Suburbanization Produced by Technological Advances in Transportation

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“The new technology of the motor car became central to the development of twentieth century cities in the US” (Roberts 2009 p53) and by 1914 the US production had exceeded that of the whole of Europe. What started out as a transportation toy for the very rich in 1900 became available to ordinary working class citizens by 1920 (Roberts 2009 p55). The technologies born of the Industrial Revolution changed forever the way people in the West lived and worked and economies strengthened as a new era dawned of mass production and consumerism. But in the 1920s, it was the availability of a mix of technologies and policies which facilitated the pace and scale of suburbanization and decentralization of the cities in both the US and Germany (Roberts 2009 p33). The 1920s was a period of prosperity and industrial and technological growth and although America and Germany had very different political and cultural environments they were subject to similar trends in developments in transportation, suburbanization, home and car ownership and decentralization of cities. The purpose of this essay is to determine to what extent suburbanization was a product of technological developments in transport. This will be examined by comparing and contrasting the political, social, economic and technological circumstances during the early twentieth century and in the aftermath of World War II in Germany and the US. √Good but I would have preferred a more focused initial paragraph that focuses upon this and the following paragraph Suburbanization was dependent upon some form of mobility for it to exist and to that extent it was a product of technology of transport (Roberts 2009 p14). Since the emergence of the US as one country in 1780, and was co... ... middle of paper ... ...e: 88-96 Jackson, K.T, 1995 ‘The Trolley & Suburbanization’ in Roberts G.KC.& Steadman, P. (eds).) American Cities & Technology, Reader, London, Routledge: 89-98 CD and DVD ‘Chicago and the Great West’ CD-ROM Chicago Case Study http://library.open.ac.uk/filestore/Irctranscripts/AT308_AC3_tra.pdf ‘‘Chicago: the building of an entrepot city” Programme 3 Part 1 DVD http://library.openj.ac.uk/filestore/Irctranscripts/AT308_VCR2_tra.pdf The Impact of the Automobile on the 20th Century http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/systems/agentsheets/New-Vista/automobile/suburbia.html (accessed August 2009) Wikipedia Halle-Neustadt ’ (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halle-Neustadt). (accessed August 2009) The Suburbanization of German and American Cities Saldern A.V www.ghi-dc.org/publications/ghipubs/bu/038/33.pdf) (November 2005; accessed August 2009)

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