Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
VA loans emphasized new construction since the point was... new construction. It was a policy designed to build more housing stock and social engineering to encourage home ownership over renting. You don't get more housing stock without new construction. Funny how that works. Thing is new construction in urban areas, aka blight removal, was what was really given extra generous treatment above and beyond just regular new construction.
Actually, in 1940, right after the the beginning of WW II in Europe (US did not enter until 1941), CA's population was almost 7 million. By 1950, it was 10 1/2 million. Now, these extra 3 1/2 million people needed somewhere to live. Add to that there was literally NO housing built from the beginning of the depression in late 1929 until after WW II (~1946). (CA's population in 1930 was 5.6 million.) So the population nearly doubled in a time on NO home building. People have to live somewhere. Would you have preferred they lived in cardboard boxes? Certainly, the housing built in the 1950s is of a different style than that of the 1920s. In many cases, that is a good thing. There were a lot of improvements in construction technology, engineering, etc in those 30 years. Kitchen design improved greatly.
The neighborhood style and layout changed, a change in home construction doesn't really affect how dense or walkable a neighborhood is. I can never figure "suburbs became more sprawling around 1950" brings up discussion on better home standards.
Many cities reached their peak populations in 1950, before losing people to the burbs afterward. I think there were lots of movements of people, from farm to city, city to suburb, farm to suburb, etc.
For say, Boston or NYC, suburban growth from rural land was tiny. For the south it must have been significant. What about elsewhere?
For say, Boston or NYC, suburban growth from rural land was tiny. For the south it must have been significant. What about elsewhere?
Are you just talking about Boston proper? It has a few areas like West Roxbury. Boston is surrounded by miles and miles of suburbs. That used to be rural land.
Contrast Boston to Sacramento (proper), Sacramento is overwhelmingly suburban. West Roxbury was annexed in 1874. It's a typical railroad suburb, sub-urbanized after the railroad line opened in 1848. Beyond it lie many other railroad suburbs which were not annexed and then more miles of auto-burbs. Sacramento, on the other hand, kept annexing. It also had a much smaller urban area. Even the streetcar suburbs represent only a small amount of Sacramento because most of the population occurred after they'd long gone bankrupt. Most of it is auto-suburbs that were later incorporated. Sacramento also has intentionally had a long-standing policy of driving out as much of the smaller urban population it had, which I don't think Boston ever did. I mean, Sacramento really did try and not have any urban population quite hard. It completely neglected Midtown for decades and went even farther in downtown and pretty effectively completely removed all the population there.
Beyond that, the population wasn't as dense. Our railroad "suburbs" are places like Elk Grove, Roseville, Folsom. They weren't really suburbs at that time. They were towns that grew around the railroad where the trains took on water. They didn't really suburbanize until the '80s. If you look at the suburbs that mostly grew in the '80s and '90s of Boston (not even sure what those are) I bet they're pretty suburban looking too.
Actaully, Boston is unique though. It's one of only three major metro areas that is becoming more urban. All of the rest are continuing to become more suburban. Yeah, it's Joel Kotkin. So I'm just posting it for people with open minds. Plus it's Harvard's findings. I generally won't cite Kotkin or Wendel Cox unless they are citing a source that I do consider reputable.
People do use them muggers love mass transit
If I mug you outside the station trolley cops won't even respond makes for better stats
For the thug mass transit is the only way to travel and more rich folks need to ride that trolley so we can all get to know each other and be real close
Actually, in 1940, right after the the beginning of WW II in Europe (US did not enter until 1941), CA's population was almost 7 million. By 1950, it was 10 1/2 million. Now, these extra 3 1/2 million people needed somewhere to live. Add to that there was literally NO housing built from the beginning of the depression in late 1929 until after WW II (~1946). (CA's population in 1930 was 5.6 million.) So the population nearly doubled in a time on NO home building. People have to live somewhere. Would you have preferred they lived in cardboard boxes? Certainly, the housing built in the 1950s is of a different style than that of the 1920s. In many cases, that is a good thing. There were a lot of improvements in construction technology, engineering, etc in those 30 years. Kitchen design improved greatly.
And CA is still under building....which is why we have such housing affordability problems now.
The neighborhood style and layout changed, a change in home construction doesn't really affect how dense or walkable a neighborhood is. I can never figure "suburbs became more sprawling around 1950" brings up discussion on better home standards.
Yes, somehow, with the rise of "suburbia" the idea of neighborhoods being organized around a "main street" where the key stuff was (groceries, pharmacy, dry cleaner, post office, school, whatever) disappeared. Or became artificially blocked with winding roads and non-gridded streets. Which is why we are so unwalkable today. My parents lived in a suburban area of Sacramento a few years ago, and they lived pretty close to the main street. The school was nearby, and there were sidewalks and crosswalks connecting all the strip malls and such. But the thing was, although as the crow flies, it was only about 1/2 mile from the main street, with the street layout it was more like 1.25 miles from main street. There was no way to walk through the neighborhood to get to the main road.
The rural % varied a lot regionally, for example, the south was much more rural then. And rural isn't discussed much on this forum for obvious reasons.
One interesting question this suggests is, if the country was that rural, how much of mid century suburban growth was fueled people from rural areas directly to the suburbs rather than from the city to new suburbs.
Edit: interestingly, missouri and massachusetts have grown at the same rate and with a similar population since the end of the 1800s. But Massachusetts has much older housing stock, oldest in the country. Difference is probably Missouri was rather rural back then and so it built new housing as it urbanized while massachusetts wasn't any more rural back then as today
I would say that there were a couple of very common patterns of rural/urban migration before/during/after WW II.
The first was of rural people moving from farms into the outskirts of market towns or just outside them where they could work "in town" while keeping some of their rural ways like having a large garden and/or keeping livestock and poultry. You find many small towns in the East even today with farms within the village limits because many small towns didn't even have zoning until the 1960s.
Another common pattern was of rural people moving to a small town outside a city because there were factories there. For example, one of the suburbs of Buffalo, NY is Cheektowaga. It grew up because the first airport was built out there, which attracted some aeronautic industries before WW II, and mushroomed into major industries such as Curtiss-Wright during the war. So many workers were needed for these industries that they had had to build barracks-like housing for them. Many of the people who came to work during the war stayed on afterwards.
A third common pattern was for rural people to move for jobs to the nearest job site. These weren't always big cities or the main cities in an area. The Watervliet Arsenal in Watervliet, NY is a village just north of Albany, NY. The Arsenal has been in business since the early 1800s (1806 I think). Albany was a tiny town and so was Watervliet when the two started out, although now Watervliet is considered an Albany suburb. There are lots and lots of these small satellite cities ringing larger cities in metros all over the country, although in the West many of these have been annexed to the bigger cities.
And CA is still under building....which is why we have such housing affordability problems now.
Bay Area, yeah. It's not easy to add enough housing to keep pace with demand there period. That's confounded by NIMBYism, California legislature which has set carbon goals which determine what infrastructure gets funded with state dollars (remember, all gas taxes are state dollars now), and decades of underinvestment in infrastructure before then. The fastest, easiest way to add housing is instant burbs like Brentwood/Antioch/Oakley or expansions of older burbs (Dublin/Pleasanton). The slower way is infill.
Santa Clara is pretty much infill only at this point. It's the fastest growing county in California (2012-13), estimates for 2013-14 aren't out yet).
I would like to thank the original poster of this thread for linking that superb article. It was supremely rational, objective, and analytical. It was so refreshing to read such rationality as opposed to the ideological propaganda so common in this forum.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
People do use them muggers love mass transit
