Taking Back the SuburbsThe Fair Housing Act at Fifty

Though many Americans still picture a "suburb" as an all-white enclave with big houses bordered by white picket fences, suburbs today look quite different from the 1950s stereotype. Most suburbs are racially diverse, and even increasingly impoverished. The city-suburb dichotomy that has defined American politics for decades is breaking down. Nevertheless, political battles, at least rhetorically, continue to be fought along familiar geographic lines. But this state of affairs can't go on forever. Either old living patterns will reassert themselves benefitting the right, or new political coalitions will be forged, taking advantage of modern political topography, benefitting the left. Which way things go may end up depending on the survival and enforcement of the Fair Housing Act—the very law that so dramatically changed the American metropolitan landscape in the first place.