In the beginning, suburbs developed and sprawled out of the major cities across the United States. As the country continued to grow, suburbs began spreading from the smaller cities and even larger towns.
When trying to understand how the suburbs work, it's important to discern the difference between a city population and a metro population. A city population is the number of people that live in the city proper, and the metro population includes the surrounding suburbs. Take the example of New York City. The official population of New York City in 2021 was approximately 8.3 million people, but the population of the Metro New York area is 18.8 million people. There are cities in the U.S. where the city proper is quite small, but the metro area is massive due to significant suburban sprawl.
The following describe examples of suburbs of major cities and smaller cities around the United States.
| City | State | Approx. Population | Approx. Metro Population | Towns in the Suburbs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Portland | Maine | 67,000 | 540,000 | Scarborough, Westbrook, South Portland |
| Boston | Massachusetts | 620,000 | 4.3 million | Cambridge, Arlington |
| Chicago | Illinois | 2.6 million | 8.8 million | Winnetka, Oak Park, Evanston |
| Atlanta | Georgia | 500,000 | 5.9 million | Hapeville, East Point, Vinnings |
| Los Angeles | California | 4 million | 12.4 million | Hollywood, Compton, Beverly Hills |
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A suburb is an area of lower density population that surrounds a large city or town. Suburbs consist of many single family homes that are usually arranged into groups called neighborhoods. The suburbs began popping up after World War II when people began to own cars and could commute into the city for work. Suburbanization is when people from the city move into the suburbs. When the suburbs get built up, they have to take land from what was rural, open land. This process is called suburban sprawl. When cities begin to expand, they move into the suburbs. This process is called urban sprawl. The suburbs can be described using the peripheral model, which shows the suburbs as a type of ring around the city.
Due to the nature of the suburbs and how they formed, there tends to be a lot of hom*ogeneity in the suburbs. The single over-arching similarity is socio-economical status. The suburbs also present its residents with more green space, more space for one's money, less crime, and better schools. Suburbs are usually included in what is called a metropolitan area. The metro area includes the major city along with the outlying towns that make up the suburbs. The largest suburbs in the country can be found outside New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles
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Video Transcript
Suburbs
Charles lives just outside of a city in an area where there are a lot of houses but not much else. He likes that it's quiet and that he can still go into the city if he wants to see a sporting event or go to the theater.
Charles is living in a suburb, or outlying district of a city, and like many people, Charles lives in the suburbs but works in the city. He commutes in every day to work and then goes home in the afternoon.
Let's look closer at suburbs in the United States, including the suburbanization movement, the peripheral model of suburbs, and issues of segregation in suburbia.
Suburbanization
Charles lives in the suburbs, as do a lot of people, but Charles' grandparents lived in the city. In fact, most people in their generation lived in the city!
A hundred years ago, living in the suburbs was not the popular choice. Most people either lived in cities or in small towns, but few chose to live in the outlying districts of the city. It was just too difficult; if they worked in the city, it was hard to get to work if you lived too far away.
In the years leading up to World War II, though, suburbs rose in popularity as people began to own cars. Cars meant that they could live in the suburbs and work in the city and that they had a way to get to and from work.
The popularity of the suburbs really boomed after World War II when an interstate system and demand for new homes increased the rate at which people moved out of cities. Suburbanization, or a migration from the cities to the suburbs, was a major hallmark of the years after World War II, and so, people, like Charles, live in the suburbs even though their grandparents didn't.
Peripheral Model
As we've talked about, the suburbs are the outlying districts of a city. Often, suburbs are separate towns that border a city, and sometimes they are part of the city but just the furthest parts.
Urban expansion, sometimes called urban sprawl, involves a city expanding via suburbs. For example, Charles lives in the suburbs of a city. When he was a kid, there weren't very many suburbs, just one or two, but now, there are many, many suburbs as more people move to the area, and the city and existing suburbs become more and more populated.
Closely related to urban expansion is suburban sprawl, which happens when the suburbs expand into rural communities. As more and more suburbs become crowded, new suburbs crop up in what used to be farmland. Take Charles: when he was a kid, the suburb he lives in was right between the city and farmland, but more suburbs have grown, and now there are many suburbs between him and farmland.
The peripheral model explains how a city is often surrounded by a large ring of suburbs all linked together via a beltway. So, in Charles' case, the city is at the center, and the suburbs surround it on all sides. Then, more suburbs surround those, and so on. The peripheral model works well on cities, like the one where Charles is, that have had lots of urban and suburban sprawl.
Segregation
Charles loves the suburb where he lives. There are a lot of great things about it: it's more quiet than the city, but he can still access all of the great things that are available in the city. He loves his neighbors and generally has a great time.
But there are some negatives about the suburb, too. The biggest problem that Charles has with where he lives is that everyone there is similar to him. They all have the same type of jobs, and most of them have the same color skin.
Segregation has been a problem in suburbs since they became popular in the mid-20th century. For many years, both legal and illegal racial segregation was common in suburbs, where whites tried to keep their suburbs all-white by refusing to sell houses to non-white families. Today, though race is not an obvious factor in real estate transactions, there are still demographic differences among races in cities and suburbs. For example, more white people than African Americans still live in suburbs, and city centers still have more African Americans than whites.
However, the largest segregation today is socioeconomic segregation. Remember that Charles and his neighbors all have similar jobs. There are doctors and lawyers and business professionals. They all make about the same amount of money.
Sadly, many economically disadvantaged people today are forced to live in center-city neighborhoods that offer fewer amenities and less well-maintained housing because richer people are taking up the housing in the suburbs. This is a trend that many cities are trying to address but one that is still a major problem in many suburbs and cities across America.
Lesson Summary
An outlying district of a city is called a suburb. In the years before and after World War II, as cars became more popular and interstate systems were developed, many people moved to suburbs in a migration known as suburbanization.
The peripheral model explains how a city is surrounded by a ring of suburbs, which happens via urban expansion, or urban sprawl, as a city becomes larger and expands into nearby suburbs, and via suburban sprawl, as suburbs expand into nearby rural land.
Finally, suburbs have always had an issue with segregation: first, racial segregation, which was particularly prevalent in the mid-20th century, and more common now, socioeconomic segregation as richer people move to the suburbs and poorer people are left in city centers.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completing this lesson, you should be able to:
- Define suburb
- Explain what led to suburbanization
- Describe the peripheral model
- Summarize the historical and modern-day problems with segregation in suburbs
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