Becky M. Nicolaides
Suburbia and
the Sunbelt
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I
n my mind, the concepts “Sunbelt city” and “suburb” are
present). The industrial city was defined first and foremost by its
nearly synonymous. This idea became real to me several
namesake-industry—meaning that industrial production left an
years ago when I was teaching at Arizona State University
indelible imprint on the urban form itself and the texture of social
West, located in the northwest reaches of Phoenix. Driving
life. Smokestacks and soot shaded the physical landscape; class
down those boulevards,
divisions defined the social landscape. Enter the metropolitan era.
where the asphalt seemed
Coming at a time when
to melt beneath my tires
America had fully emon hot days , I passed mile
braced the “culture of conafter mile after mile of
sumption,” especially as it
tract housing, mini-malls,
entered the post-World
dividing walls, broken up
War II years, the metroonly by the occasional big
politan era saw a fundabox store or freeway onmental shift. Instead of an
ramp. All of the trappings
urban identity anchored
of the suburbs seemed to
around industrial producdefine this metropolitan
tivity, the new urban melandscape. In Phoenix, the
tropolis would be anchored
city was one continuous
around the flip side: leistretch of suburbia.
sure and consumption.
Sunbelt cities, in fact,
The postwar metropolis
have had a particularly
would celebrate play and
close relationship to subrecreation, families and naurbia, partly a result of timture. Traditional downing. Many Sunbelt cities
towns and industrial
came of age when the sub- Lakewood, California, a model suburb with its neighborhoods precisely laid out. districts would be replaced
(Image courtesy of the City of Lakewood History Collection.)
urbs were reaching their
by freeways, clusters of subheyday in America. As a
urban homes, and low-rise,
result, Sunbelt cities have come to resemble suburban metropoclean industrial parks. The urban landscape itself would soften its
lises, cities that are defined spatially by suburban sprawl and that
edges, yielding itself to a greener, friendlier terrain. As the histohave taken on many of the cultural, social, and political characrian Sam Bass Warner points out, the new metropolitan form was
teristics of suburbia as well.
not simply an industrial city grown bigger, but a wholly new urban
To understand this important link between Sunbelt cities and
form in its own right, with a unique structure and qualitative
suburbanization, we need to step back for a moment to consider
character. And a key aspect of that character was decentralization.
the broader context of urban history and where Sunbelt cities fit
into that context. Some urban historians talk of three phases of
Why the Sunbelt-Suburb Nexus?
Why did the postwar metropolis follow a suburban paradigm?
urban development in the United States: the walking city era
The answer lies on several levels, which we can categorize roughly
(seventeenth through the early nineteenth centuries), the industrial city era (1840-1940), and the metropolitan era (1940 to the
as cultural, political, and technological. First and foremost, the
22 OAH MAGAZINE OF HISTORY • OCTOBER 2003
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critical to the growth of the Sunbelt, beginning
during World War II and persisting throughout
the Cold War. Part of this was a result of the
government’s desire to protect large urban areas
against bombings and invasions by dispersing personnel and training facilities in rural areas, thereby
creating regional decentralization. Scattered cities in the Sunbelt, then, became recipients of
massive federal defense spending.
At the same time, the federal government enacted measures that favored suburbanization. For
example, housing policies, through agencies such
as the Federal Housing Administration (FHA),
established in 1934, insured mortgages granted by
private lenders and assisted new home buyers. In
making its lending decisions, the FHA privileged
white suburban neighborhoods while locking out—
or “redlining,” as the process came to be called—
inner city areas. The FHA ultimately played a
critical role in spurring the suburban boom of the
postwar years, opening up homeownership to unprecedented numbers of Americans. Likewise, fedThe Hewlett-Packard complex, built in 1959, was part of the Stanford Industrial Park in Palo
eral transportation policies advantaged highways
Alto, California. Note the suburban, park-like, campus design of this workplace, with grass,
and roads rather than mass transit, facilitating
trees, and low slung buildings. (Hewlett-Packard Courtyard, Stanford Research Park, March
suburban expansion. Lastly, federal tax policies
1963. Image courtesy of Chuck Painter/Stanford News Service.)
gave tax breaks to homeowners rather than renters,
again advantaging the suburbs over central cities (5). The simultaleaders and planners of many Sunbelt cities envisioned their cities
neous infusion of federal dollars into the Sunbelt and into the
as improving vastly upon the congested eastern city model,
suburbs meant that Sunbelt cities would enjoy a double advantage
representing a kind of antithesis of the industrial city. Theirs
if they embraced the suburban paradigm.
would be “suburban” cities: wide open, in tune with nature, with
Finally, technological advances encouraged suburbanization
plenty of fresh air and space for all to enjoy. As Dana Bartlett, a
at the historical moment when many Sunbelt cities came of age.
minister and social reformer in Los Angeles, put it as early as 1907,
The rise of widespread automobile use after the 1920s enabled
Los Angeles held the promise of being “the better city”: “it shall
emergent cities to spatially disperse, transforming undeveloped
be a city of homes, and therefore a city without slums. Instead of
land on the periphery, far from streetcar lines, into prime real
the pent-up millions in other cities, that from necessity or choice
estate. Cities that came of age after this point, as many Sunbelt
know only a contracted indoor existence, here will be found only
cities did, felt the spatial impact of this new pattern of land
healthy, happy families scattered over a vast area” (1). The quality
conversion made possible by the automobile. Historians Eric
of the community thus rested on a dispersed, suburban design:
Monkkonen and Kenneth Jackson rightly remind us, however,
“Ruralize the city; urbanize the country” (2). And this suburban
that we should avoid the trap of technological determinism—
ethos, in tune with nature and the outdoors, rested too on an
attributing causality to the technological change itself. The best
enthusiastic embrace of leisure and recreation. Charles Lummis,
argument for this cautionary note is comparative analysis: with
editor of Land of Sunshine magazine, believed that Los Angeles had
similar technology available in many countries, only certain ones
the capacity to teach the rest of the nation how to shed its Yankee
embraced the suburban trend, the United States foremost among
neurosis of overwork and learn to enjoy life. As he wrote in 1897,
them. Technology may have facilitated the trend, but cultural
“By force of our environment rather than by our deliberate wit, we
proclivities and governmental policy were the more powerful
are destined to show an astonished world the spectacle of Americausal agents (6).
cans having a good time” (3). Boosters expressed similar urban
aspirations in other Sunbelt cities, like Miami, Phoenix, San
The Landscape of the “Suburban Metropolis”
Diego, and Las Vegas, which aimed to turn warm climates and
In Sunbelt cities, many of which came of age at the cusp of the
open space into cities that catered to Americans’ desires for
metropolitan era, these suburban orientations became most proleisure. And a city design that capitalized on nature and expansive
nounced. Americans quickly noticed the connection between
space—in essence, a suburban metropolis—would best realize
suburbanization and the Sunbelt. Cities like Denver, Los Angeles,
these goals (4).
Phoenix, and Houston were described variously as oozing “off in
Federal policy also contributed to the suburban inclination of
every direction like lava,” a “huge unplanned urban complex,”
many Sunbelt cities. Two major federal initiatives, one favoring
and “a spin-the-wheel happening that hops, skips and jumps
suburbanization and the other Sunbelt growth, coincided chronooutward”(7). More and more activities took place within that
logically and reinforced each other. Federal defense spending was
Building homes mass-production style, in Lakewood, California. (Image courtesy of City of
Lakewood History Collection.)
Suburban Neighborhoods in the Sunbelt
The most obviously suburban aspect of Sunbelt
cities was residential neighborhoods. These suburban communities both followed on national
trends and spurred new ones. Nationally, suburbs
proliferated at a breakneck rate in the postwar
years, leaving central cities far behind. Between
1950 and 1970, America’s central cities gained
ten million new residents (mostly low income),
while suburban areas gained eighty-five million
(mostly middle class). Compared to suburbs that
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suburban sprawl—working, producing, shopping,
playing, and living. The city was no longer dominated by a single downtown; now multiple “minidowntowns” cropped up across the metropolis,
surrounded by expanses of residential suburbs
peppered with a diverse array of amenities.
For example, suburban research and industrial parks became common fixtures on Sunbelt
city landscapes. High-tech industries, so central
to the economy of the Sunbelt, consciously designed their new spaces to make industry compatible with residences in a suburban setting. The
typical industrial park resembled a college campus, incorporating green lawns, open spaces, patios, and trees to enhance the suburban feel. This
design reflected the new character of emergent
high-tech industries; it catered to the tastes of its
new class of highly skilled, highly educated industrial workers, enhanced their working environment, and promoted creative thinking (8). Two
prime examples of such complexes are Stanford Lakewood Center. An expansive parking lot characterizes the typical postwar suburban
Industrial Park in Palo Alto and Research Tri- shopping center. (Image courtesy of City of Lakewood History Collection.)
angle Park in North Carolina. In both cases, the research/indusdropped to 42 percent. In turn, nearly one hundred industrial
trial parks were located near major universities, employed
parks had sprouted up around the city (9).
technically skilled workers, and boasted an attractive climate and
Retail also followed the suburban trend. Although the
lifestyle that typified the Sunbelt allure. The growth of these
suburbanization of shopping began as early as the 1920s, the
industrial parks helped tip the balance away from downtown to
postwar era saw a real boom in suburban shopping centers—
the suburbs. In Atlanta, for example, the downtown housed 90
otherwise known as “malls.” They were notable for their centralpercent of office space in the metropolis in 1960; by 1980, it
ized planning and their generous provisions for parking. By the
1970s and 1980s, super regional malls had emerged, like Tyson’s
Corner in Fairfax County, Virginia, Houston’s
Galleria, Orange Country’s South Coast Plaza,
and Atlanta’s Cumberland/Galleria complex.
These mega-complexes attracted shoppers from
trading areas of one hundred square miles and
more. Some supporters see malls as important new
social centers, a space where people—especially
teens—commune around the act of consumption.
They represent community anchors for rootless
families moving into and out of newer developments. Critics, however, see malls as privatized,
commercial spaces that cater only to uniform
middle-class tastes and lacked the diversity of a
true public space, as the older, industrial city
downtown, for example, once represented (10).
came before, these postwar suburbs were distinctive in a few
ways: they were mass produced, which meant the homes often
looked the same (hence the “ticky tacky” suburban imagery);
they were affordable to a much greater cross-section of Americans, particularly working- and lower middle-class Americans;
and they reached higher levels of economic and racial homogeneity than ever before. Many new suburbs were developed by
large-scale builders, who built entire communities of similarlooking homes, sometimes reaching truly epic proportions.
Levittown, on Long Island, was perhaps the most famous of
these, with its more than 17,400 homes (11). But a number of
Sunbelt suburbs rivaled if not outdid the original Levittown.
Lakewood, California, was one of them. In 1949, three developers bought up 3,500 acres of land just north of Long Beach. From
1950 to 1952, a flurry of building activity transformed this farmland into a massive suburb. Teams of men built as many as one
hundred homes each day, over five hundred per week. D.J.
Waldie, who grew up in Lakewood and wrote a compelling
memoir about the suburb, described the process:
The result was “not a garden suburb,” as Waldie observed, but
rather a series of modest, stucco homes laid out side by side on a
grid pattern of streets. Within three years, 17,500 homes had been
constructed in Lakewood, making it the biggest housing development in the world in 1950 (12).
Despite its lack of beauty, homeseekers flocked to Lakewood
and embraced what it had to offer. GIs and their families, especially, came. “Your parents,” Waldie wrote, “arrive like pilgrims.”
When the sales office opened on Palm Sunday in 1950, twentyfive thousand people lined up to buy homes. Similar crowds
showed up on subsequent weekends. Thanks to the GI bill,
veterans could buy in with no down payment and a mortgage
payment averaging $50 per month. Two-bedroom homes sold for
$7,575, while a three-bedroom went for $8,525. The homes were
modest, 1,100 square feet on average, and buyers had a choice of
seven models. Most homes came with a new gas range, refrigerator, electric garbage disposal, and washing machine. Lakewood
also became renowned for its open-air shopping center, Lakewood
Center, which became one of the nation’s most successful suburban malls as well as a model for postwar retail centers nationally.
It eventually covered 264 acres, much of this devoted to parking—in 1954, its parking lot accommodated more than ten
thousand cars (13).
24 OAH MAGAZINE OF HISTORY • OCTOBER 2003
intentionally kept their distance from ‘mixed’ neighborhoods.
They also aimed for self-sufficiency by providing business
districts and cultural amenities within their borders. Residents
of a new retirement town never needed to leave their special
community or have much contact with the ‘integrated’ population outside. The choice of virtually complete segregation was
within their grasp.
Sun City offered it all: housing; shopping; and recreation.
It particularly emphasized its recreational opportunities. As
advertisements put it, those who moved to Sun City could
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Construction crews in thirty-man teams built the rows of houses.
Each team of workmen was subdivided by specialty. One man
with a pneumatic hammer nailed subfloors on five houses a day.
The framers finished lengths of precut lumber with new, electric
saws. Another crew operated a power door hanger. Rough
plaster laid by one crew was smoothed a few minutes later by
another. Subcontractors delivered construction materials in
exact amounts directly to each building site. Expediters coordinated the work from radio-equipped cars. The foreman used a
loudspeaker to direct the movement of his men . . . . The Los
Angeles Daily News described the construction of the houses as
a huge assembly line.
Lakewood residents were people of modest means eager to
embrace the suburban good life. Most belonged to the blue- or
white-collar middle class—averaging $5,100 annual income in
the 1950s. They were typically young families with young children. And they were overwhelmingly white. Despite a 1948
United States Supreme Court decision that outlawed race restrictive covenants, the Lakewood sales staff refused to accept applications from African Americans—similar to practices in Levittown
and other postwar suburban developments nationally. The result
was a community racially and economically homogeneous, though
diverse in terms of religious and regional backgrounds (14).
Lakewood residents embraced the “recreational good life” in the
postwar years. Their lives centered on family, children, and
recreation. This recreational ethos, in fact, came to act as a
unifying element in the community, bringing families together
around sports and play. Ultimately, recreation acted to promote
community building, to socialize youth, and to define civic spirit
and identity (15). This emphasis on recreation reflected the
broader urban ethos defining the Sunbelt experience. The Lakewood experience was replicated in numerous suburban subdivisions across the Sunbelt.
If Lakewood typified the mass-produced suburbs proliferating
nationally, the Sunbelt also spawned new kinds of suburban
communities. Historian John Findlay calls them “magic lands,”
themed communities that drew upon the Disneyland concept to
incorporate elements like: a controlled environment, insulation
from the outside world, homogeneous cohesion around a particular theme or identity, and an emphasis on leisure and consumption. Sun City, Arizona, was one such “themed” suburb. This
massive subdivision, outside of Phoenix, resembled Lakewood
and Levittown in its expanse of mass-produced homes. However,
it departed from those suburbs in three main respects: first, it
promised a familiar green suburban landscape but did so in the
middle of the desert; second, it targeted homeseekers from across
the nation, not simply from its adjacent city; and third, it had a
“conscious thematic orientation”—in this case, a leisure lifestyle
for the elderly. This retirement community would only allow in
residents aged fifty and over and it walled itself off from the rest of
Phoenix as a self-contained community with control over its own
destiny (and tax base). Sun City reflected Sunbelt tendencies on
a few levels: it was emphatically suburban; it was coherently
themed; and it was aimed at retirees.
Retirement communities like Sun City “represented the
ultimate in residential segregation by age.” These towns, as
Findlay notes:
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enjoy “earned pleasures,” “an unending treasure of perfect
the 1950s. In Phoenix, over 70 percent of subdivision homes
days filled with interesting activity,” like golf, parks, manmade
had septic tanks in 1958. This system of waste disposal polluted
lakes and waterfalls, and supper clubs. Sun City, in essence,
groundwater and had high failure rates, posing serious threats
dubbed itself as a resort for retirees. While some criticized
to the environment (17).
towns like Sun City for their
Socially, the suburban trend has tended to reinforce patemphatic exclusivity, aloofterns of segregation and inness from the broader meequality.
Although
tropolis, and tendency to
legalistic means for such
isolate the elderly, many
segregation have mostly
people responded enthusipassed, developers and
astically to their offerings.
homebuyers have continBy 1980, Sun City housed
ued to find ways to ensure
forty-five thousand people,
exclusivity in their comand a second community,
munities, through tools
Sun City West, was underlike CC&Rs (codes, covway adjacent to the origienants, and restrictions),
nal. Sun City became a
gated
communities,
model for similar retirement
antitenant zoning, politicommunities, which prolifcal insulation, and tax polierated especially in the
tics. The impulse for
West. This region led the
homogeneity persists as a
way not only because of its
residential ethos in suburfavorable weather but bebia, even in the context of
cause of a cultural orientastunning contemporary dition that embraced the
versity.
leisured lifestyle (16).
While these challenges
Since the 1980s, a more
continue to confound the
diverse array of suburban comSunbelt suburbs, I—like
munities has emerged in the
many—find myself drawn to
Sunbelt, reflecting the diverthem. I moved from Phoenix
sity of the population itself.
to a suburb of Los Angeles. I
Latinos, Asians, African
commute to work in San
Americans, and others have
Diego. I am living the costs
found their ways into suburand benefits. And I remain
bia in recent years. While the
fascinated by these places in
walls and barriers of towns
the process. ❑
like Sun City persist in many
Overhead view of clubhouse and man-made lake in Sun City, Arizona. (Image
Sunbelt suburbs, in other
Endnotes
courtesy of Sun Cities Area Historical Society.)
cases, those barriers have
1. Dana W. Bartlett, The
dropped and the suburban life
Better City: A Sociological
has opened up to a broad cross
Study of a Modern City (Los
section of Americans.
Angeles: Neuner Company Press, 1907), 71.
2. As quoted in Robert M. Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis:
Costs and Benefits
Los Angeles, 1850-1930 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of CaliThe suburbs in Sunbelt cities had much to offer their
fornia Press, 1993), 192.
homeseekers: spacious land, home ownership, the promise of
3. As quoted in Becky M. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and
leisure and recreation, and a semblance of local control. They
Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965
also offered more and more amenities—jobs, shopping, and
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 68.
leisure—within easy driving distance. Yet nothing comes free,
4. For example, see Bradford Luckingham, Phoenix: The History of
as we all know. The toll on the environment has been most
a Southwestern Metropolis (Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arijarring. Dependence on automobiles created choking air polluzona Press, 1989); Alejandro Portes and Alex Stepick, City on
tion in many Sunbelt cities. My memories of Phoenix winters
the Edge: The Transformation of Miami (Berkeley, Calif.:
are of gorgeous temperatures, but choking smog. In desert cities
University of California Press, 1993); Eugene P. Moehring,
of the Southwest, suburban sprawl also put tremendous presResort City in the Sunbelt: Las Vegas, 1930-1970 (Reno, Nev.:
sure on water supplies. Septic tanks were another problem.
University of Nevada Press, 1995).
Septic tanks were quite common in many postwar suburban
5. Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the
subdivisions, servicing roughly a third of new homes built in
United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), chap-
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26 OAH MAGAZINE OF HISTORY • OCTOBER 2003
ter 11.
6. Ibid., especially 42-4; Eric H. Monkkonen,
America Becomes Urban: The Development of U.S. Cities and Towns, 17801980 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of
California Press, 1988), especially 16467.
7. Carl Abbott, The New Urban America:
Growth and Politics in Sunbelt Cities
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of
North Carolina Press, 1987), 62-3.
8. A wonderful portrait of these industrial
parks is in John M. Findlay, Magic
Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
1992), chapter 3.
9. David R. Goldfield and Blaine A.
Brownell, Urban America: A History
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990),
369.
10. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 259-60.
11. Ibid., chapter 13.
12. D.J. Waldie, Holy Land: A Suburban
Memoir (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1996), 7-8, 11, 62. The three developers were Louis Boyar, Mark Taper, and
Ben Weingart.
13. Ibid., 13, 33-7, 63, 80-81.
14. Ibid., 37, 162.
15. Allison L. Baker, “The Lakewood Story:
Defending the Recreational Good Life
in Postwar Southern California Suburbia, 1950-1999” (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Pennsylvania, 1999), introduction.
16. Findlay, Magic Lands, chapter 4, quotes
on 168, 178.
17. Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of
American Environmentalism (New
York: Cambridge University Press,
2001), chapter 3.
Becky M. Nicolaides is associate professor of
history and urban studies and planning at the
University of California, San Diego. She recently published My Blue Heaven: Life and
Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of
Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (University of Chicago Press, 2002), and she is currently coediting The Suburb Reader (Routledge) with
Andrew Wiese.
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distribution, posting, or copying is strictly prohibited without written permission of the OAH.
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Organization of American Historians
Membership
Enrollment Form
The Stages of American
Urbanization
David R. Goldfield
T
26
cities was elusive. At the same time, the
city of the early 1970s, for all of its difficulties, possessed sufficient cultural, educational, and corporate resources to weather
social and economic strife. From a historical perspective, what occurred in the 1970s
and 1980s was less a resurrection than another transition in the ever-changing form
and function of American cities.
Specifically, Americancities have gone
through five phases of development. During
the colonial era, residents and commercial
That we are the most suburban nation on the globe
is less an indictmentofour
cities than a commentary
on our ideals.
activities clustered about the waterfront.
Between roughly 1790 and 1870, cities
expanded, driven by a marketplace economy. A distinctive downtown emerged,
residence began to be separated from work,
and some people left the city altogether for
more salubrious and spacious suburbs. In
the industrial era from 1870 to 1920, a
radialcenterpattern emerged. Downtown
remained the focal point for the metropolitan area, but residential and commercial
suburban development accelerated. The
equilibrium between city and suburb van-
ished in the era of the vital fringe from
1920 to 1970. This was America's suburban era.
After 1970, accompanying the transition to a service-oriented economy, the
multi-centered metropolis emerged, characterized by concentrated settlements on
the metropolitan periphery and a restructured central city.
Several themes tie these five stages of
American urbanization together. First,
changes in the national economy have not
only triggered changes within cities,
but have influenced relations between cities. Second, the story of
American urbanization is really the
tale of two cities. Divisions of class,
race, and gender have accompanied
each of the transitions and, at least as
far as class and race are concerned,
the separation has tended to widen
over time. Third, cities have been
centers of energy and innovation.
Cities have drawn creative people,
pioneered new technologies, and
stimulated new cultures. The city's
diversity, while confusing and occasionally threatening, has been a significant
factor in its survival. Fourth, the buying
and selling of real estate have been major
factors in the geographic expansion of
cities. The privatization of space, so different from European urban patterns has
also been a major factor in reinforcing
class and race divisions. Finally, there is
the matter of personal preference. Almost
as soon as they arrived in the city, urban
residents expressed a desire to leave. The
single-family home on a plot of land has
Magazine ofHistory
Downloaded from maghis.oxfordjournals.org at OAH member access on July 27, 2011
he past two decades have been
bewildering to urban historians.
In the early 1970s, most experts had pronounced the last rites over the American
city. "Dinosaur," "obsolete," "unlivable,"these were only a few of the adjectives
writers used to assess the condition of
urban America at the time. And who
would argue? Tom by race riots, abandoned by the middle class, and drowning
in a sea of red ink, cities had obviously
outlived their usefulness. By the late 19708,
however, a new pattern was emerging. "America Falls in Love with Its
Cities-Again," the Saturday Review enthused in 1978. That same
year, Harper's proclaimed, "The
Urban Crisis Leaves Town." The reevaluation continued into the 1980s.
Media lists touted the likes of Baltimore and Pittsburgh as "most livable" cities. Newark went from bust
to boomtown, and Cleveland received
accolades from the NewYorkTimes,
which announced in December 1988
that the perennial "mistake on the
Lake" was "now in a building boom" and
had recovered from its fiscal nightmares.
The changing diagnosis for urban
America was more a commentary on the
selective perceptions of the media than an
accurate understanding of the process of
urbanization. For the swelling homeless
population, the chronically poor and unemployed (termed the "underclass" to
emphasize both their permanence and
separation from the rest of society), and
those who live surrounded by a voracious
drug culture, the recovery of American
Library of Congress
The Mississippi River at
New Orleans, 1851. By the
mid-1850s, railroads running east from St. Louis and
Chicago had supplanted the
Mississippi as the nation's
major commercial artery.
The Colonial Town
The making of urban America was the
continuation of a process, not a new beginning. The Europeans came from country
farms, modest villages, and great cities.
The settlements they established in the
New World were adaptations of what they
left behind and what they found already
built in North America. They did not
create, in one historian's unfortunate metaphor, "cities in the wilderness." The Indian villages that dotted the landscape
Fall 1990
formed the structure of the early colonial
towns, which were also a blend of Old
WorId urban and rural forms. Most urban
residents cultivated the land, especially in
the first decades of settlement. Later,
farms sustained the towns and the growing
linkages between cityand countIyside helped
to build a thriving colonial economy that
grew to international dimensions.
Three features in particular characterized this early stage of urbanization. First,
towns took their shape from the land. The
key feature that distinguished them from
their European counterparts was the abundance of, and access to, land-acres of it.
Second, in the eighteenth century a social
structure emerged in the seaport towns that
was stratified but mobile; individuals
moved up and down the social ladder and
into and out of towns with relative ease.
Finally, institutions emerged to order the
urban fragments and reduce the friction
between them. Local government was
probably the most prominent ofthese institutions.
By the time of the American Revolution, the outlines of nineteenth-century
urban America were becoming clear-the
development ofan urban core region in the
northeast, the ordering of urban space into
distinctive land and social uses, and the
emergence of social classes. The colonial
towns were not miniature modern cities,
however. The largest, New York and
Philadelphia, probably had no more than
twenty-five thousand residents by 1775,
compared with London's population of
eight-hundred thousand at the same time.
Nor did the smaller interior settlements
experience all the internal and external
changes that took place in the colonial
seaports, though they were influenced by
these changes.
The Market Place, 1790-1870
The most dramatic change that occurred during this period was an increase
in urban growth. In 1790, roughly five
percent of the new nation's population
resided in cities. Thirty years later, the
figure had slowly risen to seven percent.
But every decade between 1820 and 1870
saw urban population grow three times as
fast as national population, so that by 1870
more than one out of four Americans lived
in cities.
The development of a national urban
economy accounted for a good deal of this
growth. Commercial connections among
the cities of the northeast generated profits
that entrepreneurs invested in manufacturing enterprises, transportation systems, and
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been a compelling, and for most urban
Americans, an attainable dream. That we
are the most suburban nation on the globe
is less an indictment of our cities than a
commentary on our ideals.
With these broad themes in mind, let
us survey the five stages of American
urbanization. Not all cities, of course,
experienced these stages at precisely the
same time. The dates are approximations.
Also, not all cities have gone through five
stages. Some have skipped the earlier
stages and others have remained geographically and economically small enough to
retain many of the features of nineteenthcentury cities. But the processes that have
produced the various eras of urbanization
have affected all cities.
David R. Goldfield
Lake Forest, Illinois. As early as the 1850s, commuter railroads facilitated suburbanization, a trend that accelerated in the years following the Civil War.
business services. Expanding economic
opportunities attracted newcomers from
the countryside and abroad, further fueling
demand and investment. In the meantime,
western cities were developing along simi1arlines. After 1840 both the supply of and
demand for goods and services had reached
proportions that made linking the northeast and the west a profitable undertaking.
Technology, especially the railroad, made
that connection possible. One important
result of the connection was an urban core
that extended in a broad crescent from
New England down through the Middle
Atlantic states, growing wider to encompass the Great Lakes cities and the Ohio
River valley before narrowing at St.Louis.
This linking of cities carried political
implications as well. The south's unique
agricultural and labor systems limited southern cities to a subsidiary role within the national economy.
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As the city expanded economically,
it grew geographically. A downtown
emerged, and so did residential neighborhoods within and outside the city. The new
apportionment ofspacereflected the growing separation of different groups in urban
society. New occupations and new ways
of organizing work expanded both the
middle and working classes, and the lifestyles of these two classes revolved
around domestic ideals, associational contacts, and leisure activities that differed
markedly. Racial and ethnic distinctions
further fractured the physical space and
social organization of the larger cities.
The social and economic distinctions
in urban society were disturbing to middleclass men and women. The city was still
sufficiently compact to offer visual confirmation of the contrasts of poverty and
plenty. These contrasts not only touched
the conscience of these religious people
The Radial Center, 1870-1920
Late nineteenth-century American
cities were "giant magnets" attracting a
numerous and diverse population. Between the Ci vil War and World War I, the
number of urban residents increased from
6.2 million to 42 million. The scale of
urbanization changed by 1900 to much
larger cities, and more of them. Unlike the
trend in Europe, where cities such as Paris
and Berlin absorbed most of the population increase, the distribution fell more
evenly among cities in the United States.
In 1820, New York, the largest city, contained eighteen percent of the country's
urban population; by 1890 its share had
fallen to seven percent.
Despite the relative evenness of growth,
a distinctive urban system had emerged by
1900 with New York and Chicago anchoring an urban-industrial core extending in a
crescent from New England to the cities
bordering on the Great Lakes. Nine of the
nation's ten largest cities in 1920 were
located in the region. Western cities such
as Denver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles were becoming dominant in their respective regions but were not major rivals
to the urban core. Southern cities continMagazine ofHistory
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but awakened their fear as well. The result
was the emergence of a middle-class urban
reform movement that infused public policy with a strong dose of morality.
Social reforms were part of a larger
effort to impose order on an increasingly
diverse and fragmented city. A similar
motivation had moved reformers in the
colonial era, but by the nineteenth century
the ordering of the American city required
the organized, systematic efforts ofprivate
groups and the continued expansion of
local government. Middle-class urban
reform came to encompass the public
provision of such vital services as health,
fire, and police protection. Although efforts in these areas fell short of expectations, they laid the groundwork for the
emergence of a trained urban bureaucracy
later in the nineteenth century. As in the
colonial era, one period of urbanization
led into the next.
Fall 1990
tion. These men and women were instrumental in building the service city-a city
that provided a broad range of services to
its citizens. Many urban services that are
taken for granted today owe their origin to
these dedicated individuals. Social services such as health, dental, and optometry
clinics, school hot lunch programs, and
employment centers originated during the
early years of the twentieth century.
Such necessary regulation of urban
growth as building inspections, zoning,
and civil services also emerged during the
Progressive Era, as did the commission
David R. Goldfield
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ued to function more as colonial outliers
than as equal participants with the great
cities of the north. Staple crop prices, the
devastation of the Civil War, and white
supremacy combined to keep demand low,
capital formation weak, and dependent
status strong.
In the established cities of the urban
core, changes in scale meant life changes.
Earnest young men with stopwatches patrolled factory floors calculating worker
movements and production quotas.
Commuter railroads and, in a few cities,
new subway systems proudly posted
schedules. A new phrase, the "rush
hour," captured both the pace and the splitsecond timing required for the new order
of things.
The destination of commuters was
invariably downtown. But downtown, for
all its diversity, reflected the growing
specialization and segregation of the city.
The city was a honeycomb of geographyeconomic geography as reflectedby downtown residential neighborhoods and suburbs; moral as indicated by the presence or
absence of saloons, dance halls, and related forms of entertainment; and political
geography, as reflected in the ward system, the allocation of services, and the
increase in annexed territory.
But segregation did not necessarily
equal fragmentation; there were numerous points of community. Department
stores, professional baseball games, and
vaudeville drew a broad clientele together
to engage in a new mass urban culture.
Museums also attracted a diverse audience. Newspapers created a common language and perception of the city. Public
schools offered a uniform curriculum to
moderate the diversity of urban life. Professionals joined peer organizations that
sharpened their expertise and provided a
senseofcommon purpose. Even skyscrapers eventually lost their identification with
specific entrepreneurs and businesses and
became city artifacts.
With an emphasis on professionalism,
research, and efficiency, reformers applied
their principles to local government, city
infrastructure, social services, and educa-
The Woolworth Building, New York City. Built in 1913, the Woolworth Building was among the early skyscrapers that transformed the scale and functions of downtown.
29
and city manager forms of government
that remain popular in small and mediumsized cities. Some reforms resulted in
important changes in family life. Compulsory schooling laws and restrictions on
child labor, for example, meant that children became more of an economic liability than an asset to working-class families;
the birth rate declined.
By 1920, more people lived in cities
than in the countryside. From its initial
role as an unwanted intruder into America's pastoral democracy, the city had come
to represent America itself.
30
The Multi-Centered Metropolis,
1970 to the Present
The 1970 census announced that the
United States had become a suburban
nation. But the rising suburb and the declining city-the two stock elements of
twentieth-century urbanization-were
overshadowed by new developments.
During the 1970s, non-metropolitangrowth
was greater than suburban growth, the
sunbelt (generally, the south and southwest) offered a new regional challenge to
the old urban core,and the urban core itself
changed. In the process a new urban form
emerged-the multi-centered metropolis.
As with previous urban forms, the
multi-centered metropolis evolved in the
context of a changing national economy.
Beginning in the late 1960s and accelerating in the succeeding decade, population
migration and economic development
favored the south and southwest at the
expense of the northeast and the midwest.
After nearly two centuries of dominance,
the old urban core now shared economic
and political power with the southern regions.
Within metropolitan areas another
shift was underway. The familiar central
city-suburb division evolved into a metropolitan area that consisted of several centers, one of which was the old central city.
Suburbs did not disappear, of course,
though some changed into more comprehensive communities that included many
functions once reserved for the central
city. And new communities emerged on
the periphery of metropolitan areas-outtowns, some called them: small cities
containing a variety of commercial, entertainment, and residential land uses. Many
of these new cities benefitted from the
"uncoupling" of certain corporate services
(forinstance, clericalwork, insuranceclaims
handling, and credit card processing) from
corporate headquarters in the central city,
a development facilitated by electronic
technologies. In the meantime, the central
city solidified its function as a headquarters location and also played a leading role
as the site for knowledge functions-the
gathering, processing, analysis, and distribution of information and services, especially in the banking, legal, insurance, and
education fields.
Metropolitan areas monopolized national growth in the 1980s; eighty-six percent of the nation's population growth
occurred there. New Jersey became the
first state to be entirely metropolitan; that
is, every citizen resided in one of several
metropolitan areas that covered the state.
All farmland in the state was also within
metropolitan boundaries.
The transformation to a service-oriented economy, the expansion of metropolitan areas, and the concentration of
function in specific communities within
those areas sharpened and deepened social
divisions. Physical and cultural separation
was great, and the optimistic middle-class
reform spirit of earlier eras had subsided.
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The Vital Fringe, 1920-1970
After 1920, the areas outside the citythe suburbs-became the most dynamic
areas of growth in the nation. The balance
between city and suburb broke down as a
result of the same basic forces that had
influenced urbanization in earlier periods:
technology, new patterns of economic
organization and activity, and migrations
of population. Technology supplied much
of the impetus and means for the formation
of the twentieth-century metropolitan
area, not only in terms of new transportation modes like the automobile and the
airplane, but also in manufacturing, construction, and more efficient means of
communication and marketing like the telephone, the radio, and television. Economic organization gained a new sophistication with the rise of corporations that
commanded untold resources and
stretched worldwide. The industrial city
evolved into the corporate city. The
emphasis of the economy shifted increasingly from heavy manufacturing to new
light industries and the delivery of professional and personal services to a growing consumer market.
The breakdown in metropolitan balance reflected less the decline of the city
than the assumption of new economic and
cultural roles. The city became a center
for activities that serviced the corporate
economy-banking, insurance, accounting,
education, and legal services; its industrial
and retail functions receded. The cultural
prominence of the city increased in terms
of mass culture-popular music, films and
sports--and high culture-museums, symphony orchestras, and libraries.
During the 1930s a new force emerged
as a factor in shaping the metropolis: the
federal government. Though federal policies, from tariffs to land grants, had affected cities in the nineteenth century,
federal-city relations were at best indirect.
This situation changed during the New
Deal era when massive government expenditures played a significant role in
metropolitan expansion. Washington did
not act so much as an innovator as a catalyst, reinforcing the movement to the vital
fringe and the consequent transformation
of the central city.
The metropolitan area became fragmented into scores of politically independent communities. The loss of population
and economic base in the central cities and
the consequent decline in revenues coincided with the influx of low-income, poorly
educated people who demanded additional
social services. The riots that engulfed
inner city neighborhoods during the 1960s
symbolized this urban dilemma. By 1970
the historic resiliency of the city was open
to question.
David R. Goldfield
ing the 1980s,and local governments, faced
with fewer state and federal revenues, emphasized economic development projects
and policies. Assessments of the health of
urban America depended on which city
one looked at: the city of the "haves" or
the city of the "have nots."
The Urban Future
Fall 1990
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Will future metropolitan residents be
willing and able to close social and economic divisions? Concerted efforts to
eradicate epidemic disease in the nineteenth century were not made until sickness and death spilled into middle-class
areas. In today's multi-centered metropolis, the distances separating groups are
much greater and the opportunities for
contact much less. The institutions that
once drew disparate urban residents together-the department stores, theaters,
sports teams, and newspapers-are scattered over various parts of the metropolitan landscape as well. We have not yet
demonstrated that we are willing to divert
the historic role of urban America as a
speculative enterprise to the role of social
reformer.
If it is difficult to foretell urban policies ofthe future, what about the evolving
shape of cities? More than a half-century
ago, Los Angeles offered a preview of the
multi-centered metropolis. Does anyone
city or metropolitan area today portend
yet another reorganization of space for
urban America? If suburbs have become
cities, will central cities assume the spatial
dimensions of suburbs? Medium-sized
cities such as Charlotte and Austin have
identifiable downtown concentrations
along with the knowledge functions associated with larger cities. Beyond downtown, however, they are collections of
residential neighborhoods and shopping
centers; they are, in effect, suburban cities.
The larger cities have demonstrated that
functions, not residents, account for prosperity. Will these cities continue to lose
population and become the home for only
the very rich and the very poor?
Finally, technology has played a major role in shaping urban America. Trans-
City Post Oak, Houston, Texas. The out-town of the 1990s with relatively dense office and shopping developments
held together by ribbons of highway.
portation and communications innovations,
building construction advances, and infrastructure technologies have influenced land
uses and reinforced economic transitions.
How will new energy sources, computer
technologies, and transportation innovations alter the nature of work and the way
we live--and hence the shape and function
of the city?
These questions have no immediate
answers. But the history of urban America
so far makes two things clear. First, the
experts who have the answers to these
questions will invariably be mistaken as
often as they are correct. Second, the city
will keep changing, and it will keep sur-
viving. The first European settlements in
this country were not beginnings but rather
continuations of urban life, both in Europe
and in America. "Continuation" describes
the dynamic process of urbanization well,
and that is the easiest prediction of all; the
process will continue. 0
David R. Goldfield is Robert Lee Bailey
Professor of History at UNC-Charlotte.
Houghton Mifflin has just published the
second revised version of his coauthored
urban history text, Urban America: A History. Goldfield received the 1983 Mayflower Award for his book Cottonfields
and Skyscrapers.
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