The Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-Urban America

Abstract

In 1945 the central business district still provided the focus for metropolitan life and the property taxes that financed municipal enterprise. Over the next decade, business and municipal leaders mobilized to revitalize their cities after two decades of depression and war. Slum clearance, centripetal freeways, and parking facilities attracted new private investments. But, as Jon C. Teaford argues in The Metropolitan Revolution, racial tensions and political fragmentation undercut the viability of the single-focus metropolis. While discriminatory policies and violence policed the color line, automobiles, federal mortgages, and the mass production of housing allowed whites to escape the city. Catering to the desire for freedom and mobility, suburban governments shielded local property values and taxes from the city's troubles. By the early 1960s, suburban malls, office parks, and factories testified to metropolitan disintegration. Over the next thirty years, the metropolitan revolution created a patchwork of settlements and a center-less landscape that “suited the diverse lifestyles of the post-urban era” (p. 240).