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Originally Posted by TheCityTheBridge
I identified a number of causal factors for the rise in suburbanization. Interstate construction was one among them.
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It wasn't a causal factor. It facilitated the process, sped it up even, but it was clearly happening anyway.
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Highway 76 was built in 1959. And stretches of it predate the interstate. 676 was built in 1964; 295 in 1959. And as I said initially, interstates were one among the factors contributing to suburbanization.
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LOL. Aside from your dates being completely off the mark I grew up there and am old enough to remember when most of them opened. 1959 marks the first bridge built in Delaware that would become a part of the signed interstate years later. 295 wasn't finished until 1994. I know because when the last segment opened it cut my trip time to Philly by about 15 minutes. Until the early 80s it had only been built north to Moorestown and cut between areas of Camden County to the west that had been mostly developed in the 1880s to 1920s and to the east that had been developed in the 1950s.
The two segments of I-76 were connected - finishing the Schuylkill Expressway - in 1960.
I-95 through Center City Philly didn't open until 1979 and the rest of it wasn't finished until the mid-80s.
Construction on the Vine St. Expressway (676) didn't even start until the mid-80s and didn't open until the early 90s.
I think you should read some of the other threads in this forum because these topics have been discussed ad infinitum here and right now you're just coming off as really condescending - especially so because you're fashioning yourself as someone who knows more about the topic and you clearly don't.
So, if you want to talk about the Great Migration then you should know that it's typically broken into two parts, 1st and 2nd. You should also know that the 2nd Great Migration was much larger than the 1st. And that while black people were leaving the south in large numbers that's relative . . . and they weren't all going to the same place. The black population of Philadelphia in 1920 was 7.4% or around 134,000. To put it another way the city was over 90% white and large parts of Philadelphia were either in the process of being built or had yet to be built so the numbers of african-americans are mostly irrelevant when it comes to what the white population was doing. African-Americans from the south were moving to the oldest parts (read: cheapest) of Philadelphia, neighborhoods that native born whites had been leaving in droves well before hand. And speaking of native born whites - the white population of Philadelphia had been buoyed through the early part of the 20th Century by continuing European immigration. Native born whites began moving to the suburbs with the advent of the electric traction trolley in 1880. By 1900 the decline in native born whites in the city could already be seen. By 1920 suburban growth was rapidly outpacing urban growth. By 1930, which marked a sharp decline in European immigration, all of the white population growth in the Philly region was happening in the suburbs. By 1950 all population growth in the region was happening in the suburbs.
I'm using Philly here as an example because I can easily back up the data I'm using but the same is true for most older, northern cities.
If what you're saying is true - the suburbanization happened because white people didn't want to live around black people then there would have been some mass exodus over a decade or two. That didn't happen. The facts are that the white population of most urban neighborhoods declined at a relatively even rate over a 50 or 60 year period and in even in neighborhoods that were still 90% white in 2010 the rate and size of population is similar to neighborhoods that were 90% white in 1950 and 10% white in 2010.
Port Richmond, Philadelphia
The same phenomenon can even be observed in neighborhoods that were majority black in 1950
Graduate Hospital, Philadelphia
The white flight theory doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
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Take a look at my prior post with links to residential segregation analysis before you make believe that it did not matter. FHA loans were one of many pillars of western and northern residential segregation. Others included racially restrictive covenants, real estate practices, the politics of incorporation & local government, and others. Read the excellent Techcrunch history of East Palo Alto.
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The practices were relevant for a brief part of the suburbanization of the country (at most 2 decades) - a suburbanization which began in earnest in the 1880s and which was only really impeded by the Great Depression/WWII. I completely concur that it negatively impacted the ability of african-americans to move to the suburbs in most cases in the 1950s and 1960s but it didn't stop them from buying homes in large numbers because the FHA restrictions weren't to deny loans but to promote segregation. That's still not enough to explain suburbanization.
Here's a graph of a South Philly neighborhood with an AA population that predates WWII - most other Philly neighborhoods show similar curves
If anything the lack of access to the GI Bill - because the military was segregated during WWII and because the draft boards in Southern states (where the large majority of AAs at the time were still living) wouldn't take black men - had a much more deleterious effect when it came to getting federally guaranteed loans than anything the FHA could muster.
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The Great Migration began before the 1920s.
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The Great Migration began in 1910 and again, it started off slow, and people were spreading themselves among a lot of different northern cities.
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As I mentioned, NC schools were simply segregated by law. Even the NC historical society recognizes that most of NC continued to fight integration after Brown in 1954.
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Your point was that school financing had a big impact on suburbanization but the facts are that it happened regardless of how schools were financed. Whether or not people in NC were resisting integration is irrelevant because they lost and when I lived in NC 15 years ago kids were stilled being bussed out of their home district.
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What do you mean by obsolescence? And how do you figure that household sizes "were much bigger players in the move to the suburbs"?
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I'm not sure how else to explain housing obsolescence . . . houses built in 1880 were built with gas lanterns in the wall. There was no electricity. There were no toilets.
In 1940 in my Philadelphia census tract 30% of the units did not have a full bathroom. 10% of the houses were lacking a toilet. In a neighborhood full of small, 2 bedroom rowhomes 60% of the units had 5 or more people. 16% had more than 7 people. Hardly anyone had anything resembling a modern kitchen. This is why people left - because they knew what a modern house with a garage and a yard and 3 bedrooms looked like and they wanted one and because the GI Bill gave it to them. Not because they were scared of the black people who were already their neighbors. That's just nonsensical fantasy.
You see the same thing happening now in 1950s suburbs where the previous owners didn't modernize as often as they should have. No one buying a house in 2015 wants to deal with an electrical panel with a handful of 15 amp breakers, that doesn't have central air, that has a kitchen that needs to be gutted. Not if they can afford better anyway. That's what housing obsolescence is. If you were picking up a rental car would you take the new Camry with bluetooth, dual zone a/c, cruise control, and a good sound system or would you take the 1974 Chevy Nova with vinyl seats, no a/c, and am/fm dial tune radio. It's not a tough decision for most people.
When you look at the census data it's very clear that the people leaving the neighborhood in the 1950s were young, white renters in their early 20s aka: people starting a family and moving out of their parents house. Those were the people moving to the suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s and they were doing it because the housing conditions they were coming from were terrible. In the parts of Philadelphia that were still being built out in the 1950s you see a lot of white people moving to those neighborhoods - because the houses were new.
In this same census tract in 2010 the household size for occupied units is around 2.4. The population decline wasn't "white flight". It was white kids starting their families in the suburbs. Their parents didn't go anywhere and while the white population declined evenly over the decades the number of white households declined much more slowly. This wasn't a flight - it was a migration that took place over 3 generations. I understand that if you're pushing an agenda then "white flight" is more dramatic but, outside of a few anecdotes, that's not really how it happened.
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The Soviets were spending 15-27% of GDP on their military in the 1980s, not the 50s and 60s. Any guess about the percentage in the 50s and 60s is just that, a guess.
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Do you have any idea about the devastation that WWII wrought on Russian industry, infrastructure, and the population itself? It wasn't a rich country to begin with.
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