Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of The United States - Flight From The City

Flight From The City

"The changing ethnic composition of the urban population also increased middle-class antipathy to the older neighborhoods, as Poles, Italians, Russians, and assorted eastern and southern Europeans, most of them Jews or Catholic, poured into the industrialized areas after 1880. Although only one-third of all Americans lived in cities in 1890, two-thirds of all immigrants did. By 1910 about 80 percent of all new arrivals at Ellis Island were remaining in cities, as were 72 percent of all of those 'foreign born.' Toward the end of the nineteenth century, mayors in New York, Chicago, and Boston were being elected by immigrant votes, and the possibility was raised that urban official might be unwilling to use the police against labor radicals, most of whom came from Europe.

Jackson examined the New Deal's contributions to public housing and concludes that "the result, if not the intent, of the public housing program of the United States was to segregate the races, to concentrate the disadvantaged in inner cities, and to reinforce the image of suburbia as a place of refuge for the problems of race, crime, and poverty." By grading certain areas based on "desirability" i.e., more recently constructed and lacking of minorities, the government, through Home Owners Loan Corporation encouraged middle class white flight from the city. Meanwhile, the Federal Housing Administration “helped to turn the building industry against the minority and inner-city housing market, and its policies supported the income and inner-city housing market.” FHA avoided providing mortgages to those in ethnic or minority neighborhoods, further promoting white flight.

"To this fear were added specific programs to tax property so as to create public improvements and jobs to benefit working class voters. The observation of Lord Bryce that municipal government was 'The conspicuous failure of the United States' was often quoted. The import of such projections was not lost on middle-class families, who often took the opportunity that low price and good transportation afforded to move beyond city jurisdictions."