Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States

by Kenneth T. Jackson

This first full-scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how -the good life- in America came to be equated with the a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American suburb from the middle of the 19th century to the present day. He treats communities in every section of the U.S. and compares American residential patterns with those of Japan and Europe. In conclusion, Jackson offers a controversial prediction: that the future of residential deconcentration will be very different from its past in both the U.S. and Europe.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Urban Planning, Urbanism, Cities, American History, Sociology

396 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insights on how the kind of communities I grew up in developed. For example, "As the city became a place of exposure to other types of people, demand grew for exclusive, economically segregated suburbs. ... and these resist paying taxes to the cities they surround."

[James Smyth · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The US is not only the world's first suburban nation, but it will also be its last." Growing up in suburbia (like most of you) I assumed it was the natural order of things. The amazing 1987 book "Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States" by urban historian Kenneth T. Jackson disabused me of that notion. Moreover, it taught me about the pervasive power a conservatism based on selective memory and benign ignorance has to maintain structural inequalities.

There was so much amazing info I took 25 screencaps of Kindle pages (I'm happy to send them if you doubt any of the below points! The book itself is only $8 on Amazon btw) but I'll try to sum up important points as follows:
1. Federal housing aid and tax deductions to individuals and infrastructural spending have overwhelmingly favored new suburban communities and outward development.
(ie 75% of gov't transportation expenditures in the US in the post-WW2 generation went for highways, 1% for urban mass transit; mortgage payments tax-deductible but rent payments aren't.)
2. Several state legislatures have even compelled cities to offer their services to suburbs without receiving corresponding tax payments. (For example 1/2 of education funds for Fulton County suburbs came from the City of Atlanta, a gov't with a separate jurisdiction, in 1937.)
3. City/county lines and zoning laws have been developed and used as weapons to keep the poor out of affluent communities and stuck together in housing projects--which, unlike all European countries, were concentrated in the inner city--and protect suburbanites from paying for social services for them.
4. Minorities, particularly African-Americans, were practically barred from moving to suburbs, both northern and southern, everywhere, by collusion, federal policy choices, etc. And since housing is such a significant element of personal wealth in the States, this also set them back economically for generations.
5. Roads went from community gathering places to dangerous arteries for cars in a single generation, and combined with other inventions like A/C and TV, made Americans much more socially inward than before. We're probably the biggest homebodies on earth.

There are a lot of great things about suburbs too, and the book describes these and why they were appealing! The nature, the comfort, etc. What makes the book so important is that it shows how all the things we take for granted and assume are ordinary and natural are actually the result of strenuous effort and policy choices based on values which could in fact be very selfish. Since I've lived in foreign towns and cities for 5 years, I've seen some of these issues already, but the book made them crystal-clear. Highly recommended, especially for anyone who wants to be involved in local politics.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

For thousands of years, people lived in either the country or the city, but with the coming of the industrial revolution that changed, and especially in America. Seemingly as soon as they were able, the wealthy and later the middle class abandoned the cities in favor of neighborhoods set in the country, first commuting into the city and then commuting to other areas outside it once jobs followed the wealth out of town. Why was the traditional urban form abandoned for the suburbs to the degree that it was in the United States, and not in Europe? In Crabgrass Frontier, Kenneth Jackson chronicles urban flight and the making of the 'burbs, establishing that Americans have an historic cultural distaste for cities, inherited through England, and have been trying to have the best of both worlds, city and country, at least since the end of the 18th century. Wealth and technology first allowed a prosperous minority to establish separate country residences, and later government policy made ex-urban living the easiest choice to make, resulting in it becoming the cultural norm. Jackon begins detached and eventually waxes passionate as the suburbs' success prove to be at the expense of the cities, but he's never caustic.

The Revolutionary War was scarcely over before suburbs appeared on the American scene; even before horsecars, trolley lines, and the automobile, wealthy citizens of New York established their residences on the Brooklyn Heights nearby, and commuted by ferry. While the borders of cities have historically been slums, home to necessary but despised industries like leather tanneries, in the United States cities came to be ringed by affluence. Reasons for the wealthy leaving were varied, but a desire to get away from the city's "problems" -- the noise of industry and the presence of common working folk -- ranked high. The simplest explanation, however, is that they could. The United States had more land than it knew what to do with. At first, living outside the city and commuting to it to work was the domain of the very wealthy, but the arrival of railroads allowed moderately wealthy persons to join in. The trolley and the introduction of balloon-frame homebuilding made suburban living affordable for more people, and saw a manifold increase in the number of these communities. This was not the beginning of sprawl, however: even as they multiplied, suburban communities remained distinct, walkable places.

It was the automobile which allowed suburbia to truly transform the urban landscape, extending the ease of complete mobility to the entire middle class. At the same time, government policies promoted suburban expansion, directly and indirectly, by promoting home ownership through subsidized loans and highways. Having lost the wealthy and middle classes, their tax base, cities deteriorated further, prompting even more flight. At the same time, home loan and insurance policies favored the suburbs heavily, stifling attempts by those in the city to improve or protect their buildings. These policies were at times openly racist, denying coverage or loans to whole blocks if a Jewish or black family were to move in.

Motivated by a cultural preference for country homes over city living, enabled by the widespread availability of open land --and technological innovations like the rail line and automobile which used that land as a broad canvas to draw an entirely new kind of urban landscape - and further encouraged by government support, the Americans thus became suburbanized. The work, which Jackson introduces as an extended essay, ends with a reflection on where the suburbs are taking the American people. Built on cheap land, connected by cheap transport, and occupied by cheap buildings, Jackson believes contemporary sprawl to be not worth much in comparison to the city, and points to trends in the 1980s which might signal a turning point.

Thirty years after the fact, we know that sprawl recovered from those hiccoughs, only for its tide to slow and reverse in the later years of the 21st century's opening decade, influenced by the financial crisis and the new normal of high gasoline prices. The Millennial generation has displayed a sharp preference for city living over the burbs, and car ownership is on the decline. As Americans begin to rebuild their cities and the civilization which they foster, this look back at what caused their disintegration will prove most helpful. This comprehensive history of suburbia not only establishes why American suburbs are so different from those from across the world, but delves into the full range of factors that led to their creation: cultural, technological, economic, and political. Those wanting to understand the development of suburbia will find it a worthy guide, especially for its less strident tone as compared to an author like Jim Kunstler.

Related:
The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler
Suburban Nation, Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck
Asphalt Nation, Jane Holtz Keay

[Kaufmak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily another classic if you are looking to know more about twentieth century US cultural history. But before all of that, perhaps the most haunting aspect of this book is the dedication to Jackson's son, who had died in a car accident. Just a gut-wrenching episode that I wouldn't wish on any one. ever.

The book itself is an excellent comparative text between American and European suburbs, the emergence of the modern suburb and the government's role in the shaping of US suburbs. It does focus on the uniqueness of the US model compared to the rest of the world, but doesn't hold it as yet another example of American Exceptionalism. It is examines how the changes in transportation, financing and legal means (or neglect of legal means) created the suburban landscape we now see surrounding even the smaller cities within the US. Jackson also brings in the different acstetic in the suburbs as opposed to the city, namely an appeal to a country/rural atmosphere as opposed to an urban one. It is really interesting looking at the street names and lack of organization often used in suburbs to give a sense of a country lane.

The most important part of the book is the look at the use of FHA loans for returning GIs and the use of red line practices, that went largely unchallenged by the government, in the development of how the suburbs came into being. It discusses quite effectively, that instead of what many would like to believe, that those that bought and moved out to the suburbs did so solely on their own, there was in fact a great amount of governmental aid, and extra-legal practices, that made the suburbs middle-class and overwhelmingly white.

[David Dayen · Rating 4 out of 5]

30 years old but fascinating about the unique development of suburbanization, its racial undertones, and the dovetailing with American abundance. The ending begins with a fatalism that develops into a somewhat prescient expectation of gentrification and urban renewal. But I just read a stat that low-density suburbs grew more in 2016 than any other area. We still love to shutter into our homes, maybe more so now that modern conveniences make leaving less necessary.

[Sarah Y]

Great, thorough research. At times dense and a little dry but gives you so much to work with as to why suburbanization is a distinctly American phenomenon. All the pieces were in the right place - access to capital, cheap land, early attitudes towards city and suburb, government subsidies that favored house and highway construction, the dominant forms of transportation, institutional racism, the end of the Civil War, legislation that fundamentally changed mortgage lending, developments in residential architecture, and more ... all came together to fuel drive-in culture and a loss of community. Not all of the author's predictions came true (this was published in the 80s), but all of these factors have certainly helped to determine how our everyday lives are structured, down to why I am writing this from my work-from-home set-up in the only city in America that still favors public transportation.

[The Atlantic]

"Jackson’s 1985 work, 'Crabgrass Frontier,' is beloved by urban historians, and it underscores how novel America’s urban geography really is ... Ahead of momentous elections, 'Crabgrass Frontier' is a potent reminder that what’s built in one era shapes the next. We are living in a present constructed by people who could never have imagined our lives. As the nation faces an inflection point—a startling shortage of housing, and a dearth of renewable-energy and mass-transit infrastructure, all in the face of climate emergency—what policy makers build today will determine the fate of our descendants." — Jerusalem Demsas

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...

[James Maskell · Rating 4 out of 5]

While dense with a couple centuries of information, Crabgrass Frontier is an effective volume declaring all the whys and hows of suburban development. In it I saw explanations and antecedents of pretty much everything I saw growing up in the suburbs, from which houses had lawns and why to the evolution and degradation of different types of business and tradition.

[Onefinemess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simultaneously really boring and really fascinating, it’s a look at suburbanization in the US (and bits of it elsewhere as a matter of contrast).

Lots of information of value to come away with… but the damning critique of the goverment’s housing policies and the loan appraisal system’s (and a few other things I’m not aware enough to comment on) effect on (and indeed, as prime causes of) urban decay, ghettoization, racial segregation and any mashup concocted between them was the most intriguing part.

Things that make perfect sense once you see them lined up & spelled out, but that never occurred to me beforehand. Hint: If the government will only loan you money to build a house in the suburbs (as compared to in the city, or to repair a structure in the city), and only to white people then uh. Well, you know. Shit happens. Other factors at play as well, but almost all of them in the predictable manner.

Also, watching (imagining anyway) the changes that each new system of transportation brought is pretty fascinating.

I’m left with a phrase, not ever uttered in the book, and indeed, even argued against in the closing… but it’s still what sticks with me:

“Cities Will Abandon Themselves”

THREE STARS

Because it was a little dry, but I still highly recommend it for any longtime US citizen (particularly homeowners) or student of US culture.

[Mehrsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The later chapters are a thorough and robust account of the suburbanization of America and what that means for us today. This book really helps explain America in terms of institutions, race, and culture. The earlier chapters are somewhat boring and I think the book could use an update, but it's a must-read.

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since its publication in 1987, there have been droves of works of urban history dotting the disciplines, attempting to do everything Kenneth lays out here. Andrew Jackson Downing - check, Streetcar suburbs - check, HOLC redlining maps - check, Interstates - check… There is nothing wrong with newer takes on older works, in fact their more recent arrays of citations often give them greater utility than some of the classics. Since the social sciences are already laden with a reputation of dry language, it can be difficult to approach the classics with a genuine expectation of an intellectual thriller.

I am happy to say that Kenneth more than excels in that category, thanks in no small part to a generous serving of sass. From antebellum conceptions of urban disorder to the Reagan-era panic of “Welfare Queens”, Kenneth is very clear on the discrimination and depravity that has informed much of American intellectual and policy takes on the city and its environs. Though this is an urban historical survey, there is a clear identification at the outset of the political implications of so-called “neutral” urban attitudes. Thanks to a combination of constant migration/immigration, imperial expansion, and a hyper-capitalistic commodification of land, the US has insistently stretched their cities beyond the radii of any previously accepted standards. While municipal annexation had historically been the solution for cities to retain a critical capacity of governance, a self-perpetuating NIMBY mentality eventually accumulated enough power (coupled with technological advancements) to resist urban encroachment. This had put cities at a centuries long spiral of decline that has most hurt the marginalized communities relegated to the municipal borders.

Though he maintains the measured composure of a historian, Kenneth is clear with his condemnations. His most cited source is Lewis Mumford, perhaps the saltiest satirist of suburbia. For every promise suburbia has made, Kenneth details the means to which this success has directly hurt cities or otherwise represents a hollow victory, artificially devised to bolster a deplorable form of settlement. Though the history well rhymes, there has been a clear Overton shift over the years. The suburbs of Levitt represent a far cry from the managed middle-class values of Downing and Beecher, though one is clearly just an evolution of the other. The puzzle pieces of this sad suburban spiral compose all the stroads and places comprising the fabric so saturated in this big bland country. Though he doesn’t maintain the zeal of Kunstler, the well-stratified (and comfortably paced) chapters ease the reader into the hedge of facts comprising current shitty urban takes.

This last point is worth developing. Too often, these urban surveys assume some level of technical understanding on US real estate, transportation technology, architecture, etc. Such assumptions helped for the seasoned reader comparing theses, but prove rather restrictive for those looking for an opening into the urban critique. Additionally, the peculiar period in which this was published shields Jackson from the dated assertions of the neoliberal new urbanists. In short, this is a book that despite the age, I’d be more than comfortably pulling excerpts from when designing an Intro to Urban Geo course.

With that praise in mind, there are a few issues that drag this wonderful work away from that fifth star. Like many broad-sweeping social science texts, Kenneth provides a final chapter with insights and predictions into the future. To his credit, his wrong predictions come with justifications that are extremely agreeable coming from a post oil scare uncertain 80s. But I would be remiss not to point out how that chapter starts with him introducing the prediction of endless exurbs and hyper-automobile dependence into the 21st century, a prediction that is painfully prescient. Additionally, Kenneth does the annoying historian maneuver where it is crystal clear the entire narrative on his attitudes towards American suburbanization, yet he often opens and ends his chapters with a “neutral” (read as centrist) normative assessment on that state of development. As always, honest assertions would have made for a more interesting read. I ordinarily don’t deduct a star for this disciplinary pet peeve, but he laid it down heavy in the final chapter, which really detracted from everything he said in the rest of the book.

Nonetheless, I maintain that this is a classic for a reason. An easily accessible, but well-detailed, survey of the US’s shitty suburbs. Recommended for anyone who has experienced a hot lonely afternoon on a suburban road.

[Michael Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five points need to be made in order to show why reading this excellent book is a good idea. I suggest comparing the experience of the walking city, as Jackson describes it, to your everyday experience of the place where you live. Ask yourself this question: Do these characteristics seem familiar or alien to the manner of daily life?

1. Is there a good deal of congestion when I leave my residence? If so, then you are a member of 'the walking city.' Now, this doesn't suggest that the city is able to walk all of itself, since animals walk but cities are a mixture of walking people, the walking dead, a variety of animals and plants, and cars and so forth.

2. Is it obvious when you cross over the city limit that you are now in the so-called country? This is a key marker of the 'walking city.' If you feel that there is a vast wilderness around you when you leave the city limits, then you are a member of the walking city.

3. Are there a mixture of functions located in the city itself? In the walking city there are no distinctions between industrial areas, like Vernon, California and residential areas, like Hancock Park, California. In fact there are few factories at all. It should be obvious then that the walking city had its heyday in 1815, the ear of Napoleon.

4. Are you able to walk to work? If so, then you are a member of a walking city. If you drive to work or if you are in some sense a commuter, then you are not living in a walking city.

5. Are the best homes in the city center? If that's the case, then you are a resident of a walking city. Take downtown Los Angeles, where the worst homes are in the city center. It is definitely not a walking city. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

[Andrew Lobo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Whatever the shape of the future, [nothing] can obscure the fact that suburbanization has been the outstanding residential characteristic of American life."

I picked this up after seeing it mentioned in Conor Dougherty's "Golden Gates" as one of the seminal texts of urban planning. After reading it, I can confirm that claim. "Crabgrass Frontier" stands as a sagacious work on par with Jane Jacobs' "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" and Robert Caro's "The Power Broker." Jackson lucidly explains the factors that led to suburbanization, including technological change, racial prejudice, Federal subsidies, and the preferences of the American public. It's a meticulously researched piece of urban history and it functions as one of those rare works that helps the reader get a better understanding of how the world works. It's not perfect: it's a scholarly work that drags at points, it was written before cities began bouncing back, and it offers no prescriptions on how to combat the decline of the community. Still, a must-read for those who care about the topic.

[Vampire Who Baked · Rating 4 out of 5]

extremely depressing but very comprehensive (if a little dated -- book was published in 1985, a LOT has happened since). but it fully captures the distinctively american tragedy that is the post-war period of extreme suburbanization and movement towards low-density living, and all the awfulness that comes with it -- automobile dependence, loss of community, destruction of the environment, and a general degradation in culture and creativity in society as a whole, with people become more withdrawn and therefore more stupid, more racist, more lazy and more ignorant over time.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read on housing in America. An older academic work (1985), and a dry read at times. I think some of the framing and conclusions are subject to revision. But Jackson does a masterful job tracking urban and suburban change in the US from 1800 to 1985, while covering a wide range of associated transportation and political issues. This was a great complement to everything I have previously read on urbanism.

[Mare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously somewhat dated but a deep dive into the federal policies and trends that encouraged the growth of the suburbs and disinvestment from cities.

[Robert Rosso · Rating 5 out of 5]

actually incredible book detailing the roles of technology, culture and federal policy in making the US suburbanize faster and at a scale seen nowhere else

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book that complimented a course I took in college on the mid-19th century American city, which included a component on suburbanization. This study concludes that suburbanization is ascribable to many factors, from American desire to be surrounded by open land and to have an individual dwelling to the development of transportation systems to allow commuting into central cities from suburbs (I read an earlier book that is cited in this one on the development of Boston's suburbs based on the expansion of the streetcar system). An interesting book published in 1985--I would like to find an update of the subject.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

In understanding how on earth American cities developed as they did, there is probably no better place to start than this book. It is immensely well researched, marshaling a wealth of information that I found jaw-dropping at times. This makes it a bit too detailed on occassions, perhaps a bit harder to get through and I am no fan of reading ad nauseum that old garden city ideal or the building of early havens of wealth and beauty. I could have done with less of that, but so many of the tidbits are delightful, from the horse-car and its effects on the weak-willed:

"It is hardly too much to say that the modern horse-car is among the most indispensable conditions of metropolitan growth. In these days of fashionable effeminacy and flabby feebleness, which never walks when it can possibly ride, the horse-car virtually fixes the ultimate limits of suburban growth." p 42 (Miller - Fares Please)

to the rise of the automobile:

"There is something uncanny about these newfangled vehicles, They are unutterably ugly and never a one of them has been provided with a good or even an endurable name. The French, who are usually orthodox in their etymology, if in nothing else, have evolved 'automobile,' which being half Greek and half Latin is so near indecent that we print it with hesitation." New York Times January 3, 1899

He has a very broad analysis of suburbia's rise, and his main argument is that: "The spatial arrangement of cities depends less on ideology than on economics, less on national idiosyncrasies than on industrial development, technological achievement, and racial integration." I think he does a solid job of showing some of the economics (though I could have wished for more analysis of profits and power, and this is no critique of capitalism itself), industrial development and technological achievement.

But the mention of 'racial integration' points up where my main critique lies, because it was not integration that pushed anything at all, it was the immense push to segregation. He does a great job of unearthing and presenting the federal government's awful role in enforcing and promoting segregation through the FHA and HOLC, but it seems to me he fails to fully engage with the issue of racism, or its manifestation among white Americans themselves. Perhaps that is why he is so hopeful looking into the future...

[aa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boring and highly informative, just as I expected.

The suburbs, a manifestation of middle-class values, trick their inhabitants into thinking they are the norm.

According to this book, the availability of land, the rise of middle-class mores about the nuclear family, the American ideals of freedom, and a fear/disdain for minorities and immigrants all collided to cause the flight from cities and the creation of periphery suburbs. While the rebellious 60s and riots that broke out in urban America contributed towards the growth of the suburbs, this book shows how these dynamics that drastically escalated by 1980 had been taking place for a century beforehand.

I also found helpful Jackson's exploration of the shifting importance of the nuclear family in the 19th century, in addition to the escalating domain of 'private life' over public.

Highly recommended for anyone who grew up in the suburbs, or who are interested in the spatial/geographic development of the United States.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really clear and cogent analysis of suburbanization in America: how it happened, why, and when. The author's big argument is that it wasn't an inevitability, a natural inclination to sprawl proceeding apace over a massive landscape - instead, it was the product of specific technologies and especially governmental policies. Those policies changed forever the fate of American cities and the nature of our suburbs, with implications of course for race, opportunity, education, and individual prosperity. IT clips right along with crisp prose and held my interest from the suburbs of eighteenth-century LOndon to America's first "walking cities" through the 1980s, when it was published. Boy would I like an update. Great read, essential American knowledge.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good "view from 20,000 feet" study of the American migration from city to suburbs. I was reading primarily for the 50s-60s part of the story, but learned more from Jackson's presentation of the deeper history that came to a head when I was a kid growing up in one of the ubiquitous GI-Bill fueled suburban developments. Didn't really learn much about the areas I was already familiar with, but that clearly wasn't Jackson's purpose. Well written treatment of a significant movement, one that created a huge number of problems for cities and contributed to a widespread transformation/collapse in the American experience of community. Dovetails in interesting ways with Putnam's Bowling Alone.

[Simone · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book I read for dissertation research. I normally try to keep the more dissertation-y grad school books off of my Goodreads, on the assumption that people aren't interested in them. But i've been doing a lot of historical reading on the development of the suburbs and urban spaces, which is slightly less inside baseball and more aligned with my general interest in spaces. Anyway, I really enjoyed this one. Considered a foundational book in the study of the US suburbs, it really lays out the historical development of suburbs in the United States. Jackson balances analysis of the suburbs with some links to the urban spaces.

[Aydan]

this is for teddy! I can definitely see how this is foundational and borderline revolutionary for the field when it came out! Interesting and good discussion and made for good class conversation! I think it is worth a read for sure!

[Stephen Matlock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book on the growth of suburbs and why they got that way--and what that means to what America is today.

[AskHistorians]

Classic history of suburbanization. A bit dated, but still a great read.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a deep problem with an author who can have nice things to say about the atrocious mass public housing efforts during the Great Depression and afterward but has little or nothing nice to say about the suburbs of the United Kingdom, United States, and other settler colonies.  One of the problems one encounters when one wishes to read about suburbs and their developments is that those who are engaged in the process of building homes for others are too busy engaged in the work, so that those who write about this process by which people are able to get detached houses with a bit of grass and garden around their single-family dwellings are written about by those who hate the process and who wish that the United States would be like corrupt big government European nations and those that have imitated that malign example around the world, where the city is chosen because of the power it brings, rather than people preferring to be free on the peripheries [1].  This gap in worldview between writer and reader makes this book, and others like it, of interest mainly to fellow bitter Marxist travelers whose advice is not worth taking anyway.

This book of about three hundred pages is organized in a largely chronological fashion as the author wishes to tell the narrative of America's suburbanization from a predictably and lamentably negative perspective.  After a short introduction in which the author laments the death of his son shortly before the book was finished, the author discusses that in most of the world, suburbs are synonymous with slums (1) and people seek to live in the city because that is where the power is.  After that the author talks about the transportation revolution and the erosion of the walking city of high densities (2), and the vision of house and yard that encouraged early developers of the peripheries of cities (3).  The author spends some time talking about romantic suburbs (4) as well as the main line and the elite suburbs that were served by expensive commuter railroads (5).  After that comes an examination of the time of the trolley (6) as well as the dream of affordable houses for the common man (7), and the rise and fall of municipal annexation that left cities unable to take in suburbs that had been developed precisely to avoid the problems of the city (8).  After that the author bemoans the development of the auto (9), suburban development in the interwar period (10), and the role of federal subsidies in the spread of suburbanization (11).  There comes a comment about the ghettoization of public housing that resulted because of a laudable unwillingness to make property rights insecure to put public housing in areas where its residents were not wanted (12), a look at the baby boom and the age of the subdivision (13), the drive-in culture of contemporary America (14), some whining about the loss of community in metropolitan American (15), and some stunningly false prophecies about the revitalization of the hipster urban ideal and the end of suburbs (16).

There is a lot wrong with this book, and little that is right.  The book, of course, won awards from people who think like the author does, but such people pass out book awards that no one except their coterie cares about and pontificate while people ignore them and go about doing what they should be doing anyway, serving the culture hostile to metropolitan gigantism with its belief in high rises and high densities and a hostility to freedom of movement and a dependence on public transportation and public largess for ordinary people.  When someone has an antithetical worldview to the author, it becomes clear why the author and others of like mind write as they do and think as they do, but their vision for an America with massive and dense metropolitan areas hostile to the car and siphoning off the wealth and property of the productive classes to cater to a politically leftist proletariat is not a vision I want any part of, which is why I have spent most of my life in suburbs and the rural areas of the United States where the dream of freedom, along with its costs, can be recognized and achieved.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

[Mr. Monahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

To begin with, Ken Jackson is a groundbreaking urban historian and this is his seminal work and masterpiece. It is a quite logical starting point for any 20th century urban historian or history student interested in the urban-suburban discussion.

According to Kevin Mumford, Jackson is the “first urban historian to note the postwar increase in black population in the cities, seeing Newark as a nightmare of problems.” Published in 1985, Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier exemplifies scholarship focused on structural forces instead of sociocultural factors—namely racism, discrimination, and segregation—in effort to explain contemporary urban history. Jackson’s analysis is particularly useful to understanding modern urbanity, and Newark is one of the cities which his analysis continually gravitates toward. Jackson’s study seeks to understand the evacuation of the middle class finds from cities, a phenomena that is a...recent manifestation of a dilemma that has confronted American cities for two hundred years. On the one hand, democracy seems to call for government to remain small and close to the people; on the other hand, efficiency and the regional character of many contemporary problems point to the necessity of government that is metropolitan in authority and planning.

Jackson shows suburbanization in postwar Newark; more specifically suburbs that fiercely opposed annexation by urban centers. In postwar America, annexation had become “no longer a viable process” for cities to cope with middle class exodus, because centralization and size had long ceased to be seen as desirable objectives. Suburban resistance to annexation demonstrates the external view that urban problems could not be solved, and thus, urban isolation was not only justifiable, but the only valid course of action:

In New Jersey, for instance, most suburbs flourish and try to ignore the fact that Newark and Camden, both seriously depressed and geographically small, must struggle with the whole range of contemporary urban problems. The rich have long since departed; the middle class is almost gone…In Newark, the area of decline is practically the entire city because annexation has taken place only on a tiny scale, and the city does not have a substantial middle-class zone. Assimilation is often more difficult for blacks than for other minorities because movement form the ghetto involves movement into another governmental jurisdiction rather than simply movement into another neighborhood.

As Jackson relates, the emergence of elite suburban communities fostered the urban crisis or, as he calls it, the “crises of urban capitalism”, while simultaneously allowing suburbanites to enjoy the capitalist benefits afforded by the very urban population they seek to remain isolated from. These processes have since become known by Jackson’s contemporaries as the “balkanization of New Jersey.”

According to Jackson’s narrative, this process did not occur without Federal intervention. Franklin Roosevelt signed the United States Housing Act (Wagner-Steagall Act) on September 1, 1937, marking the first time the federal government accepted “permanent responsibility” for the construction of affordable housing. Thus began the process of USHA development of federally funded public projects, or what Roosevelt declared, “an attack on the slums of this country.” Jackson describes the bold venture of public housing as initially a “resounding” success, but ultimately as failing to fulfill the expectation of its supporters because, as Jackson puts it, there was never enough funding. Most significantly, however, public housing radical altered the “spatial distribution” of cities like Newark. On the FHA making it easier to secure a mortgage, Jackson writes, unfortunately, the corollary of [long-term, low interest mortgage] was the fact that FHA programs hastened the decay of inner-city neighborhoods by stripping them of much of their middle-class constituency…in Essex County, New Jersey, FHA commitments went in overwhelming

[Anusha Datar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book captures the development and evolution of housing and infrastructure development in the United States. Specifically, it focuses on how the US's uniquely suburban landscape came to be and what its economic, sociological, and political impacts have been and will continue to be. Jackson spares no details as he describes how the advent of commuting infrastructure allowed wealthier (and then middle-class) Americans to enjoy the economic value and abundance of urban life with the quiet privacy of the suburbs (and the economic value and abundance that comes with real estate investment in the private home). He then describes how those communities were removed from the city but still tight-knit and pedestrian friendly until the arrival of the automobile and other personal electronic devices, which made the average American more and more isolated. Throughout the book, he describes how public policy created major incentives to build suburban housing (even using urban taxpayer money to fund services in the outskirts) and how factors like FHA loan denial and redlining disproportionately disadvantaged Black and Jewish Americans.

This book was written in 1985, and it's interesting to see that Americans of all social strata (seem to be) champion the viability and value of urban life and pedestrian-first infrastructure. While the car-centric infrastructure making so easy to shutter ourselves and isolating power of advancing technology is here to stay, I wonder if Jackson's hopeful notes at the end will come to fruition.

I enjoyed reading this book, and I think it's a solid primer on urban development in the 20th century. He uses a large variety of examples and provides a wealth of data to back up what he has to say, and the framework he lays out is cogent and clear. That being said, I did find it to be a bit long-winded and dated, so I wouldn't wholeheartedly recommend it without a caveat.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several chapters were excessive and less interesting, but overall an important history. The discussion of how annexation of separate municipalities into larger cities was very common up until a certain point was great because this is not acknowledged enough at all. A metropolitan area having crazy amounts of individual independent governments creates inequality, ineffective government, and, most importantly, loopholes for people to pick and choose which benefits/laws/tradeoffs apply to them. Working and playing in the urban city and benefitting from what it has to offer, but not paying any taxes there--instead going home to your little planned utopia that keeps people of color and the poor out, is not fair or logical in any sense. The suburbanization of the United States had clear motivations and was enabled by public policy through highway construction, zoning, and the New Deal's policy of making it easy for some to build their own homes for cheap in the suburbs, while restricting others to a very limited housing stock (& public 'housing' in the most struggling neighborhoods they could find--this chapter on the Ghettoization of Public Housing is good).

I am passionate about local government because of the ideas of community, local services, and familiarity/immediacy, but in the supposed pursuit of these ideals, the suburbanization of the U.S. made all of these things significantly worse off.

Jackson's final predictions for the future (written in 1985) are interesting, but I think they have proven to be not great. I think the author overestimates the similarities between Americans and people elsewhere and also could (maybe) not have foreseen the local and federal priorities of government (and the media's generous help) over the next 40 years. It's All About Capital, Baby.