White Flight Levittown Suburban Segregation

The highway acts of the 50′s and 60′s and neighborhood building restrictions were perfectly timed with  the civil rights movement  to create modern segregation.  I live in Scarritt Renaissance an older area of Northeast Kansas City. The neighborhood is often known in the suburbs as an area of prostitution and drugs. Many suburbanites have a paranoia of the neighborhood. I hear co-workers I associate with in the suburbs speaking of the dangers of the northeast. It is mostly rubbish. I love my neighborhood. The biggest problem is poverty. There are also many wealthy individuals living in the area.  The historical homes they live in have no parallel in new suburban neighborhoods.  The wealth required to maintain these homes is outrageous, at least compared to what I make. Despite these there is mostly lower income dwellings, and yes the homeless are visible on the street unlike most suburbs. The crime that is present is most often a reaction to poverty. Women in the neughborhood are not stuck in prostitution walking the avenue because they have low morals, but because they have low incomes.

If you know architecture you can find many forgotten treasures in the northeast. I live in a little arts and crafts style apartment building. Arts and Crafts era architecture was a response to the Victorian homes. Victorian style became cheap from mass production.  The arts and crafts movement was one that embraced a higher quality of building materials and led to wonderful lasting structures that the layman often confuses with Victorian. Materials that went into these homes and apartments have no equal with today’s building standards. What is truly amazing compared to todays’ suburbs is that the wealthy homes and mansions are scattered amidst apartment buildings and the smaller homes. You will see an area that can handle lower income families as well as the wealthy all living as neighbors. This rarely happens in suburban America.

There are often regulations prohibiting multiple family dwellings in newer areas whith single family dwellings.  Codes and regulations lead to their sea of beige.  Little houses built of drywall and balsa wood as opposed to the plaster walls, stone, brick and sturdy materials that helped these hundred year old homes to still stand as the wonderful structures they are and to serve as homes for generation after generation over the century.

After WWII the troops came home to what could be seen as the most socialized and government controlled America that has ever existed. The state regulated most aspects of life with the excuse of the war. These troops set off in the highly segregated 40′s to use their G.I. bill and get their degrees. Middle class suburbia emerged dominant as chain suburbs popped up like Levittown. The civil rights movement was brewing. As Allen Ginnesburg and the Beats intermingled in the city playing with drugs speaking out about what was wrong with America, the leave it to beaver suburban life style was in it’s infancy. The wealthy or those that could get credit and play wealthy were most often the whites who had little to hinder them up to this point. Blacks had faces Jim crow laws and a plethora of hindrances legally. The state was about to further screw one class over the other as we would make our biggest leap forward in equality with the civil rights movement. We needed the civil rights movement. We did not need the government to subsidize the segregation of the white upper class.

The interstate highway acts of the 50′s and 60′s created modern segregation.  It created outer belts to cut off the cities as the white flight began. Those that could afford cars were most likely white in these post WWII years. The wealth would be drained by those that could then afford to flee and take it with them while those hindered by poverty would be cut off in the inner city. This was more dominant in the black communities of the time. The long term effects of this segregation is still seen today with minorities and migrants cut off in inner cities as the government subsidized white flight led to little suburban pockets free from the people they wish to avoid. The state made sure the rich suburbs were catered to and promoted with their inner states leading to each new little pocket of wealth along the highways and if you don’t want to see the poverty of the city you can just take the outer belt to avoid it.

Why would the city not have more crime?  They were cut off in poverty and that is the most common natural cause of crime. Unlike mixed living conditions found in the city where multi-family are found by single family dwellings, suburbs often control through building regulations which hinders diversity of class. Oh how the rich used the government to gain their segregation and to avoid the people they don’t want to see in society. Government helped with their pre-civil rights cultural preservation.

This is one of many reasons I detest most of suburbia and suburban culture.