The Rise Of The Suburbanization Of America

In the decades following the Second World War, America’s cities began a transformation still being felt today. The increased suburbanization of the middle class, and the resulting movement to stop it, led to the development of new urban spaces which had wildly varying levels of success. New partnerships between businesses and government agencies resulted in legislation that had a variety of positive and negative effects on different populations. Architects strived to create new methods of housing the middle and lower classes affordably and comfortably, attempting to simultaneously mimic the advantages of suburban life while maintaining the character of an urban setting. These projects certainly had a number of successes but too often contributed
to displacement and subjugation of less privileged communities on a massive scale. While urban renewal and expansion was generally undertaken in the spirit of defending the aura of the city center, the solutions to these problems repeatedly resulted in a more toxic situation than preceded them. In his Chicago Promontory Apartments, Mies van der Rohe succeeding in challenging the monotonous complexes built in other cities as a solution to “slums.” In opposition to developments such as Stuyvesant Town in New York City, the Promontory Apartment’s bold use of exposed concrete and ribbon windows, advanced materials and engineering methods, and superior layout offered a new model for the design of high-rise urban housing. These developments were the city’s answer to the draw of suburbia to the middle class. They offered affordable and desirable housing in the heart of the cultural centers that cities represent. The design of the Promontory Apartments was quickly mimicked by many other leading architectural firms, replacing more traditional designs. While projects such as the Promontory Apartments and the Lake Shore Drive Apartments, also in Chicago, were seen as great triumphs, many of their successors did not fare nearly as well. Their creators envisioned that their spaces would be utilized in the same way as the Promontory and Lake Shore Drive, but the result was little better than the “slums” that they replaced. Even the successful projects were criticized as being “uneconomical and undesirable.” Some felt that the resemblance to more industrial structures made the structures unfit for housing, and that their similarity to office buildings was a major drawback to their design. The flood of new projects aimed to save the city center, while sometimes well-intentioned, also gave rise to more sinister motivations. A rush of new federal funds for the interstate highway system gave mayors the ability to construct huge roads through the middle of their cities, on routes that often cut directly through neighborhoods home to largely poor minority inhabitants. These displaced residents were given little assistance on finding new homes, and were turned away from many areas due to racial prejudice. These relocation issues were largely unrecognized or ignored, and the renewal projects that caused them were lauded as successes. This blindness to the human victims of these projects may have led to commercial successes in many downtowns, but have left legacies of segregation that have yet to be reversed. Some architects had more revolutionary ideas for the reinvention of the city.
Rather than simply rebuilding existing neighborhoods, they had grand plans to extend the reach of the human race to less hospitable portions of the globe, and even to other planets, by enclosing entire cities in giant “envelopes.” These huge tents would allow people to comfortably occupy places like Siberia and Antarctica. The creation of a more temperate internal climate made many of the obvious drawbacks of living in an arctic environment far less daunting. Residents would still be able to enjoy the large public greenspaces integral to the success of many traditional cities. These target locations are home to huge amounts of untapped mineral resources, which are very difficult to extract given the harsh winters they face. These envelopes would allow for year round occupation and thus steadier access to mines. While the designer touted these plans as relatively inexpensive compared to the potential good, they ultimately never came to fruition, as they were so radical in nature that they were unlikely to be accepted by the general population. As they were also largely untested, there was a good chance that they would end up being much more costly than foreseen by their creators. These enveloped cities would never come to replace more traditional models, and other forms of urban renewal would become more
prominent. Regardless of whether they were undertaken with positive or negative intentions, urban renewal projects across the country had a wide impact on large portions of the population.
While they did stimulate economic growth in city centers and helped to stem the outward flow to the suburbs, projects were often completed with little regard for those people who were uprooted in their wake. This lack of consideration led to thousands of low income minority families who lost nearly everything and were forced into even more desperate situations. Urban renewal is always a mixed bag, but in the United States the negative effects are still being felt from decades-old
development.