There may be an argument about how the two are linked, but the -ism on display in the second photo is racism. The US built the suburbs quite explicitly to keep black people out by using poverty as a proxy, after the SCOTUS blocked housing segregation.
Yes, and it’s also unfettered capitalism. Developers buy land cheap, build homes cheap, and sell them for a profit. That’s usually not in the best interests of the homeowners or the community. In many other countries, homeowners buy land, choose a builder, buy materials, and contribute to their local area. It’s a system that costs slightly more upfront, but most of the value stays where it should, with the homeowners and the laborers. There’s no mass-produced garbage or corporate veils to syphon and protect profits far away from the community.
the -ism on display in the second photo is racism.
You can definitely go into the deep history of Levittowns, Master Planned Country Club communities, and Red Lining in the big metro areas. But I think the advent of the modern suburb speaks more heavily to the mix of “Free Real Estate” and enormous state subsidies for rural development following the S&L crash of the 1980s.
Like, there’s no reason these can’t be high rise condos with racist building managers, rather than cookie cutter ranch homes with racist HOAs. The suburb isn’t merely about racial segregation, it is about individualist alienation. Breaking up the extended family unit into the nuclear family cluster, subdividing the working class into thinner and thinner economic tranches, and fencing people into gilded cages complete with 30 year golden handcuff mortgage notes.
You can debate over the exact degree to which civic planners intended to separate and capture individual specimens of human labor. Or how deliberately the 1950s architectural model of personalized kitchens, TVs, and car ports manufactured an increasingly pliable working class subject. But the subdivision doesn’t end at the color line. We are a fully balkanized society.
We don’t have to debate to what extent civic planners intended to divide people by color. In his book, The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein just straight-up quoted them. They weren’t shy, and they wrote it down in memos, meeting minutes, and even speeches.
That’s why I say that the suburbs are a product of racism… because the people who created them intended them that way, and said so.
For the economic analysis from the class perspective, look at why suburbs became entrenched, which has a lot to do with the auto industry.
Yeah, my wife and I moved in with my parents ~ 8 years ago while I was between jobs, and because we all get along it has been such a lovely experience (especially during the pandemic!) that we have never felt a need to move back out. A couple of years ago my uncle moved in because his house was unlivable, and being able to spend time with him has been nice too.
On the other hand, I did also like living by myself, and later just with my wife, for a while, so that I could have my own personal space and privacy. I think I would have felt resentful if I were forced into a particular living situation rather than being able to choose it.
I think I would have felt resentful if I were forced into a particular living situation rather than being able to choose it.
I mean, we’re all forced into a living situation that our budgets and our work-life demands. The illusion of choice is going to a real estate agent and seeing twenty different near-identical overpriced units, then making a dubiously informed decision that’ll lock you into 30 years of debt.
I’d love to live in a crystal palace on a tropical island next to a rail station that’s thirty minutes east of midtown Manhattan and an hour west of the Vail chairlifts which runs me $99.50/mo for the note. No amount of resentfulness will give it to me.
We’re already seeing them pop up wherever real estate prices go vertical.
But dense housing builders are constantly at war with suburban city planners. Getting permits is an increasingly Kafka-esque endeavor, unless you can buy yourself an exemption through municipal corruption.
I think that you missed the point the post is making, which is that it is ironic to claim that capitalism saves us from having to live in drab cookie-cutter housing given what suburbia looks like.
The “single family home” was barely a concept before American development early last century. For the majority of human history, people dwelled together, raised families together, stayed together and supported each other their whole lives.
It was the housing industry making these “neighborhoods of the future” that started pushing the idea of moving out at 18 and getting a home on your steel-mill salary of $10 per week, and then it became shameful to still live with your family past a certain age. Forcing so many Americans into a role of being a sole-provider for an entire household as wages have dropped and house prices have soared, and we all still keep “investing” into homes in suburbia despite nobody feeling fulfilled in these cul-de-sac lives, and both parents of children having to work 6 days a week or more just to afford to sleep there.
There may be an argument about how the two are linked, but the -ism on display in the second photo is racism. The US built the suburbs quite explicitly to keep black people out by using poverty as a proxy, after the SCOTUS blocked housing segregation.
Yes, and it’s also unfettered capitalism. Developers buy land cheap, build homes cheap, and sell them for a profit. That’s usually not in the best interests of the homeowners or the community. In many other countries, homeowners buy land, choose a builder, buy materials, and contribute to their local area. It’s a system that costs slightly more upfront, but most of the value stays where it should, with the homeowners and the laborers. There’s no mass-produced garbage or corporate veils to syphon and protect profits far away from the community.
You can definitely go into the deep history of Levittowns, Master Planned Country Club communities, and Red Lining in the big metro areas. But I think the advent of the modern suburb speaks more heavily to the mix of “Free Real Estate” and enormous state subsidies for rural development following the S&L crash of the 1980s.
Like, there’s no reason these can’t be high rise condos with racist building managers, rather than cookie cutter ranch homes with racist HOAs. The suburb isn’t merely about racial segregation, it is about individualist alienation. Breaking up the extended family unit into the nuclear family cluster, subdividing the working class into thinner and thinner economic tranches, and fencing people into gilded cages complete with 30 year golden handcuff mortgage notes.
You can debate over the exact degree to which civic planners intended to separate and capture individual specimens of human labor. Or how deliberately the 1950s architectural model of personalized kitchens, TVs, and car ports manufactured an increasingly pliable working class subject. But the subdivision doesn’t end at the color line. We are a fully balkanized society.
We don’t have to debate to what extent civic planners intended to divide people by color. In his book, The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein just straight-up quoted them. They weren’t shy, and they wrote it down in memos, meeting minutes, and even speeches.
That’s why I say that the suburbs are a product of racism… because the people who created them intended them that way, and said so.
For the economic analysis from the class perspective, look at why suburbs became entrenched, which has a lot to do with the auto industry.
Yeah, my wife and I moved in with my parents ~ 8 years ago while I was between jobs, and because we all get along it has been such a lovely experience (especially during the pandemic!) that we have never felt a need to move back out. A couple of years ago my uncle moved in because his house was unlivable, and being able to spend time with him has been nice too.
On the other hand, I did also like living by myself, and later just with my wife, for a while, so that I could have my own personal space and privacy. I think I would have felt resentful if I were forced into a particular living situation rather than being able to choose it.
I mean, we’re all forced into a living situation that our budgets and our work-life demands. The illusion of choice is going to a real estate agent and seeing twenty different near-identical overpriced units, then making a dubiously informed decision that’ll lock you into 30 years of debt.
I’d love to live in a crystal palace on a tropical island next to a rail station that’s thirty minutes east of midtown Manhattan and an hour west of the Vail chairlifts which runs me $99.50/mo for the note. No amount of resentfulness will give it to me.
ADUs and duplex/triplex/fourplex housing would go so.hard
We’re already seeing them pop up wherever real estate prices go vertical.
But dense housing builders are constantly at war with suburban city planners. Getting permits is an increasingly Kafka-esque endeavor, unless you can buy yourself an exemption through municipal corruption.
I think that you missed the point the post is making, which is that it is ironic to claim that capitalism saves us from having to live in drab cookie-cutter housing given what suburbia looks like.
You don’t have to live in those places. You choose to.
Can’t pay me to live in one of those.
Racism AND capitalism.
The “single family home” was barely a concept before American development early last century. For the majority of human history, people dwelled together, raised families together, stayed together and supported each other their whole lives.
It was the housing industry making these “neighborhoods of the future” that started pushing the idea of moving out at 18 and getting a home on your steel-mill salary of $10 per week, and then it became shameful to still live with your family past a certain age. Forcing so many Americans into a role of being a sole-provider for an entire household as wages have dropped and house prices have soared, and we all still keep “investing” into homes in suburbia despite nobody feeling fulfilled in these cul-de-sac lives, and both parents of children having to work 6 days a week or more just to afford to sleep there.
Historically lawns were basically a show of “look at all the labor I control to keep this land barren.”
You are right. We should live in trailer parks and farms with all the other… Oh shit.
It is not clear to me why you think that is the only other option.