America - Urbanisation and Affluence
- Created by: tomtom11
- Created on: 23-05-16 21:09
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- America - Urbanisation and Affluence
- Concerns during Eisenhower's presidency
- Threat of a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union.
- Conformity (critics said American culture was homogenised)
- Consumerism
- Advertisements (media and roadside areas- saturated w/ product messages)
- American youth being less conformist and less well-behaved.
- Tense race relations and economic inequality.
- 1/3 of Americans were poor + poverty prevelant among minorities.
- Cars
- Spacious new cars gave a luxurious drive, and demonstrated one's status.
- Big Three: General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler
- Eisenhower was impressed with German Autobahns and initiated a highway construction programme.
- Car ownership rocketed from 39.3m in '50 to 73.8m in '60.
- 41,000 miles of interstate highways opened!
- Cultural divisions thru cars.
- Wealthy white men favoured Lincolns and Cadillacs.
- MC + WC men = Ford and Chevrolet.
- Poor Hispanic American drivers often bought cheap second-hand Chevys
- Automobiles defined the desire for young people to gain independence.
- '53 Kinsey sex survey found youths had sex in automobiles just as much as they did in their homes.
- Young people expressed their youth through customising cars into 'hot rods' or 'grease machines'
- '55 Dodge La Femme came with matching lipstick and shoulder bag.
- On-the-road culture
- Fast Food
- '60- 228 McDonald's
- Watch Movies
- Attend Church
- Tens of thousands of jobs were created in the service industries as a result.
- '60- there were 7.6m service workers + number of white-collar workers had grown from 21.2m in '50 to 27.2m
- Industrial workers = 39% to 36% of workforce by '60.
- Midwest and Northeast became economically depressed.
- '60- 34.8m service workers outnumbered 25.6m manual workers.
- Fast Food
- Car allowed ppl to move from cities into spacious homes in suburbs that were still an easy drive from work.
- Most cities lost their tax base.
- Suburbs
- 11m/13m homes built between '48-'58 were in suburbs.
- '60- 33% of Americans were suburbanites.
- Why did Suburbia explode?
- Housing shortage and easily available mortgages offered by the FHA and VA (90% of the value of the house + 30 years to repay)
- Land and new homes were cheaper in suburban areas than inner cities.
- Increased car ownership and federal highway construction made it easier for suburbanites to commute to work.
- Poorer blacks and whites, higher tax, and noise and congestion in inner cities caused white flight.
- Levittowns
- Built by Levitt brothers- 1st in Hempstead, Long Island.
- People were expected to conform to rules like when to mow a lawn, and when to hang out washing.
- Levittowns were racist- rocks were through at an African American family who bought a house in the Pennsylvania Levittown in '57.
- Cities
- Ghettos grew for many reasons:
- Restrictive covenants excluded blacks from white neighbourhoods.
- Lending institutions made it difficult for blacks to buy decent housing.
- Whites staged 'housing riots'
- Whites were unwilling to pay increased taxes to assist inner-city areas.
- FHA's low-cost mortgages deliberately excluded 'risks'
- Ppl considered as risks due to their income or likelihood to elicit a hostile reaction.
- Only 325,203 federal housing units built between '45-'65, and many failed like Pruitt-Igoe.
- Ghettos grew for many reasons:
- Consumerism
- '60- average family income gave Americans 30% more purchasing power than '50
- Americans rushed to buy cars, and labour-saving devices.
- Washing machines, freezers and dishwashers made housewives lives easier.
- Intellectuals like David Riesman were afraid of consumerism becoming the national identity.
- Teen consumers.
- Owned 10m record players.
- 1m TV sets
- 13m cameras
- spent $20m on lipstick
- $25m on deodorants.
- Spent over $1.5bn on entertainment
- Concerns during Eisenhower's presidency
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