Suburb and United States Essay Example for Free

Suburb and United States Essay The Suburbanization of North America although not commonly realized, is indeed one of the most striking features of the 20th century. For North Americans this process has changed where we live and how we live. No longer is the city and countryside completely separate, rather for many of us, these two ideas have formed together into a new urban environment. More people today live in suburbs than cities, and these entities have continued to meld, amalgamate, separate, conjoin and coexist. Consequently, a study of Suburbia and its origins is often subjective. A common definition of a suburb is â€Å"a community within a commuting distance of a central city. † However, this statement doesn’t always hold true as someone who lives in Hamilton or Guelph and commutes to Toronto every day for work probably do not consider themselves residents of Toronto. Massive areas of continuous urban development like Megalopolis in the American north east and southern California are the result of the massive move towards suburbs. The question still remains as to whether suburbs will continue to work for us. The relative prosperity of North America and cheap oil of the 20th century are what allowed suburbia to happen. As for the question of whether Suburbia will continue to remain as the dominant form of living on this continent, only time shall tell. More importantly, it is important to understand the origins and magnitude of Suburbia up to this point in time if one is truly to be prepared for the possible challenges of the future. Although the automobile suburb did not come about to until the 1920s in North America it is important to understand the pre-existing conditions, history and factors that lead to the first ‘modern’ suburbs. Both the United States and Canada were founded as rural colonial hinterlands. Despite the importance of the early towns and cities, at the time of the American Revolution, only one in twenty citizens lived in an urban setting. Alas, the United States was a rural nation of farms, plantations and men living on the frontier. It was in this rural setting that the American mindset was born. Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 â€Å"Frontier Thesis† claims that the innovative and individualistic mindset of the archetypical American is a result of the nation’s experience on the western frontier. Consequently, one can see the appeal of the individualistic and country living experience that suburbs would later offer. Despite this rural ideal, the 19th century and industrial revolution witnessed a massive movement towards the industrial city. Much like the future development of suburbia, early industrial expansion was unplanned and chaotic. By 1890 there was 160,000 miles of railroad tracks in the United States and cities like Chicago and New York’s population were exploding as a result of natural increase and millions of immigrants arriving from Europe. These American industrial cities became overcrowded, dirty and miserable for most of the working class. The industrial American city began to resemble its English counterparts from across the Atlantic. Indeed the description of ‘Coketown’ from Charles Dickens’ Hard Times had become migrated across the ocean onto North American shores. The dissatisfaction that came from living in Industrial cities manifested itself in several ways. Firstly, it should be noted that most of these cities were walking cities and main means of transportation was walking from place to place for the poor. Consequently, everything from industry to residences was relatively close to each other and the central business district or CBD. The City Beautiful movement, Sir Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City movement and the creation of Central Park in New York are all examples of yearning for green space and connectedness with nature. These projects and ideas were not only concerned about aesthetics, but rather, they were concerned with promoting social order, civic virtue and increasing the quality of life. So it was that the country and nature would penetrate into the borders of urbanism during the mid to late 19th century. However, as certain technologies became available it would be the country that would begin to be breached by Urbanism. In actuality, the first suburbs were established well before the mass or rapid transit of the late 19th century. Wealthy merchants of the 18th century established the first suburbs in London when they built their second homes within a carriage ride from the city. â€Å"Soon many of these merchants were living permanently outside the cities where their businesses were located. They were creating the first true dormitory suburbs†¦small communities in a near-rural setting. † Horse car suburbs no further than a 30 to 40 minute carriage ride from city were available to the wealthier of citizens whom could afford the 15 to 25 cent round trip fares. Frank Sprague’s perfection of the electric street car in 1888 facilitated a massive suburban explosion of â€Å"streetcar† suburbs. Although considerably more compact in land usage as later suburbs will be seen to use, â€Å"street car† suburbs would lead the charge in centrifugal movement of cities. Established closely to rail lines these residences would provide detached housing that would be impossible for the middle class within the city. Unlike our modern suburbs of today, these developments had little in the way of services. Consequently, people went home to sleep and be with family, as the residents of these new ‘street car’ suburbs’ affairs were all but entirely within the city. There were positive and negative consequences to the massive suburban growth created by the street car. Firstly, the electric street car allowed for someone to live up to ten miles away from the city core and still get to their place of business within 30 minutes. Furthermore, factories like the steel plants in Gary Indiana could now be established outside the city core on ripe land or ‘greenfield sites. This suburbanization of industry â€Å"encompassed a progressively broader cross section of groups, with the result that there began to emerge a differentiation of suburban neighborhoods according to occupation and income. † The massive exodus of middle class citizens from the downtown area changed the way its space was utilized, focusing on non-residential uses of land. Some 80,000 new residenc es were built in Chicago from 1890 to 1920, this massive centrifugal movement of people created opportunities for commercial development along rail junctions. This ultimately had the effect of ending the simple city structure with a single focal point. Before the advent of the automobile era, these street car suburbs of the late 19th and early 20th century had a massive effect on shape and character of a city as the rail lines became the arteries for all commercial, residential and industrial development. The period of suburban infill starting in the 1920s was a result of the success of the internal combustion engine and the industrial processes pioneered by Henry Ford. The aforementioned desire to live the country life and escape the wretches of urbanism did continue into this new period. In fact, the versatility of the car or bus over rail would increase the numbers of people who would and could make a life in suburbia as opposed to the city. Two important components were necessary for the new automobile suburb. The first necessary component was the infrastructure, and chiefly among it, roads. The 1916 Federal Aid Roads Act had the design of making States build and maintain interurban highways, and the subsequent 1921 act helped to provide funds for integrating a long-distance network. Secondly, people needed affordable personal vehicles. Henry Ford’s assembly line production methods had the benefit of greatly improved productivity. Utilizing these methods and economies of scale, Ford was able to lower the price on the model T from 22 months’ average pay in 1909 to only 3 months’ pay by 1925. This had the effect of putting 27 million cars on the road by the end of the 1920s in the United States. The rise in investment for automobiles and roads was tremendous during the 1920s and 1930s, but also remarkable was the lack in investment in mass and rapid transit.