An Introduction to the "Liberation Begins in the 'Burbs" Project

 

David Shankbone, Wikimedia Commons

In the early 1950s, the United States, strained by a rising population and high birth rates, found itself in the midst of a major, self-imposed housing crisis. America, though spread out, had building patterns that rarely supported fast population growth; especially in the early twentieth century, city population growth often acted in parity with deteriorating living conditions, gradually smaller homes, and insufficient increases in housing stock. But with a large, GI bill-educated workforce intent on raising a family–while working in the city–the typical standards for addressing rapid population growth would prove ineffective.

        Then, the developer William Levitt proposed a new form of urban housing: The (sub)urban subdivision. The suburban subdivision consists of medium-sized, mass produced homes that are arranged in rows on relatively quiet, winding streets. Those winding streets eventually converge into an arterial road, on which residents could commute to work or get groceries. By incorporating cheap materials on completely unused land, separating residential and commercial spaces to streamline growth, and capitalizing on the Interstate Highway Act of 1956’s development of massive highways connecting urban centers with nearby towns, the Levittown–and other suburban developments that would follow–were a revolution in the American way of life. 

By themselves, the suburbs established what we now call teh American Dream: A dream to own a house, live on your own land, raise a family and live stably. These massive housing developments also popularized the 30-year mortgage and established the concept of housing as an asset rather than a need. For the first time in American history, the dream of owning a house and building wealth was restricted not just to America’s richest, but also to much of the white American middle class. 

But, as much as suburban development radically reshaped the American landscape and led to immense population and economic growth, it was a short-term, unsustainable solution to a long-term problem. And unfortunately, while the unprecedented sprawl that suburbs cause is a severe issue, it only scratches the surface of the many fundamental problems that a short-term, profit-inspired solution to a housing crisis created. While some of these problems are related specifically to the design of suburbs–i.e. ecological intrusion, car dependency and an obesity epidemic–many of these issues strike at much deeper, much more fundamental aspects of American society. By being a store of wealth, an excluder of minorities, a contributor to gentrification, a polluter of cities, and a parasite to city services, suburbia is a system that prolongs the class hierarchy, emboldens the patriarchy, and inhibits racial justice. 

As many suburban Americans have begun to fight for racial justice, this central aspect of American society–our built environment–has received little, if any, attention. Even in the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, the women’s rights rallies of 2022, and the Hands Off! movements of today, most suburbanites advocating for racial justice, female empowerment and redistribution of wealth, out of no fault of their own, do not realize their communities’ complicity in upholding those systems of oppression. 

For these reasons and more, the following several essays on Essays by William will be devoted to a new collection, the “Liberation Begins in the ‘Burbs Project”. In this collection, we will explore how suburban design prevents women’s liberation, racial justice, LGBTQIA+ liberation, and the redistribution of wealth. We will approach this narrative from several different lenses, each of which will be its own essay. Our subjects of exploration will include (1) the culture of “exclusion” in exclusionary zoning, suburban housing policies and development, the nuclear family system, and historical suburban developments; (2) the role of car-dependent transportation in prolonging rigid racial and socioeconomic structures; (3) the suburban design’s bankrupting of cities, prevention of urban housing growth, and parasitic exploitation of city services; and, finally, (4) the disproportionate power of suburbanites in government. 

Collectively, these essays will describe the reality of suburban America’s contribution to inequality and injustice. While the problems I raise do not have simple solutions, I trust that our collective knowledge of our complicity in injustice can break us and our human siblings from our self-imposed chains. Though we will always use the truth to demonstrate the injustices of our built environment, we will rely on one fundamental underlying truth: that no matter our comparatively minor differences, we are all bound to the same Earth, watching the same sky, and living in the same country. To resolve the injustices that our suburban experiment has caused, we must first understand them and then rectify them. And, as we fight, we will find that the good action we commit to now will not only benefit our brothers, sisters, and siblings, but all of us as well. I implore you to read on and see how we can use good action and empathetic policy to liberate all of our world’s children.

This collection serves as my final project for my current general education course at Harvard, called “Power to the People,” a course on radical justice movements taught by Professor Michael Bronski. I have thoroughly enjoyed this class, and I thought that I would combine my passion for urbanist reforms with the justice focus of this course. All opinions are solely my own and do not represent those of my class, my university, or anyone else.