The 1950s: The Transfiguration Of American Culture

In the meantime, suburban population was growing and shifting during the post war years. Baby boomers brought much prosperity as they grew up and entered the work force. With so many people working and making a better living, growing families needed more room. Millions of Americans were leaving the cities for the suburbs. The growth of the suburbs after 1945 was due mainly to the large number of new homes financed by the G1 Bill which gave them low interest rate mortgages to purchase new homes. Tax deductions also made the move from urban areas to the suburbs

BABY BOOM AND SUBURBIA: Affordable housing, the desire to leave the cities, and racial fears were all factors that led to many white Americans to move to suburban areas. William Levitt was a main promoter of suburban living, he was contracted by the federal government during the war to quickly build housing for military personnel; Levitt applied the techniques of mass production to construction. In 1947, he set out to erect the largest planned-living community in the United States on farmland he had purchased on Long Island, New York.

The suburban life is a dream which people of all economic backgrounds sought. Although many families were not able to realize the ideal white picket fence suburb experience which one often imagines when speaking of the suburbs, they still created a suburb of their own. The desire for a suburban home to call their own was largely due to the notion that a home provided a sense of security; it was safety net (Nicolaides and Wiese 2006:213). This safety net could not be obtained in the central city because people were simply not able to buy an apartment or condominium and instead were simply forced to rent. Moving to the suburbs and purchasing a home was seen as a good investment, and people of all races wanted in on this investment.

The early Suburbs of London, and in addition a few in the United States, were constructed around the partition of diverse monetary classes. Amid the eighteenth century, rich entrepreneurs in London started to utilize landholdings around Westminster as an approach to evade the lower classes inside urban zones. After a century, the same happened in the United States around the urban areas of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Rural areas, for example, these, in view of class detachment, can best be portrayed as common enclaves. Here the rich could build up groups that mirrored their own particular qualities and convictions. After World War II finished, numerous Americans were avid to have youngsters on the grounds

California is a state with a lifestyle and identity all its own. One factor contributing to California’s unique singularity is the lay out of its cities and suburban areas. Unlike many metropolitan areas, which built up, California spread out, creating a commuter culture of loosely connected communities surrounding larger cities and urban areas. The popularization of suburban neighborhoods gained prominence and momentum in the 1950s, following World War II,and the influx of veterans returning home and starting families. That decade’s economic growth, attributed to government spending on the construction of interstate highways and schools, the distribution of veterans’ benefits and the increase in military spending, left Californians with high wages and low unemployment and inflation (The 1950s). These circumstances, combined with the ingenuity of new developers regarding the layout, construction and affordability of economically built homes, spear headed the creation of suburban communities in California. With thousands of new homes being built and purchased and hundreds of people

During the fifties the defining features of suburban life consisted of numerous booming prosperities which assisted in the generating of fulfillment, stability and unity as a nation. Post War reshaped the American Dream making it reality now that the immolation from the War and the great depression is ceased. With the economic growth rate doubling unemployment rates were now low thanks to the growth of national product; the boost in automobile production, schools,highways, and new technologies. This boost of the nation made it accessible for middle-class people to have more money to be able to buy land on the outskirts of city, have cars and make more babies. Americans would buy land and build boxed shaped houses all identical to one another

In “Suburbanization: USA” Robert Fishman describes the rise of suburbs in the United States, providing foundational historical information and explaining the ways in which American cultural norms contributed to urban decentralization. Growing up in the suburbs, I primarily thought of Chicago as a cultural center: fancy shops, nice restaurants, and museums. I never viewed it as a residential area. To think that suburbia largely did not exist 100 years ago, as Fishman explains, is astounding to me. My entire life has been spent in suburbs, and I know few people who hail from major cities.

The United States has always been a country of rapid growth, improvement and change. The transformation America went through for a few decades in the past century marked critically important events that influenced history to the fullest. Facing good and bad times, every citizen would agree to say the words of Martin Luther King Jr. “I have a dream.” Whether it was fighting for change and personal rights, or entertaining oneself to ignore the feeling of being deprived of daily necessities and ability to afford them, there came a time of social unity to address the substantial issues. Popular Culture impacted each decade in its unique and inimitable way, which brought forth changes critically necessary for the United States to be formed into

New styles and culture were experimented in the 1950s. This decade, towards women hairstyle emphasized a more informal look and less ornate look than those in the1940s, concentrating more on hairstyling products. The hair was styled by the influence of the people across the world and the way they wore their hair and the product that was being used such as the hair cream, hair oil and setting sprays. Women in this decade hairstyle was diverse, the length of the hair varied from short to medium length hair. Women would often get their style and the colour of their hair by pivoting role models such as a actresses and models from fashion magazines.

Pop culture took hold of America during the 150s with TV playing a role in this (Stuart 66). Before television, pop culture was spread through newspapers and magazines. People spent most of their leisure time out of the house. After TV was introduced in 1951, people began to tune into their favorite shows instead of going out. The 1950s were historically impactful and shaped the way we spend much of our leisure time today.

Initially, the leading factor in an influx of expanding suburbs was their strong economy. America had a substantial amount of money in which they could use to expand. At this point in time, they could afford food and other necessities which they couldn’t before. As a result of this

The drive for suburbanization reached its acme in England in the inter-war period. Whereas in the nineteenth century it had remained essentially a middle-class phenomenon, after the First World War, fuelled by a major government housing drive and a powerful reaction against high-density inner-city living, it also became the model for British working-class housing. The pace at which rural land was transformed into suburbia during 20 or so years between the two worlds were far outstripped that of any previous period. Outside the English speaking world, although the tradition of living in tenements continued, suburbanization quickened but was still slow compared with that in England and was to remain

During the 20th century technology had become more advanced, World War II had taken place, and suburbanization had quickly fallowed. When World War II ended families began to have more children and the economy boomed. Houses were built just outside the cities to accommodate the population shift allowing people to escape the dirty city life. Once the automobile had become accessible, allowing people to commute to work, people had began to move out of the cities they worked in and into these surrounding areas. This created the suburbs. Those who moved out of the city and into these suburbs tended to be white middle class families that could afford the larger houses in the more secluded areas. Different areas with different types and sizes of

Suburbanization is where there is a migration of people from what is considered the city to the areas outside of it. Its prominence can be seen in two major waves. The height of streetcars sparked the first suburbanization revolution where they allowed for accessibility to areas outside of the city. They helped to form the

Los Angeles is built on the vast and flat landscape; it was their opportunity to grow fast as a metropolitan. With this environment, the constant influx of population was enough to generate a significant community even outside of downtown. The urban sprawl started on its endless horizontal ground. However, soon they confronted the limit of the carrying capacity. L.A couldn’t handle its urban sprawl; it needed a solution to keep growing. Los Angeles couldn’t deal with the increasing housing demand and lacking of public space. Compared to other metropolitan, such as New York, Los Angeles showed the dramatic comparison in population density. “The urbanized area of Los Angeles was the densest in the country in 1990, more so than even New York City. The 2000 figure for the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana Urbanized area is 7,068 people per square mile, compared to 5,309 for the New York, New jersey-Connecticut urbanized area.”(Grey 90) In detail, 90 districts of L.A have more than 10,000 people per square mile. Especially Koreatown has the biggest number which is “42,000 square per mile” (LA times Sewell 2016). After decades, when it confronted its housing problem due to unaffordability, people finally realized there is no suburban area for them to move or build new housings in Los Angeles. They reached their limit of growing. “Unnerving lesson in man’s infinite capacity to mess up his environment.”(Grey 238) The population kept larger, the price of housing also increased. “Los