suburban history

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• 2/20/2022
  

  Malverne: The Incomplete Struggle for School Integration on Long Island

  by Alan J. Singer

  The general diversity of Long Island should be the area's strength. It's time to learn lessons from the past and stop allowing the area to be carved up into small and segregated school districts. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/1/2021
  

  Laugh at Parodies of School Board Meetings, but Take Local Politics Seriously

  by Lily Geismer and Eitan D. Hersh

  Local politics – if it involves a wide spectrum of community opinion – can help override partisan polarization, create new coalitions, and empower citizens to make meaningful change.

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  9/8/2021
  

  The Suburban Strategy

  Novelist Zinzi Clemmons looks to the history of Delaware County, Pennsylvania to consider, with help from historian Lara Putnam, the implications of Democrats' pursuit of the elusive suburban voter. 

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• SOURCE: Last Week Tonight
  7/26/2021
  

  Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Ties the History of Housing Discrimination to Reparations

  John Oliver breaks down the long history of housing discrimination in the U.S., the damage it’s done, and, crucially, what we can do about it.

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• SOURCE: New York Almanack
  7/6/2021
  

  How New York’s Suburbs Got So Segregated

  by Alan J. Singer

  The builders of Long Island's mass postwar suburbs chose not to challenge existing patterns of segregation, with consequences for communities and individuals today. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/27/2021
  

  The Housing Market is Booming but Remains Deeply Unequal

  by LaDale Winling

  The standards and practices of real estate appraisal were developed in the context of white supremacy in the 1920s and since then have worked to make home ownership a path toward building wealth that has favored white Americans. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  4/20/2021
  

  How White Americans’ Refusal to Accept Busing has Kept Schools Segregated

  by Matthew D. Lassiter

  The legal distinction between "de facto" and "de jure" segregation has always been a convenient fiction allowing the perpetuation of segregation by obscuring the role of government in creating and sustaining a racially discriminatory housing market. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/26/2021
  

  The County Where Cops Call the Shots

  Aaron Bekemeyer's PhD dissertation research examines how police unions, like those in Suffolk County, NY, became powerful in the 20th Century. Jennifer Mittelstadt also comments on the exceptional status of police unions.

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• SOURCE: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
  3/2/2021
  

  Georgia’s Center of Political Gravity Shifting Toward Atlanta

  "As Georgia transforms from a Republican stronghold to the nation’s premier battleground state, a seismic geographic shift is underway."

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• SOURCE: NBC Los Angeles
  2/22/21
  

  New Exhibit Reckons With Glendale's Racist Past as ‘Sundown Town'

  The suburban city of Glendale, CA has initiated a series of public programs confronting its legacy as a "sundown town" where minorities, particulary African Americans, were able to work but barred from living or socializing. 

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• SOURCE: Hartford Courant
  2/19/2021
  

  West Hartford is Mostly White, While Bloomfield is Largely Black. How that Came to be Tells the Story of Racism and Segregation in American Suburbs

  Local historians in West Hartford are working to promote public knowledge of exclusionary zoning and other practices that built and maintained racial segregation in the suburbs. 

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• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  1/14/2021
  

  How Fear Took Over the American Suburbs

  Historian Kyle Riismandel's new book “Neighborhood of Fear” examines the cultivation of a white suburban culture of vigilantism and the political exploitation of fear of community change in the late 20th century. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  1/2/2021
  

  Stop Worrying About Upper-Class Suburbanites

  by Lily Geismer and Matthew Lassiter

  Two suburban historians argue that the changing demographics and political composition of American suburbs mean the Democrats' strategy of courting white moderates will foreclose building the ethnically and economically diverse coalition they need to win. 

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• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  11/17/2020
  

  How Suburbs Swung the 2020 Election

  by Richard Florida, Marie Patino and Rachel Dottle

  The noted urban theorist points out that assumptions about suburban voters haven't kept up with the changing demographic realities of America's suburbs, which house a majority of the population and differ from each other as much as they do from central cities. 

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  11/7/2020
  

  Georgia’s Political Shift – a Tale of Urban and Suburban Change

  by Jan Nijman

  If Georgia is demographically and politically becoming unlike neighboring Republican strongholds like Alabama and Tennessee, it has, in some respects, moved in a similar direction as Arizona, where the two major metropolitan regions of Phoenix and Tucson make up over 80% of the state’s population, and where Democrats have improved their standing in recent years.

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• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  11/3/2020
  

  Pittsburgh's Suburbs Try to De-Karen the 2020 Election

  by Brentin Mock

  White suburban women have been important liberal activists since Trump's election, but still face difficulty in creating coalitions with communities of color in metro areas like Pittsburgh where segregation and inequality are rampant. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/30/2020
  

  In Michigan, a Suburban County That Flipped Blue Isn’t Looking Back

  Oakland County, which was solidly red 12 years ago, is solidly blue, becoming a prime example of the changes that are taking place in many of the nation’s suburbs.

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• SOURCE: New York Magazine
  10/26/2020
  

  Two Visions of the Suburbs Are on the Ballot. Both Are Myths

  While Donald Trump imagines American suburbia as affluent, homogenous and imperiled by liberal housing policies, Joe Biden ignores the fact that separate suburban municipalities work to segregate Americans by race and class and perpetuate different levels of access to opportunity.

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• SOURCE: Blooberg CityLab
  10/21/2020
  

  In a Land of Cul-de-Sacs, the Street Grid Stages a Comeback

  Land use planners in unlikely places-the Texas suburbs--are revisiting the idea of gridded street plans as solutions for car dependence and traffic. 

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• SOURCE: Brookings Institution
  10/15/2020
  

  Why is Trump Obsessed with Suburbia?

  by Willow Lung-Ammam

  Trump and Carson do not want white America to see itself as recipients of federal welfare policies that made suburbs possible, profitable, and desirable–from Federal Housing Administration loans and interstate highways to mortgage interest deductions. Instead, they position white suburbanites as defenders of democracy.