At the dawn of the 20th century, suburbia was a dream inspired by revulsion to the poverty and crowding of the cities. In the visions of architects such as Frederick Law Olmsted, there would be neighborhood parks, tree-lined streets and low-density housing free from the pollution and social problems of the cities. As the top map of the New York City metropolitan area shows, commuter suburbs had sprung up near the railway lines on Long Island and Westchester County by 1930, but further expansion was fueled in large part by the automobile. Eventually it was apparent that much of suburbia--Levittown was the popular example--was not delivering on the early promise, although for many, even Levittown must have seemed like heaven compared with the tenements of their childhood.

The extraordinary growth of car ownership in 20th-century America was made possible by abundant domestic oil, the world's largest highway system, and low taxes on vehicles and gasoline. But suburban growth would not have been nearly as great were it not for government policies that penalized cities and rewarded suburbs. For instance, federal mortgage insurance programs tended to promote new housing on outlying land rather than repair of existing city housing and, furthermore, excluded racially mixed neighborhoods that were deemed unstable. American communities have far fewer impediments to expansion than European ones: London, for instance, restricted sprawl by establishing greenbelts on its periphery.

Tax deductions for mortgage interest in the U.S. have been larger than those of most other countries. Furthermore, suburban jurisdictions in the U.S. have far greater zoning powers than their foreign counterparts and use this power to reinforce low-density housing by requiring large lots, thus increasing the number of affluent taxpayers and reducing the need to supply services to needy families. Arguably, the most important stimulus to white flight out of the city was fear of crime, particularly crime by blacks--a fear reinforced by the social pathologies of public housing, where blacks and other minorities predominate. Such apprehension helps to explain why revitalization projects and improved mass-transit systems have failed to lure the middle class back to the city in large numbers.

This article was originally published with the title Sprawling into the Third Millennium.

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