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Background of Suburbanization and Car Culture in the US: A brief review

Early Suburbs Via Rail Lines

The primitive versions of suburbanization began with the rail lines extending outskirts of cities and with those who could afford to get a car and a country house in 1920s and 1930s. The suburban settlements via rail lines still maintained a centered structure. They were formed by clustered and mixed-use developments. Suburbanization as we know of today - centerless and made up of detached one family houses, began and got established with the rapid rise of car sales to ordinary Americans (Gilham 29).

Rise and Dominance of Automotive and Oil Industries

Levittown models flung families away from cities and from any practical center. It didn’t make sense to live in a Levittown or in any suburb without a car (Bird 1994).

The sky-rocketing car sales meant phenomenal increase in the car production. “Motor vehicle registration jumped from 31 million vehicles in 1945 to 49 million in 1950” (Dilger 18). It was not a coincidence that General Motors became one of the biggest and most powerful U.S. companies along with the companies that capitalized on oil.

Neither was it a coincidence, as the documentary film Taken for a Ride makes a point to remind, that Charles Erwin Wilson became the Secretary of Defense in 1953. He also was the president of General Motors. During his controversial confirmation hearings, forced to make a defending argument about a possible conflict of interest between his position as the Secretary of Defense and his large stock holdings with the GM, he stated, "…for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa" (Goddard 116). Also in the same year, Francis DuPont, a long time loyalist stock holder with the GM, became the Chief Administrator of Federal Highways.

Furthermore, as Taken for a Ride highlights, the GM and its subsidiary companies were involved since 1930s in buying up the trolley lines of many U.S. cities. Once acquired, these trolley lines were poorly maintained and operated. Soon the riders of these once very efficient public transit means began to complain about them. They were then promised with the service of buses, which were to replace these trolley lines. It should be noted that these buses were produced by the GM. They were to use the gasoline of oil companies that the GM had formed tight alliances with.

Federal Highway Project and the Direct Representation of Automotive and Oil Companies in the Administration

There was more to the extent of the automotive and oil industries’ power and interests, however. These industries were also the primary responsible parties which convinced the U.S. government, with conveniently Charles E. Wilson as the Secretary of Defense and Francis DuPont as the Chief Administrator of Federal Highways, to fund and implement the enormous project of building the interstate highways under the pretext of national security, further taking away government resources from railroads and urban public transportation systems up until the present days.

Spread of fear to the point of epidemic chronic paranoia among the Americans become mature enough in 1950s to control and masterfully orient the masses in the specific direction towards which oil and automobile industries had been heavily investing. In 1956, the US Congress approved a $25 billion bill that is known as the Interstate Highway Act, which put in motion the construction of forty-one thousand miles of superhighways all throughout the US. “The Official name of the new highway system was the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways” (Gilham 35). Gilham goes on to note that “in 1951, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists had devoted an entire issue to the topic ‘Defense through Decentralization.’ Three years earlier, the National Security Resources Board had warned that concentration of industry in the cities left the national economy badly exposed in case of a nuclear attack.”

President Eisenhower named General Lucious D. Clay, one of his trusted advisor and colleague in the military, as the chair of the President’s Committee on the National Highway Program. Interestingly also, one of General Clay’s many activities and responsibilities included being “…a member of General Motor’s board,” as indicated by the archives of the Department of Transportation.

Robert J. Dilger summarized “…the arguments of those favoring the creation of an interstate highway system” in General Clay’s words who testified before the House Committee on Public Works on April 20, 1955:

Civil Defense/Slaughter and Motor Vehicles

There are several points to note in these words by the President’s Committee on the National Highway Program.

Firstly, as mentioned above, the tone is such that it makes the automobile’s becoming “a very vital part of our economy…[and] of our family life” sound like a result of a natural process. “It has become” this important in our lives as if this was the next most natural phase in the evolution of our civilization. As if Standard Oil, General Motors, Ford etc. were mere agents of nature who did exactly what their ‘natural’ almost ‘divine’ mission had imposed on them to do. As if everyone else, for their part, had to do whatever is necessary to adopt to this phase. And the most logical way to stay in tune with the nature’s seamless progress was to lay down as much highway as possible and to house people as far apart as possible from each other in order to stay mobile harmoniously with the nature’s direction.

Although we would, of course, not expect it to take place, a historically more accurate account would have clearly implied that the oil and automotive industries have been very successful in making the automobile an inseparable part of our economy, life, and culture by mercilessly pushing aside all other viable alternatives and by modifying the human ecology in the States in accordance with their profit agendas. And now that they are more powerful than any other entity in the country, we have no other choice but go along with their plans and designs. One of the most crucial component of these plans and designs is laying down more highways and dispersing the population across the land where they would have to use a car if they want to get anywhere for any reason.

Although we would, of course, not expect it to take place, a historically more accurate account by General Clay on that hearing would have clearly implied something like this: “The oil and automotive industries have been very successful in making the automobile an inseparable part of our economy, life, and culture by mercilessly pushing aside all the other viable alternatives and by modifying the human ecology in the States in accordance with their profit agendas. And now that they are more powerful than any other entity in the country, we have no other choice but go along with their plans and designs. Two of the most crucial components of these plans and designs are laying down more highways and dispersing the population across the land, where they would have to use a car if they want to get anywhere for any reason. But this is not all as bad as it sounds, folk. It may financially prove to be beneficial. I myself, for example, am on the General Motors board and I make decent money, besides my salary as a general. I think many of you, too, will make a killing out there with the new economy. Good luck to you all and God bless America!”

Secondly, the civil defense arguments that convinced the US to spend hundreds of billions of dollars up to this day should be modified. General Clay mentions that the interstate highway system is designated as an essential component of civil defense “for the dispersal of population in the event of atomic attack.” One statement here is true: the interstate highway system has been essential in the dispersal of population. It is difficult to believe, however, that the dispersal was essentially created for the civil and national defense purposes. History since 1956, the year that the Interstate Highway Act was passed, rather tells that the all-round campaign for the Act was essentially “for the movement of the house wife to shopping, and for the movement of the worker to work.” In the meantime, “the monetary cost of U.S. motor vehicle accidents in 1986, for example, was estimated to be $74.2 billion….Motor vehicle fatalities for the period of 1977-88 exceed all U.S. battlefield fatalities in all wars from the revolutionary war through the Vietnam War” (Loeb et al. 2). So, General Clay ties the rate of fatal traffic accidents to the insufficiencies of highway system, even 30 years after his testimony, after $74.2 billion and after having constructed 42,000 miles of new highways, they were not able to stop the high rate of death on roads. In fact, the additional cost of traffic due to death, serious injuries, material loss, productivity loss, and health loss has increased when we consider the accumulative damage of wasteful land-use, and air, water, and soil pollution on human beings and all other forms of beings.

Moreover, dispersing people across wide tracks of land and making them absolutely depend on private vehicles for transport in case of a disaster (military or natural) is hardly a sound argument. All highways where people are on the move are prone to get clogged and immobile very quickly. This is confirmed by the daily congestions every morning and evening during rush hours all across the States. What would be the state of same highways in case of a disaster? Everybody would hope on their cars and try to get out as fast as they could. But because everybody does the same thing, they would soon find each other stock on the same road. Although fiction movies can not be cited as evidences in this case, it is interesting to remember scenes in almost all disaster movies where thousands of cars, vans, SUVs, and trucks are stuck on highways. In September 2005, however, what Huston-TX experienced when it was menaced by the Hurricane Rita was not fiction. It took the population for days to evacuate the area.

Civil defense does not imply that each individual is for him or herself in case of a disaster, that they should do their best to survive within the limits of their own means and capabilities. In case of a disaster, you would not want to hear from civil defense officials: “Hey, if you have car, lucky you! Get out now! If you don’t, tough luck, body! We don’t have any help to offer you other than reminding of miles of well maintained highways. You should have worked harder and get yourself a car, loser!” Yet, one is tempted to think that this is exactly what happened in New Orleans.

But even this advice by such civil defense officials would not be accurate because, as mentioned above, the more individuals hop on their cars to get away, the more immobile highways get. In this scenario, everyone is a loser, whether that is during an atomic attack or during a hurricane.

Instead, resources should be diverted for two purposes:

1. To make mass transit and other modes of travel more widely, cheaply, and accessibly available for the masses.
2. To make cities more livable - not merely tolerable but functional, practical, efficient and yet more beautiful, accommodating, affordable, and healthy.

As David Banister argues, “With the growth in population, the city must remain the focus of human activity with some 70-80 per cent of the world’s population living in cities. Within the changing global economy, we must visualize the sustainable city of the future” (19). The world population is growing and the number of people that cities accommodate is increasing. Suburbanization and transportation system as we have witnessed in the US last 50 years have proved to be quite far from sustainable. Moreover, American life style continues to be a model for the world’s population as the cultural imperialism of the US is still a dominant force throughout the world. The American dream is dreamt and realized not only in the United States but also anywhere where people watch Hollywood films and American shows. Suburbanization is not good for the States and not good for the world. Based on our experience in the last century, between a bleaker and brighter future, cities represent the brighter node.

Federal Housing Act of 1949 and Suburbs

The policies of Federal Housing Act (FHA) formed the second major column of suburbanization. “At the end of the World War II, the work of the FHA was augmented by the passage of what came to be called the G.I. Bill. This act created a Veteran’s Administration (VA) loan program aimed at helping returning veterans afford new homes. Modeled after the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), the VA program achieved many of the same ends. It also added further accelerant to the suburban home-building conflagration that soon consumed the nation” (Gillham 37).

Federal Housing Act’s subsidies loan program was heavily one sided towards building single one-family houses outside of cities. FHA’s guidelines made specific recommendations to not build in densely populated, older neighborhoods of cities. This was soon to be called 'redlining', which worked to leave many minority urban neighborhoods in the margins of investment that went into residential and commercial development. With the Federal government’s blessing, within a decade developers built hundreds of thousands of houses on wide tracks of lands outside of cities. Prototype for these housings was the Levittown model. Invariably, these suburban houses were populated by the middle and working class white people.

What remained in the cities, in the meantime, were the underinvested urban neighborhoods. While demographics of suburbs were remained homogenously middle-class white, demographics of many neighborhoods in cities were increasingly becoming a mixture of underserved minority groups, mainly blacks and Hispanics.

In a sense, it could be asserted that the planning of suburbs as segregated areas was done at the federal level. Perhaps, the way Robert Moses had been gaining power since 1920s and becoming an uncontrollable power at regional level by 1950s is beyond coincidence or his personal skills and wit. His course to power was set at the federal level, as well.

Soon after the white flight from cities to detached one-family houses in suburbs, manufacturing jobs, retail and popular entertainment entities flocked to suburbia. “By 1963, more than half of all industrial employment in the United States had moved to the suburbs. By 1981, almost two-thirds of all manufacturing in the nation was taking place in suburban industrial parks [and] nearly two-third of all retail trade in the nation took place in large shopping centers outside the center city” (Gillham 39).

Cities Out of Favor

Unlike downtown commercial centers, however, these suburban shopping malls were inaccessible to all but to car users. Only transportation mode that gets consumers to these places is the private motor-vehicle. An overwhelming majority of malls do not have any public transportation services. They are surrounded with wide barren areas of parking lots.

When these manufacturing jobs were leaving cities in the early years, there were several factors involved:

1. The rents and taxes were cheaper in suburbs.
2. There was more space to operate in.
3. Access to these manufacturing locations in suburbs was easier.
4. A large portion of the white working class population had moved to suburbs.

Most of these jobs, too, like shopping malls, were accessible only by car. And only a small number of companies provided shuttle services.

The connection between city demolition, suburbs, and cars was established as early as 1920s. Le Corbusier made models of huge apartment complexes that could be categorized as walled-up cities. In these models, the automobile was glorified. It was the center of attention in terms of design and space. Apartments were designed in such a way that it would be both unnecessary and very difficult for the residents to leave their complexes. They were prison-like residential skyscraper and supposedly self-sufficient since the designs included shopping malls, entertainment centers, parking lots, bus stops etc. within the complexes. “Le Corbusier viewed older cities such as Paris as antiquated, dark, congested, and unsanitary. Worse, these old medieval cities were totally unsuited to the automobile. In 1925, Le Corbusier unveiled his Voisin Plan for the renewal of Paris.(…) The Voisin diorama was part of a larger exhibit in the Pavilion de l’Espirit Nouveau, which was financed in part by the Voisin automobile company. The plan proposed nothing short of the demolition of almost all of the historic city of Paris north of the Seine River” (Gillham 42).

It is not a coincidence that Le Corbusier’s concept was sponsored by and exhibited in the Voisin Auto Company’s pavilion. Moreover, it is no a coincidence that his concept was more fully embraced by the American entrepreneurs, made up of big auto and oil companies. Parisians did not go along with Le Corbusier’s plans and kept their neighborhoods. New York, on the hand, abandoned its neighborhoods to the pro-highway plans of Robert Moses, who was influenced by Le Corbusier and awarded by General Motors for his services. One version of Le Corbusier’s model was the housing projects that were planted in parts of major cities as part of the urban renewal campaign. This campaign itself was a part of the suburbanization and highway expansion project.

Not surprisingly many dynamic, lively, and cherished neighborhoods of New York, Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens were designated as slums and demolished. In their places, expressways and mono-type housing projects were erected. These projects ignored all the essential elements that made a lively, functioning, and self-sustaining urban neighborhood. They also embodied the future reality of urban ghettos since they were partly conceptualized to confine certain minority groups within a designated and remote location. Expressways served as think, hard-to-cross division lines in these locations (Burns 2001).

The other version of Le Corbusier’s model was developed by the French public housing policies. The public housing projects that were developed in 50s, 60s, and 70s accommodate working class families, most of which were immigrants. Today, these public housing complexes are the arenas for teenage rioting. These energetic yet deeply unhappy, disappointed, and disoriented youth groups express the resentment that was repressed for years by their bearers and denied or ignored by the French. These riots bring mind the urban riots of 1960s and 1970s, which expressed the frustration and disenchantment of residents in these neighborhoods.

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