It's a bit more complex than "Americans were rich". Whether they were rich or not: * the US Federal Government gave returning servicemen a lot of money, includ

It's a bit more complex than "Americans were rich". Whether they were rich or not: * the US Federal Government gave returning servicemen a lot of money, including low-cost mortgages and loans, which resulted in huge housebuilding programs that created huge suburbs and exurbs (because it's much cheaper for the housebuilder): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill * the US Gov spent billions on public works to create the highway system in the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act_of_1956 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act_of_195... * huge swathes of the USA enacted zoning laws so that the only type of house that could be built was single-family homes with huge gaps between them, creating the lowest possible density neighbourhoods, effectively requiring a car to get around (whereas higher density housing could have the same number of residents and be walkable) -- there's a strong likelyhood this was done to allow white flight to neighbourhoods that keep the socioeconomically deprived out, and until the 1960s it was completely legal to say "you can't rent or sell this house to black people" (it was only made illegal in 1968 with the Fair Housing Act): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-family_zoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-family_zoning * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_steering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_steering * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_(law)#Exclusionary_covenants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_(law)#Exclusionary_co... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_segregation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_segregation_in_the_Uni... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residential_segregation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residential_segregation_in_the... These components very much add up to incentives to build widely and sparsely and to rely on cars to make it work. It didn't happen because Americans were rich, but because rich Americans wanted to exclude poor people from their lives