A long trend with a postwar surge
Suburbs are older than the twentieth century. Streetcars and commuter railroads allowed some people to live outside American cities well before 1900, and automobiles extended the pattern in the 1920s. But the largest wave of suburban growth came after the Second World War, when millions of families bought newly built homes outside the central cities. In the Philadelphia region, as elsewhere, that growth was substantial in the places that now make up Camden County’s inner suburbs and beyond.
The popular name for the pattern is suburban flight. The term is widely used, though some historians find it too simple. Many people were moving toward something they wanted, such as more space and new housing, as well as away from conditions in the city. And many who stayed in cities did so by choice, not necessity.
What drew households outward
Several developments came together after 1945.
- A housing shortage and a baby boom. After years of depression and war, many young families needed homes.
- Mortgage lending. Federal mortgage insurance and veterans’ benefits made it possible for many families to buy homes with small down payments. Their guidelines tended to favor new suburban construction over older city housing, as discussed in the article on redlining and housing policy.
- Cars and roads. Higher car ownership and new highway networks made distant homes workable. See the article on how highways and bridges reshaped cities.
- Building at scale. Developers adopted mass-production methods to build large numbers of similar houses quickly and relatively cheaply.
- Preferences. Many families valued a yard, a driveway and a newer house.
Jobs followed
Initially, suburbs were seen as places to live while working in the city. Over the following decades, employers moved too. Manufacturers built single-story plants on larger plots near highways, and retailers opened shopping centers and malls. Offices followed. As jobs became available outside the city, a household that left was less tied to the city for work, and the city lost both residents and employers. This overlapped with the broader decline of factory work in older cities, described in the article on deindustrialization.
Race and exclusion
Suburban growth was not equally open to everyone. In the middle of the century, discrimination by lenders, real estate agents, builders and some communities limited where Black families and other minority households could buy. Some suburban developments excluded Black buyers outright, and racial covenants were common until courts stopped enforcing them in 1948. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited much of this discrimination, but patterns established earlier changed slowly.
As a result, the early suburban population was disproportionately white, and the cities that many of these families left became more diverse. It is important to describe this accurately: the racial makeup of cities changed because of policy and discrimination as well as individual choices. It was not a failing of the people who remained.
Effects on older cities
For a city like Camden, the movement outward had a number of consequences:
- Fewer taxpayers and a weaker base. As households and businesses left, the amount of property value that could be taxed fell relative to needs. The mechanics are discussed in the article on fiscal basics.
- Concentrated need. Residents with fewer resources, who had fewer options for moving, made up a larger share of the remaining population.
- Vacancy and disinvestment. Empty buildings and lower values discouraged maintenance and investment.
- Separate jurisdictions. Municipal boundaries in New Jersey are small and numerous, so a household could leave a city without leaving the region while also leaving the city’s tax rolls. Because suburbs were separate governments, the wealth of the metropolitan area was not shared across a single budget.
Suburban communities themselves also changed. Many grew rapidly, built schools and services, and later faced their own aging housing, traffic and fiscal questions. The inner suburbs in particular have seen shifts in population and need in recent decades.
Later patterns
Suburbanization has not been a one-way flow. Since the late twentieth century, some cities have attracted new residents, immigrants have settled in both cities and suburbs, and many suburbs have become more diverse. Some higher-income households and businesses have moved back toward city centers, which raises its own debates about rising housing costs and displacement. Camden’s experience of these later trends has been uneven and is covered in other articles.
Reading the history carefully
It is tempting to give a single cause, but suburban growth resulted from policy, markets, technology and personal choices working together. For specific local figures, such as population by decade, the U.S. Census Bureau’s historical data are the most reliable source.