A Road To Subsidized Bliss

A Road To Subsidized Bliss
by Michael R. Allen

The postwar years saw a boom in suburban development due to the government's building the modern highway system. Certainly, the suburbs were already in place before the highways, but there excessive boom was caused by massive federally-funded highway projects in urban areas.

This is not to say that people did not want to live in suburbs, but the suburban phenomena would have been much more restrained without the interstate system. The "car was king," as historian John Diggins says, and the federal government decided to build a highway system that reflected the vehicle monarchy.

According to the Department of Commerce's 1964 study Highways and Economic and Social Changes, 34 million Americans changed residence each year -- many to the 'burbs'. These population transfers, the report says, "could not have been made adequately without [highways]." Began in 1956, the Interstate highway system quickly cut through old American cities, adding quick routes to rural areas once an hour away from city cores.

This rapid, individualized way of traveling meant that one could continue working where the jobs were and live pretty much where he wanted. The demand for suburban life increased rapidly, thanks to this new incentive to live away from the city. While older suburbs had been on streetcar lines, newer ones were near highway exits.

The new suburbs brought opportunities for a new, inexpensive life to millions of Americans urgent for housing in an expanding nation. Like Levittown, most were near enough to large cities for work but far enough away so that pollution and crime were not a problem. A suburbanite could have land that he would not have in the city; this green space would absorb more pollution and make for healthier living. Of course, the open space also put distances between neighbors.

While the suburbs had cleaner stores and better schools than the cities, they were often miles from the homes. The distances removed the close-knit feeling that allowed for urban neighborhoods to thrive. Social distances were caused by physical distances; few people knew their neighbors well. Homes were new, but often not in the variety of styles as or as large as old city and country dwellings.

However, most suburbanites saw the benefits outweighing the drawbacks. As Diggins notes in The Proud Decades, "if not beautiful, suburbia was affordable."

The spread of suburbia, like the spread of fast food restaurants and "big box" retail outlets, was what a sizable portion of the public demanded. However, its spread has largely been negative, and made possible by government intervention in the form of road subsidies. Life in the suburbs has insulated a whole generation (and soon, another) from experiencing the rigors and wonders of city life that have shaped people for hundred of thousands of years.

Politically, suburban development is costly to taxpayers as utilities and roads are built and rebuilt -- usually with developers not having to foot their own bills. Suburban governments are typically composed homogeneously, so there is a dangerous law-by-consensus rather than pluralism. And cities have become more racially and economically homogeneous without strong middle classes living there.

Without the development of the interstate highway system, suburbs would have development with more user-paid transit systems and with more efficient land use. Instead, government intervention led to "urban sprawl."

Ironically, the government now seeks to limit the growth of suburbs through Urban Groth Boundaries. Portland, Oregon, already has one in place. New Jersey has limited suburban growth on a statewide scale. Politicians from Al Gore on down are calling for "smart growth" -- code for limited suburban growth and more tax dollars to fund older suburbs and cities.

All proposed approaches are more of the same stuff that led to this mess. Government cannot stop its own creation. Nor should it continue to subsidize suburban development through ultilities and roads. What is needed is a hands-off approach to suburban development and urban recovery.

The nineteenth century saw glorious urban areas built for a new merchant class. The twentieth century changed the trend, and gave America its suburbs -- at taxpayer expense. Suburbs might not have come about through unaided market processes, but they can prosper now if they are allowed to develop freely, without aid or hindrance.

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