Suburbanization, the Spread of Suburban Culture: A Residential Mobility Approach to the Post-WW II Suburban Types in American Metropolis

Abstract

Traditional accounts often have underestimated complexities involved in suburbanization process by assuming direct, linear causality to explain the suburban patterns of metropolitan development. Yet, an explicit explanation that encompasses the complexities of the multitude of flux of causal relationships and feedbacks and incorporates demographic and morphological variations of contemporary suburban types is still not available. In this paper, I apply a complexity approach to provide an inclusive justification for suburbanization that fits more flexible into most patterns of the post-WW II American suburbs. Taking into account intersections of many weaker factors, this paper approaches suburbanization as an intra-metropolitan residential mobility pattern. Over the course of the second half of the 20th century, residential mobility preferences coupled with land market preferences, technological advancement, and political support to escalate rates of city-to-suburb residential mobility and spread this pattern of mobility.