When America Became Suburban

3. Parasitic Urbanization

40 3 Pa ra s i t i c U r b a n i za t i o n The sudden loss of population from the industrial cities coupled with mass suburbanization and Sunbelt-city growth constituted a sharp break in the country’s developmental trajectory. They were the consequences of a profound rupture in the underlying dynamics of urbanization . After 1945, the distributive urbanization that had prevailed from the mid-1800s to the early 1940s gave way to parasitic urbanization. This was a turning point. No longer would national growth be shared; cities of the West and South along with suburbs throughout the country would prosper by draining people and investments from the older, industrial cities.1 Of course, turning points are never abrupt, and historical periods rarely have crisp boundaries. Yet the two periods are substantially different. The degree to which people clustered in cities, the frequency at which new cities came into existence, and the processes by which cities developed are hardly comparable. Moreover, postwar city growth took place in a different part of the country than did urban decline. The demographic realities and the workings of the national economy were also distinct. After midcentury, the environment for the large, industrial cities—cities that had dominated their metropolitan areas and made the United States into a prosperous nation and a global power— turned inhospitable. The decades after World War II brought forth novel institutional and social relationships that spurred a new round of economic expansion . From the stock market crash of 1929 that triggered a worldwide economic depression to the recovery years of the early 1940s, the United 41 Parasitic Urbanization States had stagnated economically and demographically. During the war, the decentralization of military installations and defense industries had presaged the suburbanization and regional shifts that soon followed. It was the cessation of the war and the return of prosperity, though, that released blockages to real estate investment, domestic consumption , residential mobility, marriage, and the raising of children. Into existence came a new set of social realities averse to simply expanding existing cities. Parasitic urbanization—a “breakup of the old urban form,” as Lewis Mumford put it—was the response.2 Distributive and parasitic urbanization are part of a larger historical dynamic in which societies grow and decline, expand and contract, in response to novel technologies and social arrangements. Development unfolds in long waves of institutional change. Driven by innovations that reshape the economy, these waves undergo qualitative transformations as the consequences of those innovations are depleted and new technologies and institutional relations are launched. Each wave creates , even as it is sustained by, unique patterns of urbanization. These long waves, moreover, are not confined to national boundaries . Development ebbs and flows in many countries simultaneously. This fact directs our attention to the transnational dimension of these transformations. The full meaning of American postwar central-city decline, mass suburbanization, and their cultural consequences can only be grasped by looking outside the United States. The country has never been isolated from international commerce, immigration, the flow of ideas, or regional conflicts. Nor has it, through either size or the sheer fact of its great wealth and power, managed to sequester itself from the predatory forces that rack other countries. In those fateful postwar years, its cities, weakened and vulnerable, were defenseless against such global influences. Urbanization’s Rupture An astute observer tracking urbanization in the early twentieth century—the growing population in cities, the expansion in the number of urban places—would not have predicted the reversal that first appeared during the 1930s and became virulent thereafter. Nor would that person have grasped the subsequent importance of incipient suburbanization . The initial loss of central-city population was easily explained away as a result of the economic depression; the population loss that followed as the 1940s waned and the 1950s unfolded was more perplexing. Commentators viewed the latter with cautious 42 Parasitic Urbanization concern and with an optimism that held that appropriate government interventions could reverse the trend. Even now, a contemporary of our earlier observer might interpret the aggregate data as suggesting a slowing-down of urbanization and a geographical adjustment, but certainly not a radical break in past trends. Looking more closely, we find a relentless and serious population loss that extended to the smallest of the central cities and that involved a radical rearrangement of the country’s population. This...