Kailani Gorman

Kailani Gorman is an undergraduate student at the University of New Mexico.

Urbanization Across the Centuries

Hi everyone, my name is Kailani Gorman and I am studying Environmental Design and Planning at the University of New Mexico. This semester in CRP 165: Social Issues in Urban Planning we have been looking at the history of design and planning in the United States. It is interesting observe how the twentieth century has affected our cities and how many of the problems that we face today are results of design choices made during that era. Observing how we have designed our cities in the past and noticing what prompted those decisions gives context to the world we live in today. In this essay I will be looking closer at the suburbanization that occurred in the twentieth century.

In the nineteenth century our population was rapidly expanding. There were breakthroughs in public health such as advances in sanitation systems, widespread agricultural land, and better health care. This allowed the population to flourish, creating highly concentrated populations of people living in close quarters. The population grew so quickly that people scrambled to create infrastructure for the ever-increasing amount of people which resulted in very dense urban centers. Before the widespread distribution of transportation systems the majority of people in the United States were concentrated in the central core of the city.

By the early twentieth century cars were becoming an integrated part of American society. The United States was being developed to accommodate the increasing population. The government created networks of highways that made the United States more connected than ever before. This increased ease of transport for resources and goods and also helped people travel around the country more easily. The urban centers of cities were densely populated, loud and dirty during this time which created an incentive to expand into the countryside for those with the resources to do so. It was now possible to live outside of the city center while still having access to the resources of the city. While the rising popularity of cars wasn't the sole reason for why planning evolved the way that it did, it certainly played a part. The ability to travel easily and quickly on highways and roads brought immense changes to the world of planning and soon after suburbs began to rise in popularity.

Suburbs are residential neighborhoods usually found on the outskirts of a city, built around single-family households and mainly admired because of their lifestyle benefits. Suburbanization was possible because of widespread plumbing systems, access to transportation and other technological advances. When soldiers returned home from World War II they wanted to live away from the city and many chose to live in neighborhoods only accessible by car or mass transit. The idea of the American dream, a house with a two car driveway and happy children playing on the green lawn with a picket fence, was flourishing amongst society and suburbs quickly became the ideal way of living. As middle class families continued to move away from the urban center, they chose to live in quiet neighborhoods free from the poverty and noise of the inner city. Suburbs offered the ideal location to raise children, there was community and entertainment but still had the luxury of privacy because of the individually owned properties.

The decentralization (expansion and migration from city center to the outskirts) of cities can be seen as setting the foundation for economic and racial segregation that is still widespread across the U.S. It was primarily people of European descent that had access to the wealth and autonomy needed to migrate from the city to suburbs and the countryside. This migration is now commonly referred to as the "white flight". Naturally, many stores and public services followed the people with money to their affluent communities, leaving the inner cities desolate and without many resources. Of course, this left the inner cities mainly populated by the poor and working class, enforcing a dynamic of us versus them that can be seen through the lens of economic wellbeing and race.

As planners we can look at the progression of cities in the United States and see how it has shaped the society we live in today. We are now reliant on developments in design such as automobiles and city-wide plumbing systems that made our expansion into the countryside possible and we have figured out technologies that allow us to live in virtually every climate found on earth, no matter how inhospitable. Looking at the rapid growth that occurred during the twentieth century shows that we often end up reacting to circumstances instead of fully considering how our actions and designs will be a legacy for future generations. I am excited to continue learning about the history of planning and design in order to better understand the design issues we are solving today.

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