World War II when the nation prepared to settle back into a state of peace, there arose a few necessities of citizens that became a problem. During the five years of war, military production had been more of a priority than consumer goods. Though between 1940 and 1943, with men leaving for war and an absence of birth control there was also a rise in birth rates. With many new families coming back together, housing availability became a major problem. People opted for living with friends and relatives and others lived in Quonset huts or temporary homes fixed out of former trolley cars, trailers, or surplus grain bins. The government’s response to this need for millions of homes was first to fund a massive construction program. Next the government started approving mortgage insurance for the Federal Housing Administration. There was also a mortgage program for Veterans under the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944. All of this triggered a building boom of Single-family housing that began at 114,000 housing starts in 1944 and increased to 1,692,000 in 1950. Among the many homebuilders that were involved the most successful was the Levitt family. Abraham Levitt and his sons, Alfred and William began on a small scale making Tudor-style houses for the upper middle class. The ... ... middle of paper ... ... had also taken money away from inner city housing development. Nevertheless, all people who were not allowed in the suburbs were forced to live outside the suburbs and in the inner city areas. Catholics, Jews and blacks had always been excluded from some neighborhoods, but builders such as the Levitt organization refused to sell to blacks or minorities. The creation of the suburbs had come in an era of progression. With young people able to afford to own this housing, it created a new type of family, different from the extended family, which consisted of parents and their children only. The suburbs were now a new type of community of people with similar houses, lifestyles and income levels. Though with this new achievement and progression, it meant a fall in urban neighborhoods as well as higher poverty or exclusion for those citizens not included in this culture.

Show More
Related

  • Chicago’s Cabrini-Green Housing Project

    1551 Words  | 4 Pages

    In 1942, a public housing development went up on Chicago’s near north side to house veterans returning from World War II. They were known as the Francis Cabrini Homes, and “were built in an area that had undergone massive slum clearance”. They consisted of fifty-five two and three story redbrick buildings arranged as row houses, resembling army barracks. The Francis Cabrini Homes housed 600 racially diverse families un...

    Read More

  • How Did World War II Transform American Society and Government?

    1276 Words  | 3 Pages

    Most of the suburbs were built as small communities with strip malls. This meant that all families had to have at least one car if not two for a second job. Families with a two-income household had it much easier than those with one. This caused an explosion of the middle ...

    Read More

  • Suburbanization and the Social Use of Television

    602 Words  | 2 Pages

    This major development, as described in Lynn Spiegel's article "The Suburban Home Companion", was largely driven by the concept of suburbia as a safe, clean environment (free from "undesirables" such as blacks and lower-income families) in which families could experience both an increased private and community life. This separation, Spiegel says, is what opened the opportunity for TV success. As nuclear suburban families desired to experience the "outside" world (including travel, unusual voyages etc.), they were also trapped in a homogenous communities where life was mundane, and immense pressure was put on each family in these "fair tale" towns to keep up with, and out-do, next door neighbours, and produce a consistently stable and satisfied appearance.

    Read More

  • Summary: An Ethnic Geography Of New Orleans

    530 Words  | 2 Pages

    Campanella writes, “Blatantly racist deed covenants excluded black families from the new land, and the white middle-class denizens of the front-of-town leapfrogged over the black back-of-town and settled into trendy low-lying suburbs such as Lakeview” (Campanella 2007, 704-715). The water management infrastructure created the Lakeview district. Lakeview attracted buyers of all races, yet systems of spatial segregation that emerged in the early twentieth century denied African Amercians and other minorities access to property in this part of New

    Read More

  • Interpretation Of Little Boxes By Malvina Reynolds

    1886 Words  | 4 Pages

    The need for suburbs following WWII was due partially to a rise in migrants in America who needed homes, a need for jobs for returning Veterans, and the introduction of “low-interest home [mortgages]” (“Suburbanization in the United States After 1945”). These houses were designed to be produced in mass quantities, meaning that the quality of the building materials used in these houses was far from exceptional; however, many of the houses interiors were equipped with “up-to-date appliances, mechanical systems and utilities” (“Suburbanization in the United States After 1945”). Additionally, early suburbs cultivated a sense of assimilation for new residents. Suburbs provided “Italians, Poles, Greeks, Jews, and other European-Americans” with a way to more easily homogenize with white Americans, leading to a racial divide in suburbs amongst races and ethnicities who were unable to pass as white (“Suburbanization in the United States After 1945”). Once the European ethnic groups integrated into the white suburbs, they found that they could “[attain] symbols of white, middle-class status, such as college educations, pensions, [and] small businesses” (“Suburbanization in the United States After 1945”). As reflected in Reynold’s second verse, “the people in the houses/All went to the

    Read More

  • The History of Hoovervilles and Government Camps

    1260 Words  | 3 Pages

    For most Americans, work was not the only issue families were faced with, but also shelter. Between the early 1930s and 1932 families were squeezed in with relatives, the unit densities sky-rocketed, and either defied eviction or found shelter in vacant buildings. Most could not even pay for normal rent housing. This left people finding shelter under bridges, in courts, and vacant public lands where they began to build their own shelter. Thus this is when Hooverville began and government camps arrived soon after.

    Read More

  • Levittown

    934 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...lready been rented out to families two days after the sale was announced. Time magazine called Levittown as “it epitomizes the revolution which has brought mass production to the housing industry” (Time).

    Read More

  • Women In Suburbanization

    1456 Words  | 3 Pages

    Thus these elite necessities prompted high rates of fertility - couples during and after the world war two wedded at an ever more youthful age with the posterity therefore more various - creating the desire for, without a doubt, more commodious housing. Greater homes and greater families suggested a greater workload for spouses and mothers and requested a more noticeable obligation to the private space. Extending auto proprietorship both made the suburb possible and ensured its isolating effect upon housewives: public transport was seen immaterial, disregarding the way that most families had one vehicle which was utilized by work-away

    Read More

  • America in the 1950's

    581 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ime period in American history. The country had bounced all the way to its feet and was going stronger than it had in two decades. Men were coming home from war, eager to start families and be good American consumers. One could go on with a peaceful conscience knowing that the automobile that he just purchased was bought in good faith: it would help support the economy, create jobs, and contribute to better opportunities for Americans. Or so one believed. Living in the suburbs suddenly became an attraction that appealed to returning veterans. Neighborhoods near schools and churches were ideal places to raise kids, and start a family. The middle-class family was evolving at a speedy pace that was taking families away from large cities at an even quicker pace. To own your own home, have your own car, and raise your family in the suburbs was the “all American” dream.

    Read More

  • Essay 1

    1806 Words  | 4 Pages

    In “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop, the narrator attempts to understand the relationship between humans and nature and finds herself concluding that they are intertwined due to humans’ underlying need to take away from nature, whether through the act of poetic imagination or through the exploitation and contamination of nature. Bishop’s view of nature changes from one where it is an unknown, mysterious, and fearful presence that is antagonistic, to one that characterizes nature as being resilient when faced against harm and often victimized by people. Mary Oliver’s poem also titled “The Fish” offers a response to Bishop’s idea that people are harming nature, by providing another reason as to why people are harming nature, which is due to how people are unable to view nature as something that exists and goes beyond the purpose of serving human needs and offers a different interpretation of the relationship between man and nature. Oliver believes that nature serves as subsidence for humans, both physically and spiritually. Unlike Bishop who finds peace through understanding her role in nature’s plight and acceptance at the merging between the natural and human worlds, Oliver finds that through the literal act of consuming nature can she obtain a form of empowerment that allows her to become one with nature.

    Read More

  • Gender And Gender Roles In The Movie Pleasantville

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    Herbert Gans piece on the mass production of suburban styled homes like Levittown with its homes on the outskirts of the city and mixed land uses closer within the core “ analyzes the suburbs and makes it evident that they are not a utopia” no matter the societal segregation they represent (Herbert Gans). These areas have their burdens resulting in physical and social isolation, no access to transportation, the start of gender roles, and inadequate decision making. In comparison, Pleasantville was a society of segregation due to the land constraints and urban planning of the society. Its visible that there is an increase in segregation between the suburban population and inner city. The higher class living in the suburbs would remain in that area unless it was for work.

    Read More

  • The Increase of Social Welfare in the United States

    1263 Words  | 3 Pages

    The 1800’s and early 1900’s brought about major changes to families and to the economy. People began to move away from farms and into cities where there were jobs. People began to rely solely on themselves rather than their extended families for support. As industrialization began machines began to take over work that was previously done by people. People found it increasingly hard to find work that could sustain their needs. People who were from vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, had a difficult time getting their needs met. People began to have a real need for social welfare programs that were beyond what families and communities could provide. (Morales, Sheafor, 2000)

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Gentrification: A Positive Good For Communities

    1003 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The Deeper Problems We Miss When We Attack ‘Gentrification’”exhibit their opinion on the positives of gentrification and the potential of “revitalization” in low-income urban communities. Badger argues that gentrification brings nothing more than further opportunities for urban communities while integrating citizens of different social classes.Furthermore , she continues to question if gentrification is in fact the monster that brings the prior expressions against gentrification where she says “If poor neighborhoods have historically suffered from dire disinvestment, how can the remedy to that evil — outside money finally flowing in — be the problem, too?”(Badger) Stating that the funds generated from sources external that are brought into these communities can’t be problematic. This concept is further elaborated in the article “Does Gentrification Harm the Poor” where Vigdoor list the potential positive enhancements gentrification can have on an urban area in America ,stating that gentrification can

    Read More

  • The Housing Act of 1949

    1574 Words  | 4 Pages

    Spirits in the United States were high after World War II. The triumph over Germany brought with it a sense of accomplishment which made the country feel as if it had the ability to achieve anything and could overcome all odds. Unfortunately for soldiers coming home high spirits did not guard them from the shortage of affordable housing. In 1946, the head of the Office of Price Administration estimated that over 1.4 million houses were needed to house returning veterans and home front workers. Even at the highest rate of construction it would take twelve years to house everyone properly and affordably. The Federal Government realized the problems the cities were facing and decided that it would be best for local governments to mandate the situation along with federal funding. In order for local government to accomplish this task the Housing Act of 1949 was passed.

    Read More

  • Gentrification

    1826 Words  | 4 Pages

    Beginning in the 1960s, middle and upper class populations began moving out of the suburbs and back into urban areas. At first, this revitalization of urban areas was 'treated as a 'back to the city' movement of suburbanites, but recent research has shown it to be a much more complicated phenomenon' (Schwirian 96). This phenomenon was coined 'gentrification' by researcher Ruth Glass in 1964 to describe the residential movement of middle-class people into low-income areas of London (Zukin 131). More specifically, gentrification is the renovation of previously poor urban dwellings, typically into condominiums, aimed at upper and middle class professionals. Since the 1960s, gentrification has appeared in large cities such as Washington D.C., San Francisco, and New York. This trend among typically young, white, upper-middle class working professionals back into the city has caused much controversy (Schwirian 96). The arguments for and against gentrification will be examined in this paper.

    Read More

More about Essay 3

Open Document