Sub Urbanization
After World War II the concept of life in
America began a new. The process of
sub urbanization began in cities all
across the nation. Today the cities of
yesteryear are gone and life as we
knew it ended. However, people do not want it
to end. They still want the
American Dream; the house in the suburbs, the good
job, the wife, car and 2.4
kids playing in the yard. These people have been the
driving force in the
division of socioeconomic status, and the division of race
in the suburbs.
They accomplish this through local governments and the decisions
made through
them. Though what has been created, by all of this over the years,
isn't
necessarily bad, but it has hurt the country in ways that we did not
expect.
When soldiers returned from the war they were greeted with open arms and
a
new booming economy. It was this booming economy, of service-oriented
jobs,
that allowed the middle class of people the opportunity to move away
from their
jobs and separate their work from their home. Also during that
time we were
still, as a country, practicing racial segregation, which is
part of the reason
for the racial inequalities in the suburbs today. These
new communities, of
mostly white nuclear families, were now in need of a
council to make the
decisions that needed to be made for their area. They
didn't want the city to
make these decisions for them since they were so far
away. Also since most
people worked in the city, they wanted to continue with
the dream of keeping
home and work separate. Therefore they banded together
as neighborhoods and
communities to make the decisions that affected that
area on a daily basis. The
benefit of this was that now they had almost total
autonomy from the poor and
the lower class they so quickly left behind in the
city. This is where the
socioeconomic division began. The people of the
suburbs loved their lives. They
lived around the people of the same
socioeconomic status and were separated from
their work. Time went on and the
suburbs slowly became racially integrated, but
only by the educated wealthy
minorities. Life in the suburbs was good until we
started to notice the
decline in the life lead by the inner-city folk. We as the
good, moral
country that we are, decided we needed to do something about them.
Which
actually was a good idea on paper, but the reality of it, is that it
didn't
work out as we had hoped. The suburban councils/governments had created
laws
and other things that had reduced the amount of space that would be
allowed
for the renewal of the lower class and poor. The original settlers of
the
suburbs had done two things to keep their wonderful life-styles. The
first thing
that some areas did was to raise the housing prices of the area
to the point
that nobody else could afford to move in. They did this by
building extravagant
houses and spending their money on their schools. The
second thing, often done
in conjunction with the first, was to actually write
into law that there shall
be no low-income housing in that area. By doing
this, the suburbs stayed safe
and the feeling of community was saved for the
time being. The pursuit of the
American Dream is not a bad thing. It is
actually a fundamental part of our
economy. Capitalism is based on the fact
that there will always be a caste
system. But the rapid suburbanization, also
known as white-flight, helped to
create a greater disparity in the lives of
the lower class and the lives of the
upper class. In other words suburbs and
their suburban councils have beaten the
economic system and created one where
the rich get richer and the poor get
poorer. There is no real way to rectify
the situation at this time, so all we
can do is wait for another economic
change to help lift the poor. However, what
we can do is help to prepare them
by fixing their housing and educating them.
The suburbs have always been
a place of retreat for the wealthy, they will
always be, and there is nothing
we can do to change that. The wealthy will
always find a way to stay ahead as
long as they can. Whether they do it through
shear wealth, laws that restrict
the poor, or through laws that restrict other
races, they will do it until
they get caught. These councils and laws are
necessarily bad, they are just a
product of the economic driven, capitalistic
society we have chosen to live
in.