Suburbs and Race
The Spatial Influences of Jim Crow
America began as a society of rural farmers, coexisting with urban industries. By the late 19th and early 20th century this country experienced a migration from the farms to the cities that eventually overtaxed the ability of municipalities to provide basic services. This ultimately led to a new outmigration to newly developed suburbs. While suburbs have always provided a respite from minorities and new immigrants, in the post World War II era the government inadvertently facilitated the race-based spatial divide through housing and transportation policies.
The Historical Development of Suburbs
While the general public typically regard the post World War II era as the initial origins of suburbanization, the process actually began in this country almost a half century earlier. The technological developments that led to the gas-powered engine required new surfaces in order to better facilitate the urban movements of cars. Furthermore, these new surfaces led to an unforeseen alteration of urban life. Where streets were once an area of socialization, they were rapidly becoming arteries in new transportation systems. These new arteries quickly facilitated the creation of suburban housing.
Spatial Patterns of Suburbanization
Suburbanization in the U.S. developed out of two economic realities found in cities. First, land becomes progressively cheaper away from the urban core. Secondly, the population becomes less dense and more homogeneous away from the urban core. A recognizable pattern soon emerged at the beginning of the 20th century as the upper and middle classes left the urban cores for the promises of private home ownership, green grass, and physical separation from the new influx of foreign and minority newcomers.
A cyclical demographic movement was underway. As more and more of the moneyed classes fled the inner cities, their previous housing became occupied by increasingly more economically distressed families in need of greater municipal services that, in many cases, they could not pay for. This ultimately led to an increase in taxes thus making suburban housing more and more attractive to those wealthy enough to own cars. This cycle was played out over and over again in cities across this country.
However, there are examples in other countries where suburbs had a different spatial impact on cities. In South Africa, for example, the moneyed classes live in the cities’ core to better access city services and amenities. This meant the poor are forced to the suburbs and must face the daunting commute to the inner cities. Homogeneous environments are crucial to the development of both spatial models, but in the U.S. real estate developers wield immeasurable influence in local politics and urban development.
Conclusion
Suburbanization will always be associated with white flight, even though blacks and other minorities joined the exodus by the 1970s. However, the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v Board of Education (1954) made the idea of a homogenous environment free from minorities and the ensuing racial strife of the 1950s and 1960s more and more attractive. The result has been the spatial development of concentrated poor in the inner cities surrounded by rings of the white moneyed classes.
References
Jackson, Kenneth. Crabgrass Frontiers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
McShane, Clay. “Transforming the Use of Urban Space: A Look at the Revolution in Street Pavements, 1880-1924.” Journal of Urban History 5, no 3 (May 1979).
Spatial Deconstruction in D.C.
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