Jon C. Teaford - The Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-Urban America

THE METROPOLITAN REVOLUTION

THE COLUMBIA HISTORY OF URBAN LIFE

The Columbia History of Urban Life

Kenneth T. Jackson, General Editor

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THE METROPOLITAN REVOLUTION The Rise of Post-Urban America Jon C. Teaford Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2006 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-51093-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Teaford, Jon C.

The metropolitan revolution : the rise of post-urban America / Jon C. Teaford.

p. cm.(The Columbia history of urban life)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-231-13372-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 0-231-13373-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Metropolitan areasUnited StatesHistory20th century. 2. Cities and townsUnited StatesHistory20th century. I. Title.

HT334.U5T4 2006

307.7640973dc22

2005034053

A Columbia University Press E-book

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Contents

We are on the threshold of a crucial era of change in the urban way of life, wrote the respected architect-planner Henry S. Churchill in 1945. Vast disintegrating and destructive forces are loose on the world, he observed, causing Americans to seek new physical urban settings as well as new social and economic patterns. Although his vision of the future was not perfect, Churchills sense of impending radical change proved prescient. The American city was indeed on the brink of a revolution that would transform the metropolis and the lifestyle of the nations residents. During the following half century, traditional notions of the city would become obsolete, and concepts standard to the understanding of urban areas would grow increasingly outmoded. By 2000 changes in metropolitan life would draw into question the meaning of such terms as urban and suburban, as language and notions appropriate to the world of Henry Churchill seemed to fall short of explaining the new reality.

In 1945 the United States was an urban nation, dominated by clearly defined urban places with an anatomy familiar and comprehensible to experts like Churchill as well as city dwellers in general. The metropolis was a place with readily discernible edges, its lifestyle sharply distinguished from that of the rural rubes and hicks, many of whom had obtained the benefits of electricity only a decade before. Cities were in the nations vanguard, enjoying the latest technology and defining the cutting edge in fashion and culture. They were the centers of commerce, manufacturing, entertainment, and intellect where the luckiest Americans made and spent their fortunes. Manhattan and Chicago were magnets attracting the ambitious and adventurous, those who sought to get ahead and enjoy the best in life. The vast expanses beyond metropolitan America were the sticks, the home of those who remained behind.

At the core of each of these urban places was a single central business district, the undisputed focus of the metropolitan area. Although segregated by socioeconomic class in different residential zones, all metropolitan Americans recognized the downtown as the center of urban life. It was the unquestioned hub of finance, retailing, office employment, government, and transportation, and Americans viewed the metropolis as radiating from this single preeminent center. Each metropolis had one dominant heart marked by bustling crowds and soaring skyscrapers that was perceived as essential to the urban areas continued existence.

Metropolitan Americans not only perceived a single dominant focus for urban life, but also shared common space. The realities of urban existence forced the diverse elements of the populace to come into contact; it was difficult to escape the various fragments of the metropolitan mosaic. Because of rationing of gasoline and tires during World War II and because few families had more than one automobile, residents relied heavily on public transit. Middle-class men commuted to work on buses or streetcars that passed from middle-class neighborhoods through blue-collar districts, taking on working-class passengers, to the downtown area, a destination for residents from throughout the metropolis. Likewise, middle-class women shoppers traveled to downtown department stores by means of public transit, moving slowly through the various social zones of the city. On reaching downtown, they shared the sidewalks with businessmen, panhandlers, and working-class shoppers.