Do people in older generations (white flight) have warped ideas of modern cities? (Dallas, Detroit)

[Katiana]

Originally Posted by lrfox

Many look negatively at the cities. Here in Boston, large chunks of the city WERE warzones ( a stretch of Washington St. Downtown was called the "Combat Zone."). Obviously a lot has changed since then (as the trend of people moving back into the cities continues).

My father, who's parents left urban Pittsburgh in the 50s for the 'burbs of Virginia Beach, is still convinced I'll be married soon and moving my kids back out to the suburbs. I understand what some people like about the 'burbs, but they're not for me and most likely will never be. IF I have children (at 24 I still have absolutely no interest), I don't fear bringing them up in the city. It won't ruin them.

Having lived in suburban, urban and briefly a rural area there are irrational fears on both ends of the spectrum. Many of the older generations outside the city think walking city streets are like playing Russian Roulette. At the same time, I know many people (especially up here in the Northeast) who think driving 25 miles outside the city is like taking a trip to Siberia. It's a two-way street. I still prefer the urban areas.

At age 24, you've got a lot of living ahead of you. Never say never.

[jimmyev]

Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

Some of that could be due to "urban renewal" as well in terms of African Americans.

With Houston's hatred of governmental planning it never underwent government-imposed "urban renewal" projects.

[puerco]

Originally Posted by grapico

I have noticed that from talking to several people that left cities for good in the 50-60s, even from Chicago and New York that they have these very warped ideas of what the city is like now. I have heard all these bad stories of it and they view it so weird, which is completely WRONG of how they are now.
But I think this whole period, mostly of boomers had these weird ideas, opposed to cities (STILL) and love the suburban living.

Case in point are both my parents and my gfs parents... My dad was in Chicago in the 60s. My gfs mom was in Manhattan in the 60s, her dad was in Chicago, New York, St Louis and a few others as he was a business man. They all have the same mostly negative view of modern day cities, like they are exactly the same as it was back in that era. They all left respectively for sunny california and florida burbs.

Thoughts? Has anybody else experienced difficulties trying to explain life there to this older generation?

I haven't read all of the posts yet but after reading just a few I think your question should be "Do older suburban people look at cities that way?". There are millions of us - boomers & our parents' generation - that never felt the need to flee the city & have always appreciated urban living. I may be an older person but I wouldn't live in the suburbs if my life depended on it. (Well, maybe I'm exaggerating just a tiny bit.)

[neotextist]

Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

Some of that could be due to "urban renewal" as well in terms of African Americans.

Yes, some of that happened, most notably in the Fourth Ward and Allen Parkway area. But most middle-class black people fled to the suburbs just like whites and stayed there. Downtown was a ghost town until the late 1990's. It remained abandoned throughout the 1980's in favor of suburban growth amid Houston's notorious boom n' bust cycles of that time, until my generation (I'm in my 30's) started venturing down there again.

[slowlane]

Originally Posted by 20yrsinBranson

I lived in some large cities in my younger years - New Orleans, Phoenix - etc. I have very fond memories of them. The few times I have returned I find that they are much worse now than when I lived there. Heck in Phoenix, there were no gangs, no drive-by shootings, etc. You could walk at night in any neighborhood without fear. Now days you would be insane to do it.

I don't know which cities you are specifically referring to when you say that they have "improved". My opinion is that they are actually worse than they were 30 or 40 years ago. Just because a city takes out a warehouse and puts in a park instead does not make a city better or safer. People can be murdered just as dead in a park as they can behind a warehouse. There are lots of bars on upscale neighborhoods in gentrified areas, in case you haven't noticed.

20yrsinBranson

Maybe you should leave Branson and visit some large cities. Violent crime rates have dropped tremendously in most major cities since their peak during the 1980s drug wars. (Although the best-selling book "Freakanomics", controversially, attributes much of the decline to the Roe v. Wade national legalizing of abortion in 1973, which reduced the number of babies being born into unwed and dysfunctional at-risk households).

Washington DC and New York City are 2 examples that have shown great improvement. NYC no longer has graffiti on subway cars (from what I've heard, anyway). Times Square no longer has a pornography and sex industry. Bill Clinton now works out of an office in Harlem, which has an increasing White population. Hoboken (just across the river from Manhattan) has many new high-rise apartments and hip yuppy stock-traders. The Bowery is now a hip and respectable area, if I'm not mistaken.

Downtown Washington DC is filled with brand-new high-rise apartments and there is a great White influx into the city. Downtown neighborhoods like U-Street, Columbia Heights, and Chinatown which were derelict as recently as the 1980s, are surging with energy and stylish new cafes, theaters, and clubs. The Navy Yard area is poised to join them soon. The greatly changed racial makeup of the DC city council also reflects this.

[samyn on the green]

All of this was not an accident. It was part of social engineering plan to Americanize white "ethnics" away from the close confines of the urban neighborhood. The suburb was the vehicle for Americanization. The federal government and people like the Ford foundation engineered the whole process by blockbusting the urban areas by providing mortgages for southern Blacks, while only providing mortgages for ethnic whites in the new suburb.


No longer would the urban catholic speak his mother tongue and have his life revolve around a supernatural God. Instead of being a Italian or Irish or Polish he would assume a new American identity called "white". His life would revolve around acquiring material items and all sorts of vice. He would speak English, spend 30 hours a week being socialized in materialistic American WASP culture by TV and leave the old world morals behind. This is what the the 1960's culture of free love was about. All of this social engineering occurred in the banal environment of the new suburbs.

Originally Posted by MassVt

You have to keep in mind that almost all of those originally involved in the white flight of the 50's are quite elderly, or have passed on. This was the generation ( sometimes referred to as "The Greatest Generation"), and they grew up in city neighborhoods, only to use the Gi Bill in the late '40s to leave for more spacious homes in the newly-built suburbs. Their memories of city life date back to the 1920-30s as children and young adults, but the neighborhoods that they remember as children ( Little Italy, the Polish section of town, etc) no longer exist; in some cases, they died out 2 generations ago.

Much has been made of the Generation Gap between the WW2 generation and their children, the Baby Boomers, but the real gap may have been between the WW2 group and THEIR parents, who may have come from the Old Country in the earl yyears of the 20th century. Many of these people immigrated to America intent upon keeping their old European customs, including speaking the native tongue in the home, but their children ( the WW2 group) wanted nothing of this, and were determined to become as "American" as possible, as quickly as possible. Thus, you have the scenario of the WW2 generation moving to the suburbs, but visiting their aged parents back in the old city neighborhoods, which by then ( 1960s-1970s) had badly deteriorated, and thus may have transferred these negative sentiments about city life to their children, the Baby Boomers. The city became "something to escape"..."there but for the grace of God go I"..., and such sentiments are no doubt ingrained in those elderly Americans who left for greener pastures starting in the late'40s.

[Toxic Toast]

Originally Posted by nurider2002

I always feel like urban life is primarily spent indoors (in the heat of summer the cities are too hot for much of anything outside) and that if you don't spend a considerable amount of your time engaging in cultural events (e.g., museums, theatre, concerts, etc.) you are pretty much inside your house.

I don't think this is true at all. I live right outside of downtown Indianapolis, and I am always outside riding my bike, walking the dog, sitting on the canal and river; doing something outside when the weather allows. Even when I am visiting friends in Chicago, we do the same types of things. Judging by the number of people I regularly see outside as well, in both cities, it seems a lot of people also enjoy spending time outside in the city.

[wburg]

Indeed. Part of why things like yards and lots of square feet are less important to a city dweller is because you spend more time outside the house--not just museums, theatre or concerts but neighborhood parks, sidewalks, cafes, front stoops, retail stores, etcetera. You encounter people randomly and can just watch the street scene unfold, while simultaneously doing things like running errands or walking the dog.

To Generation X and to perhaps an even greater extent the Millenials, the suburbs are something to escape--the city is the place they want to escape to.

[Woozle]

Originally Posted by wburg

To Generation X and to perhaps an even greater extent the Millenials, the suburbs are something to escape--the city is the place they want to escape to.

And I'll repeat it for the umpteenth time: that is not fact, it's propaganda.

Gen X'ers who are now in their 30's, statistically move to the exurbs, not the cities, across the country.

The Millenials live with Mommy and Daddy.

Suburbanites are NOT returning to the cities.

He would speak English

The horror!


There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

-- Theodore Roosevelt

[samyn on the green]

This is a good example of the philosophy of why the cities in America were pummeled in the 20th century. make no mistake about it, the cities were purposely destroyed as a means to an ends. People that lived through the destruction are certainly going to have a stigma attached to the big city. America had a huge ethnicity problem and social engineering via the suburbs, the car and the TV is what solved this problem.

All of are new problems, pollution due to too many cars, isolated depressed people, moral decay, obesity are all a direct outgrowth of the solution that was provided to the American ethnicity problem.

Originally Posted by Woozle

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

-- Theodore Roosevelt