Sub-urbanization in America Essay

From 1890 to 1920, cities in the United States experienced a rapid growth that was unprecedented in years previous. This growth was caused by a number of factors and resulted in both positive and negative consequences. Such factors included, industrialization, technological advances, migration and immigration. Although American cities greatly improved by the expeditious urbanization, these factors also developed numerous challenges including pollution, sanitation problems, a need for environmental reform, political corruption, overcrowding, high crime rates and segregation.

For a majority of Earth’s history, its populous has been free to roam and live off of the land, maintaining a balance between the habitat and its inhabitants. However, as technology develops the earth is placed at an even bigger disequilibrium. In the places where massive sequoias reigned, high-rise apartments now stand. Just as water rushed through rivers, cars drive down streets. The populants of Earth continue to innovate, industrialize,and urbanize, but at what cost?

Today, Detroit, New York City and Chicago have many similarities They're highly populated cities with high crime rates, many homeless people, noisy streets and terrible traffic. In contrast, they attract many tourists with their tall skyscrapers, and their famous attractions. As well as similarities, there's also, many differences. Today, Chicago and New York City are known for having many job opportunities and luring people in with promising careers. Whereas in Detroit, it's known to be quite hard to find employment. These cities have gone on a long journey to get to where they're at today. I'll be discussing Detroit's history from around 1880 to 1910 and comparing it to the way Chicago and New York City was in the book, Sister Carrie written by Theodore Dreiser.

During the “Baby Boomer” era, following WWII, America underwent one of the largest demographic shifts and population growths in history. Huge amounts of home construction on the outskirts of America’s largest cities, known as “levittowns” became the new staple of the American dream, with the houses sporting two car garages, and white picket fences. These low density, predominantly middle class residential districts, were America’s first true suburbs. These suburbs were constructed mainly in response to the new postwar consumerism that enveloped the parents of the baby boomers. With the new economy, affordable housing, and most families becoming single income dependent, families grew bigger and bigger. The 1947 passing of the bill that lead to the interstate highway system, only added fuel to the fire of suburbanization. With the new interstate highway system, more affordable and fuel efficient automobiles, and the government aiding in the financing of new suburban homes, the choice seemed elementary. All of these factors pushing to the suburban movement, only spurred the baby boomers on, and between 1940-50, there was an 835% percent increase in living births with nearly 4 million children being born every year. In 1940, 19.5% of the United States population lived in what would be considered to be suburban areas outside of large metropolitan areas, however, by 1960; the number was pushing nearly 40%. The postwar suburbanization of America during the baby boomer

The concept of suburbia quickly morphed into something far different from country living. Over the years, urban sprawl has created vast suburbs. Instead of local shops, the suburbs we know today have large malls full of box stores. Highways connect our suburbs to the city center instead of railways and the modern suburb doesn 't have the same sense of community that the original suburbs had. According to the documentary, "suburban life" and everything that comes with it has been packaged and sold in bulk to many Americans and Canadians. And this package we call "The American Dream", which is simply of a mockery or a satire of what the original suburbs used to be like, is

Detroit, Michigan grew up around the automobile industry. At its peak, Detroit was the fifth-largest city in the United States, becoming the home to over 1.8 million people by 1950 (Davey, Monica 2013). The prolific population was due greatly to the success of the auto industry in the city. At that time, Detroit was flying high, its name coined “The Motor City” (americaslibrary.gov), and automobiles greatly impacted commercialization. From transporting goods to hastening production, to selling parts, to manufacturing and selling new automobiles, the auto industry completely transformed Detroit. Things seemed

This paper explores the economic restructuring and revitalization of Detroit Michigan post World War II until today. The purpose of this research paper is to show the history of Detroit’s auto and manufacturing industry, in what ways it has changed in recent years, and how it has helped define the economy of Detroit and damaged it. This paper suggests that the deindustrialization of plants and industries and the depopulation of whites to the Suburbs have triggered the economic downfall of the Motor City. Some social issues such as race discrimination and segregation that might have led to the riots of 1943, and 1967, and the migration of African Americans to Northern States in search of employments will be discussed as well. In

The author Kenneth Jackson suggest that "suburbanization has been the most private but normal way for American life," and it is still one of the most influential diagrams when it comes to the styles of American rural areas. He also talks about how the car, government projects, prejudice, and various other monetary, political, and social conditions made it more idealistic to push for advancement outward which in return caused for the demolishing of urban communities one by one. Jackson starts off by talking about the contrasting lodging designs in America vs. the ones in Europe. He also makes mention of the revolutionary nature of the five spatial chacrteristics that were shared worldwide by every major city in the world in 1815. During this time the most economical and easiest way to get around was on foot and as a result the term “walking cities “was

In Chapter 2 of the text “Slavery, Emancipation, and Class formation in colonial and Early National New York” explores the centrality of slave labor and race to the development of class relations in colonial and early national New York City. In the 1600’s slave labor was noted as the central point to New York’s colonial economy and to the survival of European culture. The North colonial economy relied more heavily on slavery for free laborer than Manhattan. As a result of the slave era African American males and females became to central force and the foundation of New Yorkers ‘slave economy. Between 1600 and 1738 the slave population

Over the lase few decades. texas has remained as one of the foundational conservativeand Republican states across the nation. Voting patterns, influenced by a variety of factors like ethnicityand religionalong with rediscticting boundries play crucial roles in the distribution of votes for primary elections, presidential elections, and state government policies. For the past 25 years, although Texas has consistently and largely remained Republican, immigration, education, urbanization, and multiple other factors have shifted the political mindsets of population within the state.

Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Chrysler Corporation, Dodge Brothers and Packard Motor Car Company all had automobile manufacturing and assembly processes in the city. Detroit provided many manufacturing jobs, shopping, entertainment, transportation, and housing. The 143 square miles of Detroit wasn’t quite enough room so the suburbs also began to develop. (The rise and fall of Detroit: A timeline. (2013, July 19). Retrieved December 05, 2017, from http://theweek.com/articles/461968/rise-fall-detroit-timeline) Detroit would be defined as urban because it had a build-up of the central city and spread into the suburbs. The population wasn’t high enough for it to be a megacity and with the globalization of auto production, Detroit never really reached the world city

On July 18, 2013 The City of Detroit became the largest city in United States history to filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in the amount was 20 billion dollars (Bomey,Priddle,Snavely 2013). How does once an productive city fall so far it has resort to filing for bankruptcy? This story of Detroit's bankruptcy starts in the 1950's. The City of Detroit has its highest population to date which is 1.85 million,which includes 290,000 manufacturing jobs (Weber,2013). With the promise of jobs that the City of Detroit offers, this attracts many African Americans from the south to move to the City of Detroit to find work. However many strikes begin to happen because many of their whites counterparts did not want to work with African Americans at that time. Next there is the expansion of the Big 3 (Ford, Chrysler, General Motors) many of these factories were not built in the City of Detroit, they were built in the suburbs of the City of Detroit. This led to many middle class whites to move from the City of Detroit to the suburbs for jobs and to start a new life for their family. Third there is the development of technology, majority of the jobs located in factories are done

Through the creation of suburban neighborhoods middle class families have been able to achieve upward mobility. With the creation of suburban neighborhoods in the 1950’s it gave families the opportunities to go out and buy their little piece of the American Dream. The time of poverty from the Great Depression was over as was the second World War and then it was a time that the American Dream was well within reach. However with this outward expansion, for those who could not afford to leave, it also brought about a higher crime rate, as well as lower educational standards in the people living in the inner cities. Today suburban neighborhoods can be seen to have many different stereotypes in the media as well. Suburbia, when it was born

In July 2013, Detroit, one of the biggest cities in the United States of America, filed for bankruptcy. Some say that the economic downfall of Detroit was due to thousands of people leaving the city and others say it was due to the racial tensions that the blacks and whites had with each other. Both of those things did happen, but I believe they happened because of a greater cause. I believe that the reason Detroit’s economy fell apart was due to the city’s government and their poor administration.

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,