Three basic types of short answer questions Picture/Cartoon/Visual-Do you know the context, can you explain the history around it with SPECIFIC EVIDENCE Two historians-Can you explain the difference between the two and support each argument with SPECIFIC EVIDENCE Body paragraph-can you basically write the body paragraph of a long essay and give SPECIFIC EVIDENCE? Three basic types of short answer questions

Growth of Suburbs in the Postwar World (1945-1980)

GI Bill Baby Boom Government Housing Funding Postwar Growth of Suburbs Transportation Revolution

Baby Boom Times were so optimistic after World War II that their was an influx in children being born (ask your parents how it happens). This created a huge demand for larger houses away from the dangers of urban living.

GI Bill (Serviceman’s Readjustment Act) Veterans returning from the war were given direct benefits from the US government. Government subsidized home loans Job training from the government COLLEGE FULLY FINANCED BY THE US GOVERNMENT INCLUDING LIVING EXPENSES This largely led to the creation of a new middle class in the United States. GI Bill (Serviceman’s Readjustment Act)

Government Housing Funding Creation of new loans and the FHA, Federal Housing Authority which created 30 year loans and said you only had to have 10% down This continued the ideas created by the New Deal that the FEDERAL government should assist citizens in creating a higher standard of living Government Housing Funding

Transportation Revolution The factories that were converted to war material are converted back to consumer, especially cars 1956 National Defense and Interstate Highway Act-Created the interstates system, commuting to work made easier. Transportation Revolution

Levittowns were some of the first planned communities built in 1947-1951. Created by a Jewish-American owned company, Levittown houses were all the same so they could be mass produced cheaper and assembled on site cheaper. These communities were the first Suburbs. Levittown

Levittown

Social Hierarchy in the Suburbs Blockbusting was the practice of selling one house to in the cities to a black family to scare all the white families that houses would be worth less and they should sell. Real Estate agents could then buy the house for cheap and sell it for a profit. Redlining-denying minorities loans because they came from financially unstable backgrounds, keeping them out of the suburbs Steering-Real Estate practice of discouraging certain groups of buying in certain neighborhoods based on ethnicity White Flight-The movement to the suburbs of affluent whites who are emotionally uneasy about urban life. Social Hierarchy in the Suburbs

Blockbusting-Red Lining-Steering & White Flight

REAL ESTATE PAMPHLET Now take analyze the document packet to make an evaluation about the suburbs: Did the growth in post-war suburban neighborhoods represent optimism and prosperity or did it reflect a focus on materialism and a slightly new but still rigid view of American identity? In your real pamphlet: Put the name of you real estate company on top In the pamphlet put the following: The benefits/problems of living in a new suburb like the Levittown’s Characteristics of Levittown and other suburbs Racially discriminatory practices such as blockbusting, racial covenants, and red-lining Was this the American Dream or continuation of the pre-war American Identiy

-James Patterson, Grand Expectations, pg. 1974 “Those who lambasted suburbia…tended to ignore several basic facts: the boom in building energized important sectors of the economy, providing a good deal of employment; it lessened the housing shortage that had diminished the lives of millions during the Depression and war; and it enabled people to enjoy conveniences, such as modern bathrooms and kitchens, that they had not before.” -James Patterson, Grand Expectations, pg. 1974 Levittown represented the worst vision of the American future: bland people in bland houses leading bland lives. The houses were physically similar so the people inside must be equally similar; an entire community was being made from a cookie cutter…a multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at uniform distances on uniform roads, in a treeless command waste, inhabited by people of the same class, the same incomes, the same age group, witnessing the same television performances, eating the same tasteless prefabricated foods, from the same freezers, conforming in every outward and inward respect to the same common mold.” -Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformation, and Its Prospects, 1961 Explain the difference between Patterson and Mumford Choose a historical development or event from the period 1940- 1960 and explain how it supports Patterson’s explanation Choose a historical development or event from the period 1940- 1960 and explain how it supports Mumford’s explanation