Title: Suburbanization in the United States after 1945 | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History
Headings: Suburbanization in the United States after 1945
Suburbanization in the United States after 1945
Summary
Keywords
1945–1970: Era of Mass-Suburbanization
Postwar Real Estate Development
The City-Suburb Divide: Urban–Suburban Inequality in the Postwar Era
Race, Ethnicity, and Exclusion
Social Life of Postwar Suburbanites
“Culture Wars” over the Postwar Suburbs
Political Life
1970–Present: Growth and Diversification
Land Development and Real Estate
Table 1. The Growth of Metropolitan and Suburban Areas in the United States, 1940–2010
Metropolitanism
Social Diversification
Social Life
Politics across Diverse Suburbia
Reforming Suburbia
Suburban Crisis, Suburban Regeneration
Discussion of the Literature
Primary Sources
Further Reading
Notes

Content: Suburbia shaped habits of car dependency and commuting, patterns of spending and saving, and experiences with issues as diverse as race and taxes, energy and nature, privacy and community. The owner occupied, single-family home, surrounded by a yard, and set in a neighborhood outside the urban core came to define everyday experience for most American households, and in the world of popular culture and the imagination, suburbia was the setting for the American dream. The nation’s suburbs were an equally critical economic landscape, home to vital high-tech industries, retailing, “logistics,” and office employment. In addition, American politics rested on a suburban majority, and over several decades, suburbia incubated political movements across the partisan spectrum, from grass-roots conservativism, to centrist meritocratic individualism, environmentalism, feminism, and social justice. In short, suburbia was a key setting for postwar American life. Even as suburbia grew in magnitude and influence, it also grew more diverse, coming to reflect a much broader cross-section of America itself. This encompassing shift marked two key chronological stages in suburban history since 1945: the expansive, racialized, mass suburbanization of the postwar years (1945–1970) and an era of intensive social diversification and metropolitan complexity (since 1970). In the first period, suburbia witnessed the expansion of segregated white privilege, bolstered by government policies, exclusionary practices, and reinforced by grassroots political movements. By the second period, suburbia came to house a broader cross section of Americans, who brought with them a wide range of outlooks, lifeways, values, and politics.