1. The Middle Class Exodus
In the decades after World War II, the population of suburban areas more than doubled while the population of central cities shrank. Many of the new suburbanites were members of a growing white middle class who had grown up in cities but chose to buy their own home and raise their family in the suburbs. These affluent suburbanites may still have worked in cities, but their homes and much of their spending were in the suburbs (along with the associated property and sales tax revenue). Notably, formal and informal mechanisms–such as restrictive covenants that banned sale to people of color; zoning laws that effectively excluded poor people; and informal, discriminatory real estate broker practices–kept the suburbs nearly all white. Those who remained in the cities were disproportionately likely to be poorer people of color, often living in slums, and thus were the most in need of the social services that city governments were increasingly ill-equipped to provide.
The Middle Class Exodus
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09:53 - 10:20
As this section implies, the postwar period saw a boom in automobile ownership. By 1930, over 40% of American households owned a car, often purchased from Henry Ford or other American car companies. Car ownership stagnated during the Great Depression and World War II, before growing dramatically in the postwar period. By 1960, more than three in four households owned a car; over 20% owned more than one.
10:20 - 10:48
This portion of the clip illustrates what became a regular part of millions of American lives in the postwar period: the daily automobile commute to work. Government policy was central in creating this reality. Across the country--and perhaps most famously in New York City under legendary urban planner Robert Moses--municipal governments tore down sections of existing cities to make room for highways connecting suburbs to urban cores. In Milwaukee, where this clip is set, 7,500 housing units were torn down in this era as part of various "urban renewal" projects.
10:48 - 11:05
Indeed, the rise of the automobile (and accompanying automobile infrastructure) was a major force facilitating suburbanization. So too was federal housing policy. The GI Bill made it far easier for World War II veterans (a major portion of the population) to secure a mortgage on a new home. And New Deal-era Federal Housing Authority also incentivized new home construction outside the urban core. The FHA insured home mortgages, but not in certain neighborhoods that were deemed "high-risk"--because of the color of these neighborhoods on FHA maps, this process became known as "redlining." As a result of this policy, it was difficult to impossible to secure mortgages in certain urban neighborhoods, but easier to get insured loans in the suburbs. Thus, federal housing policy help attract the growing middle-class out of the city.
11:05 - 11:59
This segment illustrates the flight of middle and upper class residents to the suburbs was already resulting in blight in the urban core as early as the late 1950s. In 1958, the Wisconsin State Legislature to revamp areas that had been abandoned or where buildings had fallen into disrepair. In pursuance of the act, a "Redevelopment Authority" was established to renew blighted areas of Milwaukee--ideally by reviving economic activity in depressed areas, but sometimes rundown neighborhoods were razed without being rebuilt.