Post-War Suburbs: Cesspools of Conservatism?

After World War II, industrialization allowed for the rapid development of single-family homes expanding from the American urban core. This is a phenomenon called urban sprawl that, arguably, continues to affect how we live, work, and vote in America. In the 1960’s specifically, historians, planners, sociologists, and other intellectuals began studying the effects of the newest form of living on the American public. One such scholar was Scott Donaldson, author of The Suburban Myth published in 1969. Donaldson’s writing was in response to the specific targeting of the suburbs as a hotbed of conservative Republican conformity by other scholars of the time and contributed to a minority literature in defense of the suburbs. Thirty years later, Harvard Professor of History, Lisa McGirr, published her book Suburban Warriors on the role of Western suburbs like Orange County in the rise of the conservative movement of the 1960s. Donaldson and McGirr differ in their understanding of the relationship between the suburbs and the conservative Republican movement of the 60s especially with regards to the role of the built landscape, the reason for suburban involvement in politics, the degree of suburban conformity, and ultimately whether or not suburbs have the power to change people’s political affiliations.

In 1969, Scott Donaldson wrote The Suburban Myth in response to what he deemed an unfair attack by historians and planners against suburbia. In his work, Donaldson asserts that the suburbs have been “unjustly and irrationally, accused of all sorts of vices which they neither produce nor harbor.”[1] While defending the suburbs, Donaldson also summarizes the relevant opinions of the suburbs throughout the 1950s and 60s. He claims the majority of those that attack the suburbs believe it spreads conformity.[2] Donaldson paraphrases, “People moved to the suburbs, such arguments ran, and the suburbs made the people conformist.”[3] One type of conformity targeted by Donaldson’s peers was political conformity from Democrat to Republican within the suburbs. Approximately three decades later, Harvard History Professor Lisa McGirr published her work, Suburban Warriors, in 2001 which actively adds to the list of accusations of the suburbs that Donaldson tried so prematurely to defend against. With slightly more perspective than Donaldson, Suburban Warriors traces the transformation of the modern American Right from a small, ‘extremist’ group in the early 1960s to a mainstream movement by the decade's end.[4] McGirr aims to highlight the often overlooked “kitchen-table activist” and their conservative motivations that are rarely discussed by her peers in the record of American conservative history. Through a case study of the suburban community in Orange County, California, McGirr establishes these grassroots conservative movements as “the nucleus of a broader conservative matrix” that eventually “propelled assertive and unapologetic conservatives to national prominence.”[5] Thus, McGirr successfully adds to the list of consequences of post-war suburban sprawl that Donaldson struggles to compete with in ruling them as inconsequential quirks of suburban living.

The first chapter of Suburban Warriors sets the scene for McGirr’s argument by analyzing the relationship between the built environment of the suburbs and the consequences of its characteristics. As she introduces the case study of Orange County, McGirr spends time describing the precise characteristics of the built environment. This is then used as evidence for her point that the physical landscape of the suburbs, specifically the rapid development of single-family homes with no downtown or gathering place, created a “hospitable terrain for the Right by reinforcing a search for alternative forms of community.”[6] In other words, the developers of the mid-20th century urban sprawl projects abandoned the concept of public space in their plans in favor of growth and, in turn, weakened the potential for a suburban sense of community as residents lacked a place to gather.[7] McGirr attaches two larger significances to the consequence of the physical landscape of the suburbs: the first is the resulting racial and economic homogeneity,[8] and the second is the social vacuum it left that allowed churches and other organizations to assert control over the suburbs by providing an opportunity for community engagement.[9] Donaldson’s argument in defense of the suburbs similarly exhibits a distaste for the rapid, unplanned, mass development of the post-war suburbs.[10] But instead of dwelling on the “deplorable lack of privacy,” and the “cesspools intermingled with shallow wells,” Donaldson downplays these negative characteristics of the “Little Boxes” as he refers to them.[11] He writes, “The suburb is no longer an idyllic retreat for the wealthy few, but a much less idyllic one for the middle class mass…many of the qualities remain, and it is still true that the suburbs ‘come a lot closer than cities to the idyllic open country which…still haunts Americans as the desire land for pure living.”[12] Thus, Donaldson tries to correct the narrative and remind the reader that the mass developed suburbs are an opportunity for those incapable of affording the lush-version of non-city life and this comes with some minor health consequences but is overall a positive opportunity for the American middle class. So, while McGirr highlights the negative social consequences of the physical characteristics of urban sprawl on communities, Donaldson neglects these consequences and, instead, proposes the neutral interpretation of the suburban physical landscape: “what’s so wrong with ticky tacky houses if it makes the middle-class happy?”

The role of politics in the suburban communities is another topic covered by both scholars. Donaldson begins his discussion of the role of politics in the community by summarizing the general misconception of apathetic suburbanites by social scientists in the 60s. Donaldson argues against the idea that “the citizens have all but given up their political rights in a retreat to apathy,”[13] or that “suburbanization will result in less, and not more political participation.”[14] Donaldson says that scholars misunderstand the average suburbanite. He is not a commuter too tired to pay attention to local issues. They are commonly new homeowners that care deeply about the zoning crisis, streetlight issue, or garbage disposal debate.[15] And actually, when the critics of suburbia “talk about the lack of ‘vigorous political activity,’ they mean a lack of meaningful political activity.”[16] He supports this interpretation with evidence supporting that homeownership does seem to correlate with political activity, specifically at the local level. McGirr similarly argues that there is political involvement rooted in the suburban setting. But instead of connecting it specifically to homeownership, McGirr argues that it is a social event meant to fill a hole where community engagement is otherwise disregarded. She writes specifically about conservative activism in Orange County, quoting one woman saying of her involvement in conservative activism, “it became…a social thing.”[17] Moreover, McGirr argues again that the role of the rapid, mass development of suburban communities meant that the values of these new communities were “up for grabs.”[18] Politics provided a sense of community otherwise neglected.[19] In total, McGirr found that “Attending informal neighborhood meetings and participating in bridge clubs were some of the ways people sought to create a sense of community for themselves, eased by their shared socioeconomic backgrounds.”[20] Thus, while they disagree on the main reason for the rise of politics in the suburbs (homeownership vs. community engagement) Donaldson and McGirr agree that the mid-20th century suburbanites were actively involved in politics.

One common theme among the suburban politics of the 60s was the suburbanite’s opinion of the different scales of government. Donaldson devotes a small portion of his book to discussing the suburbs’ dislike of metropolitan government. He writes, “Suburbanites commonly resist metropolitan government in the name of the Jeffersonian ideal of the small community, made up of individualistic, self-sufficient yeomen who meet occasionally to solve their mutual problems.”[21] In other words, suburban residents believed that big government did not fit with the experience of the individual suburbanite. Local government among residents was fine, but the management level need not extend beyond the local level of homeowners with homogeneous backgrounds and concerns. McGirr expands this suburban opposition to big government in Suburban Warrior. Despite being a recipient of federal funds, creating the largest urban military-industrial complex, California suburbs held resentment for the presence of the federal government due to the unnecessary bureaucracy, red tape, and general control.[22] This resentment was fueled by the individualism rooted in the hundreds of success stories and new business that made them believe in the health of the economy and the potential of the American Dream.[23] This individualism, McGirr argues, then created a platform for the Right.

McGirr and Donaldson disagree on whether or not the suburban environment is conducive to Republican or conservative ideologies. Donaldson argues fervently against the idea that any responsibility can be attached to the suburbs for the results of the Eisenhower election in 1952 or 1956 specifically, but also the rise of the Republican party in general. He argues that there is no proof that families moved to the suburbs and became Republican. This is a concept referred to as “conversion theory.” Scholars at the time, Donaldson summarizes, believed that when “the modern American” moved to the suburbs, one of the first steps would be to “Cast off whatever liberal beliefs he might once have held and drift into conservatism, supporting only Republican candidates.”[24] This argument of the relationship between suburbs and Republican political success, Donaldson points out, was an attempt to scapegoat the easy target of the suburbs for Eisenhower’s success in the 1952 and 1956 election. He summarizes the interpretation of Democrats at the time: “The suburbs beat us…the Democrats would never win another election unless they could somehow reverse the suburban trend to Republicanism.”[25] Donaldson instead counters this argument showing there is actually evidence against the claim of suburban conversion, supporting instead a slight, but overall insignificant, trend towards the left. Thus, “it is not safe to conclude that suburbia creates conservatism, although the temptation to so conclude is strong.”[26] Alternatively, McGirr does seem to suggest in her study of Orange County that suburban Republican conversion exists. When discussing the origins of the people who moved into Orange County, McGirr writes that “Although they had not necessarily embraced right-wing politics before they came West, the environment of Orange County reinforced strands of social conservatism they had brought in their cultural baggage.”[27] Thus, while this does not suggest the suburbs converted an extreme liberal towards the Republican party, she argues the experience of living in suburbia can trigger existing conservative ideologies embedded in the migrants’ political standing. McGirr’s main point in discussing the relationship between suburbia and the Republican, conservative party, is to highlight the “convergence of a particular set of social, economic, and political forces” within the suburbs that contributed to the germination of a conservative culture.[28]

The one main similarity between McGirr and Donaldson is that they both refer to suburbia as a frontier. Donaldson wrote an entire chapter on the concept of the “Suburban Frontier.” He argues that suburbia acts as a contemporary frontier, especially for the growth of democracy.[29] More specifically, Donaldson writes that political democracy, of any kind, thrives in new communities where there is pressure to organize and solve problems. The freshly developed suburbs of the 60s exhibited this frontier for political democracy when suburbanites needed to band together to solve the problems overlooked by developers like the sewage system, garbage disposal, emergency services and other requirements of healthy and safe living.[30] As a result, the pressure of these issues being crucial to the health of the community, community organization was essential and often followed. It helped, Donaldson argues, that the suburbs had the best advantage to political democracy: a homogenous population with similar problems.[31] McGirr uses similar language in Suburban Warrior. She writes that the mass development of suburban communities was “in a very real sense, a modern-day version of the California gold rush–making Orange County the new frontier West of the second half of the twentieth century.”[32] It was an extension of the American Dream, especially for Orange County where the military industrial complex financed the growth of the area throughout the Cold War.[33] The suburbs became the “last bastion of the frontier, where individualism remained the ruling ethos of the day and where new entrepreneurs, from small businessmen to powerful cowboy capitalists, made their dreams come true.”[34] Despite the lack of geographical frontier, the suburbs acted as a social and developmental frontier for almost any cause that could spread across a group of white, middle-class families.

Donaldson and McGirr’s understanding of the relationship between the built, social, and cultural environment of suburbia and the political affiliation of its residents differed across a range of categories for suburban analysis. While McGirr had the advantage of a disconnected perspective from experiencing the new suburbs herself, Donaldson’s perspective is important in highlighting the misconceptions of what suburbia looked and felt like when it was in its first form. Donaldson’s neglect of how the built environment could trigger more than just dissatisfaction with the aesthetics of suburban life is reason enough to doubt his conclusions regarding the full consequences of post-war suburbia. McGirr’s perspective, on the other hand, could be somewhat biased as she knows the results of the political movements of the time and can trace these consequences back to whichever qualities make the most sense for her argument. In other words, especially regarding the potential for the suburbs to convert Democrats to Republicans, McGirr could be awarding too much credit to the conditions of the suburban environment because she knows that the trends towards Republicanism continued throughout the latter half of the century. Nonetheless, both perspectives are useful in understanding the relationship between place and ideology.

Citations

[1] Donaldson (vii, Preface).

[2] Donaldson, ix.

[3] Ibid., vii.

[4] McGirr, 15.

[5] Ibid., 4.

[6] McGirr, 39.

[7] Ibid., 40.

[8] Ibid., 42.

[9] Ibid., 30.

[10] Donaldson, 65.

[11] Ibid., 67.

[12] Ibid., 89.

[13] Donaldson, 155.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid., 156.

[16] Ibid., 155.

[17] McGirr, 65.

[18] McGirr, 56.

[19] Ibid., 39.

[20] Ibid., 48.

[21] Donaldson, 17.

[22] McGirr, 25.

[23] McGirr, 29.

[24] Ibid., 147.

[25] Donaldson, 149.

[26] McGirr, 148.

[27] McGirr, 30.

[28] Ibid., 29.

[29] Donaldson, 159.

[30] Ibid., 158.

[31] Ibid., 159.

[32] McGirr, 28.

[33] Ibid., 52.

[34] Ibid., 52.

Bibliography

Donaldson, Scott. The Suburban Myth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969.

McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. Electronic resource. Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2001. http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/cul/resolve?clio16090289.