America was >50% urbanized by 1920, when the automobile age began: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U

America was >50% urbanized by 1920, when the automobile age began: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Stat... And while most American suburbanization[0] wasn't explicitly centrally planned, it was very much the intentional result of federal policies such as FHA loans that were initially only for single-family homes (and FHA redlining of many urban neighborhoods), the mortgage-interest tax deduction, and the federally-funded construction of urban freeways. [0] many early suburbs were, in fact, built by the Federal government, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greendale,_Wisconsin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greendale,_Wisconsin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt,_New_Jersey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt,_New_Jersey