When America Became Suburban

5. Domestic Prosperity

101 5 D o m es t i c Pros p e r i t y No one factor brought about the parasitic urbanization of the postwar period. Cultural attitudes were biased against big cities, while the institutional tendencies of government and business favored nearly unfettered growth and ceaseless expansion into adjacent farmlands and open spaces. Without the great burst of prosperity that followed World War II and the corresponding expansion of the middle class, however, the forces of deconcentration and the seemingly inexorable decentralization stemming from demographic growth would not have reached such an unprecedented scale. An “affluent society” encased within the world’s first trillion-dollar national economy made possible a great wave of consumption that carried forward the era’s low-density development.1 Yet the postwar suburbs and the Sunbelt cities were not solely consequences of economic growth. They were also antecedents, simultaneously reaping its benefits and spurring the economy’s expansion. Parasitic urbanization was consequence and cause. Domestic prosperity owed its existence, in part, to the widespread adoption of a consumptionfocused suburban lifestyle and the communities that supported this way of life. The construction of single-family homes, the automobiles that they necessitated, and the public infrastructure that served them fueled the economy. The modest reinvestment occurring in declining cities also contributed to economic growth, but as a factor it paled in comparison to suburbanization and to the more encompassing disinvestment these cities experienced. The fact that the older, industrial cities were not redeveloped when the country was at its most prosperous is indicative of 102 Domestic Prosperity the profound rupture in urbanization processes. Essential to parasitic urbanization was decline in the midst of prosperity. Much like the urbanization story, the story of postwar domestic prosperity benefits from a global perspective.2 The affluence that the United States enjoyed after World War II was due largely to the country’s dominance of the world economy. For many of these postwar years, the nation ran a trade surplus, and the dollar occupied a privileged position in international currency markets. The restructuring of the international division of labor, with developing economies taking on manufacturing functions and developed economies specializing in business, educational, and financial services, buttressed what was happening domestically. The Cold War conflict that pitted the United States against the Soviet Union—capitalist markets against central planning, democracy against communism—further energized domestic production , of which military consumption was a leading component. Parasitic urbanization and domestic prosperity are two of the three pillars of the postwar transformation of the national identity. They enabled the country’s shift from an urban to a suburban society. The third pillar is the peculiar global dominance that the nation enjoyed during these decades. Because of the ideological challenge posed by the Soviet Union, suburbanization became ensnared in the international projection of American interests. The second pillar of this transformation involves the domestic prosperity that reigned from the late 1940s to the early 1970s and the role that suburbanization played in giving it visibility. “Postwar affluence took hold of the American imagination,” and Americans imagined themselves to be suburban.3 Postwar Economic Growth From just after World War II to the recession of the mid-1970s, the period of the short American Century, the country experienced unprecedented domestic affluence. One historian wrote that “never in the long annals of mankind had so many people in any nation enjoyed so high a level of prosperity.” The United States had become the world’s largest economy, and its place in the international web of trade and finance , diplomacy, and Cold War militarism “helped produce the most sustained and profitable period of economic growth in the history of world capitalism.”4 During this quarter century, the gross national product (GNP) expanded threefold. From 1948 to 1973, the economy grew at an annual rate that was over one and one-half times as large as that for 1929 103 Domestic Prosperity to 1948 and over twice as large as that which held sway after the recession of 1973–1975. Most importantly, this growth occurred while inflation and unemployment were at all-time lows. And since the country ’s population increased at a lower pace, a broad swath of residents were financially rewarded; median family income more than doubled. The proportion of households that could be considered middle-class was twice as big at the...