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Of course the specifics of US housing policies incorporated the racism of the time but my point is that many such policies also exist in countries where such ra

Of course the specifics of US housing policies incorporated the racism of the time but my point is that many such policies also exist in countries where such racial tensions have never existed. So there are clearly many good non-racist reasons for such policies to exist and that shouldn’t be dismissed. Likewise it’s counter-productive to view US history purely through the lens of racism, important as it may be. White flight occurred during a post-war boom of new housing, new roads, especially the new interstate highways, and newly wealthy post-WWII economy full of qualified GI-bill graduates. The baby boom still remains the highest rate of births the US has seen, and all those families needed housing. Developers built the suburbs in response to those factors. The modern family had their own house, their own garden, a clean, quiet street, fresh air. The modern man drove his own clean, personal, car to work in the city on one of the new highways. Meanwhile automobile/tire/gas companies were literally buying up city street car services and closing them down to force cities to replace them with busses (which they could sell them). Similar stories happened in cities all over the world during this period of post-war economic expansion. But the story you tell above gives racism the sole credit for what happened and that’s not even remotely accurate. Was racism a factor? Absolutely. “Redlining” by banks prevented black families from buying a house in the suburbs. In some cases realtors engaged in “blockbusting” so that they could sell all of the houses in a neighbourhood. Race is a huge and important factor in American history and politics but the narrative you give above is really not representative of what happened. Likewise your description of Europe is misleading. Many European cities lost their industrial base and never recovered, one only needs to look at the North of England to find ample examples (Birmingham, the UK’s heavily industrial “second city” had its peak in 1951). Meanwhile the suburbs boomed. Your list of major US cities excludes LA, the 2nd largest, which has boomed.

rayiner 8y ago
I'm not saying racism is, for example, the only cause for suburbanization. However, it's not fair to lump it together with a bunch of other factors. It's a uniquely important factor that had effects that distinguish the U.S. from culturally-similar industrialized countries. Your example proves it: cars enabled people to have "their own house, their own garden, a clean, quiet street" in Western Europe too. Western Europe had a baby boom too. But U.S. cities lost 25-50% of their population, while Western European cities continued to grow steadily that whole time. U.S. cities today remain inverted compared to European ones--many are low income and majority-minority even though the surrounding suburbs are prosperous. You need something to explain that disparity. And it can't be things like automobiles or the desire to live on a quiet street, because that existed contemporaneously in Europe too.
- jahewson 8y ago
  It is simply not true that European cities continued to grow in the manner you describe. Deindustralisation and urban decay were the defining elements of post-war Europe. The loss of industrial employers in cities led to conditions that were so bad that the post-war UK government demolished large amounts of city-center housing as “slums” and the development of an increasingly dysfunctional urban environment - Birmingham, which peaked in 1951 was the inspiration for Stanley Kubrik’s “A Clockwork Orange”. The contemporary inversion of the core of European cities is a modern phenomenon because most European cities spent the latter half of the 20th century in a similarly impoverished situation to the US. It is gentrification and taxpayer-funded regeneration that has fixed this problem - Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the problem never occurred. So how did Europe fix it? Perhaps because Europe has better social programs and social housing and is able and willing to fund them. As a European looking at the US I see a place that, despite its complex history, is really not so different in terms of the factors driving urban and suburban living. Its racism may be unique and distinguishing but it is not always the most important factor.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    It's interesting you use Birmingham as an example. Birmingham peaked in 1951, but lost only 10% of its population by the 1980s, and is now nearly as populous as it was before. Philadelphia, a comparably-sized city, lost a quarter of its population since 1950, and never recovered. Baltimore lost 40% of its population and never recovered. D.C. lost 30% of its population and is only gradually recovering now. Chicago lost 25% of its population. Detroit lost 2/3 of its population, even while the surrounding suburbs were booming by providing the cars that made suburbanization possible. Major European cities (Munich, Rome, Madrid, London, Paris), meanwhile, grew consistently during that time. Where is the precedent in Western Europe for a city of 1.8 million people (bigger than Munich or Barcelona) losing 65% of its population? It doesn't exist. And unlike Birmingham, whose decline was tied to specific economic problems, the metro areas of these U.S. cities continued to do well despite staggering population losses and ghettofication in the core cities. It's not like the suburbs of Birmingham were prospering while the core city was in decline. Europeans really don't understand the scale of the race problem in the U.S. Many Americans don't understand it--it's hard to understand until you spend some time in Philadelphia, etc., and see a place that is majority minority and disproportionately low income, surrounded by prosperous mostly white suburbs. It's a demographic trend that happened literally because white people didn't want to live next to black people, and simply left.

rayiner 8y ago

I'm not saying racism is, for example, the only cause for suburbanization. However, it's not fair to lump it together with a bunch of other factors. It's a uniquely important factor that had effects that distinguish the U.S. from culturally-similar industrialized countries. Your example proves it: cars enabled people to have "their own house, their own garden, a clean, quiet street" in Western Europe too. Western Europe had a baby boom too. But U.S. cities lost 25-50% of their population, while Western European cities continued to grow steadily that whole time. U.S. cities today remain inverted compared to European ones--many are low income and majority-minority even though the surrounding suburbs are prosperous. You need something to explain that disparity. And it can't be things like automobiles or the desire to live on a quiet street, because that existed contemporaneously in Europe too.

jahewson 8y ago
It is simply not true that European cities continued to grow in the manner you describe. Deindustralisation and urban decay were the defining elements of post-war Europe. The loss of industrial employers in cities led to conditions that were so bad that the post-war UK government demolished large amounts of city-center housing as “slums” and the development of an increasingly dysfunctional urban environment - Birmingham, which peaked in 1951 was the inspiration for Stanley Kubrik’s “A Clockwork Orange”. The contemporary inversion of the core of European cities is a modern phenomenon because most European cities spent the latter half of the 20th century in a similarly impoverished situation to the US. It is gentrification and taxpayer-funded regeneration that has fixed this problem - Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the problem never occurred. So how did Europe fix it? Perhaps because Europe has better social programs and social housing and is able and willing to fund them. As a European looking at the US I see a place that, despite its complex history, is really not so different in terms of the factors driving urban and suburban living. Its racism may be unique and distinguishing but it is not always the most important factor.
- rayiner 8y ago
  It's interesting you use Birmingham as an example. Birmingham peaked in 1951, but lost only 10% of its population by the 1980s, and is now nearly as populous as it was before. Philadelphia, a comparably-sized city, lost a quarter of its population since 1950, and never recovered. Baltimore lost 40% of its population and never recovered. D.C. lost 30% of its population and is only gradually recovering now. Chicago lost 25% of its population. Detroit lost 2/3 of its population, even while the surrounding suburbs were booming by providing the cars that made suburbanization possible. Major European cities (Munich, Rome, Madrid, London, Paris), meanwhile, grew consistently during that time. Where is the precedent in Western Europe for a city of 1.8 million people (bigger than Munich or Barcelona) losing 65% of its population? It doesn't exist. And unlike Birmingham, whose decline was tied to specific economic problems, the metro areas of these U.S. cities continued to do well despite staggering population losses and ghettofication in the core cities. It's not like the suburbs of Birmingham were prospering while the core city was in decline. Europeans really don't understand the scale of the race problem in the U.S. Many Americans don't understand it--it's hard to understand until you spend some time in Philadelphia, etc., and see a place that is majority minority and disproportionately low income, surrounded by prosperous mostly white suburbs. It's a demographic trend that happened literally because white people didn't want to live next to black people, and simply left.