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The advent of the suburbs in the 1950's after WWII helped to create a definable separation between the poor and the middle class. All of this became feasible when the US government gave billions of dollars to GI's for education and through the VA for home loans. Now, for the first time since the majority of people lived in rural areas could they not have to rely on small tenant apartment living in the city and could have their own small piece of heaven that they could afford.

Here is where the separation comes though between the two classes of Americans... those who did not go to war, or through their own choices or bad luck could not receive a VA loan or first time loan to buy a house outside the city, did not have the chance to move to the new suburbs and remained in the broken down tenants of the ghetto. And since the Central Business District (CBD) was growing and expanding with skyscrapers and local businesses, they had to move to a sort of 'ring' around the CBD to be near the action of city life. This is why in many, many big cities you will have a modern clean main street, and within 2-4 blocks in a circle around that business district, you will see the poor and destitute living in the worst of apartments.

The suburbs also were made possible due to the new highway system that Eisenhower legislated and had created during the 1950's. Now, with everyone in the middle class owning a car and having a good job in the city, they could commute on these new highways and return home to the quiet of the suburbs.

In essence the suburbs meant freedom... freedom finanicially, freedom from reliance on others for your home or apartment, and freedom from the chaos that was the massed cramping of cities that was the mainstay before WWII... and it created a new chapter in America where it was not longer just urban and rural, but urban, rural, and suburban.

Learn more about this author, Kenneth Schortgen Jr.
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