American suburbanization
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| Author | Kenneth T. Jackson |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | History, Urban Planning |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
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Publication date
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1985 |
| Media type | |
| ISBN |
(Hard Cover) (Paperback) |
| 307.7/4 0973 | |
| LC Class | HT384 .U5 J33 1985 |
(Hard Cover)
Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States is a book written by historian Kenneth T. Jackson and published in 1985. Extensively researched and referenced, the book takes into account factors that promoted suburbanization such as the availability of cheap land, construction methods, and transportation, as well as federal subsidies for highways and suburban housing.
Jackson attempts to broadly interpret the American suburban experience, which he views as unique. He states that "the United States has thus far been unique in four important respects that can be summed up in the following sentence: affluent and middle-class Americans live in suburban areas that are far from their work places, in homes that they own, and in the center of yards that by urban standards elsewhere are enormous. This uniqueness thus involves population density, home-ownership, residential status, and journey-to-work." His working definition of suburbs has four components: function (non-farm residential), class (middle and upper status), separation (a daily journey-to-work), and density (low relative to older sections). Also dominant in the book is the notion that the wealthy began the flight from the city first — something that the middle classes eventually emulated as city tax rates gradually increased to pay for resulting urban problems - as the poorer classes remained in the older central urban areas.
From ancient times, the city's primary function was as a central meeting place to conduct business. Jackson argues that before 1815 and the industrial revolution, every major city was a "point" on a map that could be walked from edge to center in two or three hours. Cities had five characteristics:
“Suburbs, then, were socially and economically inferior to cities when wind, muscle, and water were the prime movers of civilization…Even the word suburb suggested inferior manners, narrowness of view, and physical squalor.”
Between 1815-1875, however, the situation began to change in the United States. With new transportation alternatives such as the steam ferry, omnibus, the commuter railroad, the horsecar, the elevated railroad, and the cable car came “an exodus that would turn cities inside out and inaugurate a new pattern of suburban affluence and center despair.”
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