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).
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.
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
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:
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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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:
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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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