The New Suburban HistoryKevin M. Kruse, Thomas J. Sugrue America has become a nation of suburbs. Confronting the popular image of suburbia as simply a refuge for affluent whites, The New Suburban History rejects the stereotypes of a conformist and conflict-free suburbia. The seemingly calm streets of suburbia were, in fact, battlegrounds over race, class, and politics. With this collection, Kevin Kruse and Thomas Sugrue argue that suburbia must be understood as a central factor in the modern American experience. Kruse and Sugrue here collect ten essays—augmented by their provocative introduction—that challenge our understanding of suburbia. Drawing from original research on suburbs across the country, the contributors recast important political and social issues in the context of suburbanization. Their essays reveal the role suburbs have played in the transformation of American liberalism and conservatism; the contentious politics of race, class, and ethnicity; and debates about the environment, land use, and taxation. The contributors move the history of African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and blue-collar workers from the margins to the mainstream of suburban history. From this broad perspective, these innovative historians explore the way suburbs affect—and are affected by—central cities, competing suburbs, and entire regions. The results, they show, are far-reaching: the emergence of a suburban America has reshaped national politics, fostered new social movements, and remade the American landscape. The New Suburban History offers nothing less than a new American history—one that claims the nation cannot be fully understood without a history of American suburbs at its very center. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 Marketing the Free Market | 11 |
2 Less Than Plessy | 33 |
3 Uncovering the City in the Suburb | 57 |
4 How Hell Moved from the City to the Suburbs | 80 |
5 The House I Live In | 99 |
6 Socioeconomic Integration in the Suburbs | 120 |
7 Prelude to the Tax Revolt | 144 |
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Administration affordable housing African Americans antibusing Association build busing California Center central cities Charlotte-Mecklenburg Chicago Press city of knowledge civil rights Cold War Council county’s Court created culture defense desegregation districts environment ethnic Fairfax County families folder Fremont groups HHFA high-tech homeowners Housing Policy Ibid immigrants industrial institutions integration issues Jacobs Jane Jacobs Latinos Lewis Mumford liberal live located majority metropolis metropolitan area middle-class minorities Montgomery County mortgage Mumford Negro neighborhoods North officials organization percent planning population postwar suburban Princeton University Press programs Proposition 13 public housing race racial racial segregation real estate redevelopment reform region research park residents rules San Leandro school board Silicon Valley social southeast Charlotte space suburban growth suburban politics suburbanites suburbia suburbs tion United Urban History urban renewal Washington white flight Whyte working-class York zoning