American cities in the 1900’s were the prime place to be. Cities were clean, industries were booming and education was a priority. “The city, not the farm, had become the locus of national experience” (Chudacoff and Smith 255). Everyone wanted to live their dreams in the city until they shortly realized the cities became overpopulated, hectic, and stressful. Streets became filled with garbage from people littering, traffic is always a problem, and there is no where to relax and enjoy yourself without the stress of work. The suburbs became the place of relaxation. Where people who had jobs in the city took a vacation to their house in the suburbs. To bring American cities back to life, people should focus on the way suburbs construct their ways …show more content…
The reason people started traveling to cities was they needed work, but now because of a large population jobs are harder to find. Over half of the nation 's population are congested into cities according to the 1920 federal census. In 2014 the United States Census recorded New York City alone holding about 8.5 million people, while the entire state of New York held 19 million people, making just the city alone hold half of the population of the state. A larger population causes there to be a substantial increase of poverty within the cities. Today, over 500,000 people are unemployed living in New York City. Dr. Josiah Strong once said, “The city has become a serious menace to our civilization, because in it each of our dangers is enhanced and are all are localized… Not only does the proportion of the poor increase with the growth of the city, but their condition becomes more wretched…” (Kingsbury 249). Economically, most of the nation 's work must be done in cities. When the Civil War was over millions of men came home to their jobs in the suburbs taken. Producers turned into consumers therefore everywhere you use to find a soldier, there are women, men and even newly invented machinery. The soldiers headed towards the city in hopes to find work there. This gave the cities even more people and many soldiers without jobs. Without a job no one can make money. People in the suburbs thrive off of bragging about their money. Money brings people security and comfort; reasons why Levittowns were created. The Levitts’ created homes that were impeccable to anyone who caught a glimpse of them. They were fair priced, yet welcoming with the newest technology. People in the suburbs lived an “ideal life” (Kingsbury 262). As time progresses new inventions and laws begin to help the city
Several works we have read thus far have criticized the prosperity of American suburbia. Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, and an excerpt from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem "A Coney Island of the Mind" all pass judgement on the denizens of the middle-class and the materialism in which they surround themselves. However, each work does not make the same analysis, as the stories are told from different viewpoints.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, several factors contributed to the growth and expansion of cities in the United States. The 1850s saw a fantastic peak in the immigration of Europeans to America, and they quickly flocked to cities where they could form communities and hopefully find work1. The rushing industrialization of the entire country also helped to rapidly convert America from a primarily agrarian nation to an urban society.
Phillips, E. Barbara. City Lights: Urban-Suburban Life in the Global Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
In the book The Great Inversion, author Alan Ehrenhalt reveals the changes that are happing in urban and suburban areas. Alan Ehrenhalt the former editor of Governing Magazine leads us to acknowledge that there is a shift in urban and suburban areas. This revelation comes as the poorer, diverse, city dwellers opt for the cookie cutter, shanty towns at the periphery of American cities known as the suburbs. In similar fashion the suburbanites, whom are socioeconomic advantaged, are looking to migrate into the concrete jungles, of America, to live an urban lifestyle. Also, there is a comparison drawn that recognizes the similarities of cities and their newer, more affluent, residents, and those cities of Europe a century ago and their residents. In essence this book is about the demographic shifts in Urban and Suburban areas and how these changes are occurring.
That the idea of the suburbs will come to the end, if there are no ecological recourses available for people to use, other than fossil fuel and natural gas. The solution given by James Hustler Kunstler, as to make the suburbs more like the cities and small towns, the idea that maybe sounds nice, if you never experienced living in a city. His idea is preposterous, theoretical and reality wise, as the idea of making everything
Now, a normal sized town contains fast-food joints, supermarkets, malls, and superstores, but a small town lacks that appeal. The small-town could be the most beautiful landscape known to man, but lack the necessary luxuries in life that a typical American would benefit from. Carr and Kefalas make this statement that emphasizes the town’s lack of appeal, “Indeed the most conspicuous aspects of the towns landscape may be the very things that are missing; malls, subdivisions, traffic and young people” (26). The authors clearly state that they realize that towns, such as the Heartland, are hurting because of the towns’ lack of modernization. For all intents and purposes, the town’s lack of being visually pleasing is driving away probable citizens, not only the native youth, and possible future employee’s away from a possible internship with the town. The citizens with a practice or business hurt from the towns inability to grow up and change along with the rest of the world, yet the town doesn’t realize what bringing in other businesses could potentially do for their small town. Creating more businesses such as malls, superstores and supermarkets would not only drive business up the roof, but it’ll also bring in revenue and draw the
At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States went through a series of major changes known as Industrialization and Urbanization. These developments had a major impact on American life, especially in newly urbanized cities such as New York and Chicago. Americans moved very rapidly from agriculture to machinery, and big businesses boomed, as well as the pockets of a select few. However, along with this change, unprecedented consequences faced thousands of unfortunate Americans who lived in these inner cities but did not get the chance to share in the profits of the country’s economic growth. As other Americans grew extremely rich due to their successful business and investments, the poor in America only grew poorer. They worked numerous hours a week for an extremely low pay rate in places such as factories where conditions were harsh. These laborers would most likely live in buildings called tenements, which were overcrowded apartment buildings in the poorest part of a city. As these negative consequences of urbanization and industrialization ravaged through cities, social reformers began to take action to combat these ills. One social reformer, by the name of Jacob Riis, exposed these appalling conditions to the American public through his experience with journalism and photography and uncovered the horrific effects of Urbanization and Industrialization in New York City in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. His actions sustained the Progressive Movement in the city and were the reasons for several measures taken by the city to repair these social ills.
Following the end of World War II, the United States found itself in a completely different world. The country was no longer in an economic depression and the country emerged as a major World Power. The country was becoming more prosperous and the birth rate was soaring. The need for housing rose and Levittown emerged as the standard for the fulfillment of the new housing need. Levittown, the brainchild of the firm Levitt and Sons, and the first mass produced suburb in the country, had an important impact on the country.
Furthermore, the consolidations of ghettos in the inner city, as well as the rise of suburbs, are just two of the characteristics and problems that consequently arose for U.S. cities following the culmination of the Second World War. Ghettos in the inner cities were not as successful as they were envisioned to be, because in practice they suffered from overcrowdings, poverty, racial tensions, and violence and drugs. Additionally, public housing projects (created to solve problems with poverty and vagrants caused by the rapid growth of cities) ultimately also suffered from the same fate. As for the emergence of suburbs, they also proved not to be quite as successful as envisioned either, because in practice they created segregated cities and communities.
Dumenil, Lynn, ed. "New York City." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History. N.p.: Oxford UP, 2012. Oxford Reference. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
“Could suburbs prosper independently of central cities? Probably. But would they prosper even more if they were a part of a better-integrated metropolis? The answer is almost certainly yes.” (p. 66)
It started with a governmental incentive of getting America out of the Great Depression. Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) was “signed into law by FDR, designed to serve urban needs” (Jackson, 196). This law protected homeownership, not only that, “it introduced, perfected, and proved in practice the feasibility of the long-term, self-amortizing mortgage with uniform payments spread over the whole life of the debt” (Jackson, 196). Because of this new law, it was cheaper to buy a house than rent. Then came the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) that encouraged citizens to reside in new residential developments and/or areas with FHA-approved features, like Levittown. Mass-produced cars and cheap gasoline made the option of moving to a suburban area more of a reality for many families because now they can think to live such a lifestyle. With cars, come commuters who needs accessible roads to drive to and from work, to go grocery shopping, etc. which mean that the government need to pave roads for such commute to happen. “The urban expressways led to lower marginal transport costs and greatly stimulated deconcentration,” (Jackson, 191). As Jackson expressed, “The appeal of low-density living over time and across regional, class, and ethnic lines was so powerful that some observers came to regard it as natural and inevitable,” (190). Urban areas were becoming too crowded, too heterogeneous, more and more crimes were breaking out everyday; this is not an ideal living condition for a lot of people so moving to a bigger, more spread out area is a great contestant. Therefore, some of the key factors that explains the growth of the suburbs are housing policy (FHA & HOLC), mass-produced houses, mass-produced cars, cheap fuel, and government funding
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.
After World War II, the United States of America became a much wealthier nation. As America gained wealth and the populations in urban cities and transportation technology increased, many Americans spread out, away from the urban cities, to fulfill the common dream of having a piece of land to call their own. The landscape constructed became known as the suburbs, exclusive residential areas within commuting distance of a city. The popularity and success of the suburban landscape caused suburbs to sprawl across the United States, from the east coast to the west coast and along the borders between Canada and Mexico. By the 1990s, many suburbs surrounding major urban cities developed into being more than merely exclusive residential areas. The new kind of area developed out of suburbia, the post-suburban environment, has the characteristics of the suburbs and the characteristics of the central city, or what postmodern political geographer and urban planner, Edward Soja calls, ‘the city turned inside out' (Foster 1). The post-suburban environment, is “a fundamentally decentralized spatial arrangement in which a variety of commercial, recreational, shopping, arts, residential, and religious activities are conducted in different places and are linked primarily by private automobile transportation” (Kling 1). The multifaceted aspects of the post-suburban environment make it an attractive and dynamic space with opportunities of employment. Topanga Canyon, near Los Angeles, California, is such an example of a suburb space that's developed into a dynamic post-suburban space. Since the post-suburban space of Topanga Canyon is dynamic and filled with employment opportunities, it's attractive to Mexican immigrants who wish to have a better l...
Imagine having to choose to reside in one place for the rest of your life. Which would you opt for? Some people would argue that the hyperactive lifestyle that a big city has to offer has more benefits than living in the country. However, others would contend that the calm and peaceful environment of the countryside is much more rewarding. Several people move from the city to a farm to get away from the hustle and bustle. Likewise, some farmers have traded in their tractors and animals to live a fast paced city life. Of course, not all large cities are the same nor are all of the places in the country identical. Realizing this, ten years ago, I decided to hang up the city life in Indiana to pursue a more laid back approach to life in rural Tennessee. Certainly, city life and life in the country have their benefits, but they also have distinguishable differences.