After World War II the concept of life in America began a new. The process of
sub urbanization began in cities all across the nation. Today the cities of
yesteryear are gone and life as we knew it ended. However, people do not want it
to end. They still want the American Dream; the house in the suburbs, the good
job, the wife, car and 2.4 kids playing in the yard. These people have been the
driving force in the division of socioeconomic status, and the division of race
in the suburbs. They accomplish this through local governments and the decisions
made through them. Though what has been created, by all of this over the years,
isn't necessarily bad, but it has hurt the country in ways that we did not
expect. When soldiers returned from the war they were greeted with open arms and
a new booming economy. It was this booming economy, of service-oriented jobs,
that allowed the middle class of people the opportunity to move away from their
jobs and separate their work from their home. Also during that time we were
still, as a country, practicing racial segregation, which is part of the reason
for the racial inequalities in the suburbs today. These new communities, of
mostly white nuclear families, were now in need of a council to make the
decisions that needed to be made for their area. They didn't want the city to
make these decisions for them since they were so far away. Also since most
people worked in the city, they wanted to continue with the dream of keeping
home and work separate. Therefore they banded together as neighborhoods and
communities to make the decisions that affected that area on a daily basis. The
benefit of this was that now they had almost total autonomy from the poor and
the lower class they so quickly left behind in the city. This is where the
socioeconomic division began. The people of the suburbs loved their lives. They
lived around the people of the same socioeconomic status and were separated from
their work. Time went on and the suburbs slowly became racially integrated, but
only by the educated wealthy minorities. Life in the suburbs was good until we
started to notice the decline in the life lead by the inner-city folk. We as the
good, moral country that we are, decided we needed to do something about them.
Which actually was a good idea on paper, but the reality of it, is that it
didn't work out as we had hoped. The suburban councils/governments had created
laws and other things that had reduced the amount of space that would be allowed
for the renewal of the lower class and poor. The original settlers of the
suburbs had done two things to keep their wonderful life-styles. The first thing
that some areas did was to raise the housing prices of the area to the point
that nobody else could afford to move in. They did this by building extravagant
houses and spending their money on their schools. The second thing, often done
in conjunction with the first, was to actually write into law that there shall
be no low-income housing in that area. By doing this, the suburbs stayed safe
and the feeling of community was saved for the time being. The pursuit of the
American Dream is not a bad thing. It is actually a fundamental part of our
economy. Capitalism is based on the fact that there will always be a caste
system. But the rapid suburbanization, also known as white-flight, helped to
create a greater disparity in the lives of the lower class and the lives of the
upper class. In other words suburbs and their suburban councils have beaten the
economic system and created one where the rich get richer and the poor get
poorer. There is no real way to rectify the situation at this time, so all we
can do is wait for another economic change to help lift the poor. However, what
we can do is help to prepare them by fixing their housing and educating them.
The suburbs have always been a place of retreat for the wealthy, they will
always be, and there is nothing we can do to change that. The wealthy will
always find a way to stay ahead as long as they can. Whether they do it through
shear wealth, laws that restrict the poor, or through laws that restrict other
races, they will do it until they get caught. These councils and laws are
necessarily bad, they are just a product of the economic driven, capitalistic
society we have chosen to live in.