Avila - Architecture and Suburbia

Modernist Architecture

• International style

  • Emphasizes function over form - minimalist, rational

  • EX: UN Building - symbol of progress

The Expressway World

Cities designed around automobiles (More and more people began owning their first cars during this period)

• “We must kill the street” = redesign streets more modern

veterans come home

• home ownership was very important for social and economic mobility

• they need homes for their families (Truman made housing more assessible

GI Bill of Rights

turned housing shortage into construction boom

• more jobs, colleges, but less educated women

Housing Act, 1937

provided federal funding to build affordable housing

• construction created jobs

• boosted economy

• built up middle class

White Flight

mass suburbanization

• Predominately white families fleeing to suburban areas, ethnic groups left in urban settings

Bulldozing

• Destroyed streets and neighborhoods in poorer/more racially diverse areas

• Gave way for highways and industrialization

  • National Highway and Defense Act of 1956

New Deal

FDR created loan programs to help finance loans

• racist policies placed on some neighborhoods

• highways for easy suburb assess bulldozed thru redlined hoods

redlining

banks/ government refusing mortgages and loans to certain neighborhoods

• house prices dropped in these neighborhoods as it became less and less favorable to live in redlined neighborhoods

FHA (federal housing assosiation) / HOLC (homeowners’ loan corporation)

• Rated neighborhoods A-D; ethnic areas rated lower

• Loans denied to poorer/ethnic neighborhoods

• less investment in the neighborhood

Biodiversity

Lack of funding in redlined neighborhoods also resulted in the degradation of the biodiversity

• desert islands (food deserts, school deserts, etc.)

Fair Housing Act, 1968

banned discrimination in housing

• but the couldn’t move out because they were so poor

Suburbia

• consumerism (TVs in every home)

• domestic culture heavily pushed

• rise of the middle class