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How about what-if the GI Bill incentives after WW2 also were applicable to be used to purchase existing homes and duplexes, and also to be used to allow double and triple occupancy homes (as long as it was owner occupied)?
Would that have reduced urban sprawl, and helped to maintain the density of cities?
We can also throw in another what-if: what-if local redlining policies were ignored, and local segregation laws and discriminatory policies were overruled by federal lending - or is that too much to suggest?
I'm pretty sure you could use the GI Bill to buy an existing house or a duplex. Who do you think bought all the existing houses that were sold in, say, 1946 and '47? The neighborhood I grew up in was largely populated by ex-GIs who moved in right after the war. Are you telling me none of them used a GI Bill loan? I don't think I believe that.
I think the real reason so much new house construction (necessarily in suburbs) occurred right after the war (and the GI Bill was extensively used to finance it) was that there was a pent-up demand from 1929 on. Basically almost no one could afford to buy a house from 1929 through 1940; then there was a little period where the war work was starting; but then all the men from 18-35 or so (prime house buying years) went into the Army. So bascially you had 16 years of backlog. The only way to meet that was to build a lot of houses, fast.
I suspect, too, that had there never been the Depression and WW2, the movement to single family houses would have been slower. But if you grew up in the Depression, either living 10 to a house on the farm, or three families in one house, or in a two room flat, and then (the men) spent three or four years living in a barracks with 50 of your closest friends (if you weren't in a foxhole); and then you realize it's possible to get married and use the GI Bill to buy a nice little two bedroom one bath house, all indoor plumbing, electric everything, refrigerator (no more icebox), gas or oil heat (no more splitting wood) - man, you thought you'd gone to heaven. Why on earth, with that in front of you, would you want to go back to living above the shop?
I'm pretty sure you could use the GI Bill to buy an existing house or a duplex. Who do you think bought all the existing houses that were sold in, say, 1946 and '47? The neighborhood I grew up in was largely populated by ex-GIs who moved in right after the war. Are you telling me none of them used a GI Bill loan? I don't think I believe that.
I think the real reason so much new house construction (necessarily in suburbs) occurred right after the war (and the GI Bill was extensively used to finance it) was that there was a pent-up demand from 1929 on. Basically almost no one could afford to buy a house from 1929 through 1940; then there was a little period where the war work was starting; but then all the men from 18-35 or so (prime house buying years) went into the Army. So bascially you had 16 years of backlog. The only way to meet that was to build a lot of houses, fast.
I suspect, too, that had there never been the Depression and WW2, the movement to single family houses would have been slower. But if you grew up in the Depression, either living 10 to a house on the farm, or three families in one house, or in a two room flat, and then (the men) spent three or four years living in a barracks with 50 of your closest friends (if you weren't in a foxhole); and then you realize it's possible to get married and use the GI Bill to buy a nice little two bedroom one bath house, all indoor plumbing, electric everything, refrigerator (no more icebox), gas or oil heat (no more splitting wood) - man, you thought you'd gone to heaven. Why on earth, with that in front of you, would you want to go back to living above the shop?
I tried to bold the first sentence and couldn't? Another CD glitch, I guess. Anyway, yes, you could use GI loans for existing homes. In fact, my MIL complained that right after the war it was hard to buy a house w/o using a GI loan. (She complained about everything, but I believe her.)
The surbanization of the US happened due to the confluence of certain ideas and events during the 20th century.
People got sick of living cheek to jowl with family and neighbors in apartments and multifamily housing. Wealthy people did not live in such tight quarters and Americans aspire to be upwardly mobile. Maybe they could never afford a 4k sq ft house on 2 acres, but they could see themselves in a single family 1200 sq ft house on a 100 x 100 lot and it was in their price range.
After the Depression and WW2, there was a can do attitude mixed in with earning power and the VA loans that were available to the vets. Many cities were surrounded by farms, usually owned by family for many years. Farmers are not wealthy. When developers reacted to the demand for housing in the 1950s, farmers cashed in by selling their land - as is their right. Owning a house on your little piece of land and not having to pay rent is highly motivating and became a popular way to build wealth.
Businesses followed the population and soon people were also working in the suburbs. The growth of the interstates allowed businesses to be less connected to rail lines allowing for more business expansion.
More business meant more housing and more suburban sprawl. If there was no demand, it would not have happened.
For this country in mind, El Paso Texas USA is one of the best for a large enough city without much if any suburbs past the urban limits boundaries. Judging from the evidence.
The city limits of El Paso are 255 square miles which shows the reason for the lack of development outside of the city is because of how large the city is in area not because it has been built in a particularly dense manner. El Paso had an estimated population of 682,669 in 2018 and Boston had an estimated population of 694,583 in 2018 within an area of 48 square miles. El Paso is just a small metro area with 80-90% of the metro contained within the city limits it is not a particularly good example of a lack of sprawl considering how low density it is.
I think suburbanization in this country was pretty much inevitable. We have more land than we know what to do with. People didn't need to be packed into cities when literally millions of acres of develop-able land sat in their backyards. I do think we should have done something to control it, and preserve our history. We've created an entirely new disaster by allowing suburbanization to occur the way it did.
The only slightly promising thing is that we're seeing people move back into the city. I doubt we'll ever see the majority of our major cities over 15,000 people per square mile again, but at least its a step in the right direction.
It was not inevitable, you want an example, Brazil a country bigger than the US when the territories were excluded, and that never went through this process, today you have a big empty interior and cities like Rio de Janeiro that house 7 million people and a metropolitan region that houses 13 million, or Sao Paulo a city that houses 11 million people and a metropolitan region of 21 million ... that would be New York and Los Angeles.
So where do you think the 6 million people in the Rio metro area that don't live in the city itself live?
SUBURBS.
NYC is an exception in the US, and only 43% of the population lives in the city. LA is more normal by US standards, with about 21% of the population living in the city. Compare that to the Brazilian cities mentioned.
NYC is an exception in the US, and only 43% of the population lives in the city. LA is more normal by US standards, with about 21% of the population living in the city. Compare that to the Brazilian cities mentioned.
Rio de Janeiro: 13M metro, 7M city: 54%
Sao Paulo: 21M metro, 11M city: 52%
OK, I am prepared to believe these percentages are higher than the average of US cities, but half of each metro is living in SUBURBS. Don't try to tell me Brazil doesn't have suburbs.
The suburbs of those cities are much different from ours. They're more likely to be more dense and walkable than north America.
You also have placed where dense urban development continues beyond the city lines. I'm thinking of much of the state of Mexico, which surrounds Mexico City. Yes they're suburbs but are still pretty dense.
What would the United States look like today if everybody hadn't flocked to the suburbs in the 1950s?
Speaking specifically for NYC, it would definitely follow the European model with the poor people on the fringes of the city. For modern-day examples, see the terminus of the 2 train in the Bronx, or the borderline of Far Rockaway Queens and Nassau county. However you have wealthy enclaves at the borders of our city like Riverdale in the Bronx and Little Neck in Queens. Which I actually tend to think is morally fair. I don't mind traveling farther to pay less. That's really how it should be. What skews NYC is politics and proximity to the Atlantic Ocean.
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