Word: suburbias
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...POOR. On the suburban evidence, President Nixon was politically wise to shoot down a HUD proposal to encourage construction of low-income housing in suburbia. The idea is distinctly unpopular. In suburbs where there is no low-income housing today, almost half the residents are against it (v. 38% favorable and 13% undecided): in high-income suburbs, opposition is strongest (68% to 22%). Only 26% of those interviewed said there already were low-income projects in their community...
Whether white suburbanites like it or not, the suburban scene is being altered. Blacks are moving to the suburbs in growing numbers, although the white influx over the past decade has been so great that the percentage of blacks in suburbia has risen only imperceptibly-4.5% overall in 1970 v. 4.2% in 1960. As of 1968, however, there were proportionately more poor blacks in the suburbs than in the cities. Industry, too, has been deserting the central city for the suburbs...
...result of its demographic dominance, suburbia may soon achieve a political primacy that the cities never quite managed in the long era of malap-portioned, rural-dominated state legislatures, which traditionally hold the key to everything from congressional districting to the parceling out of state aid funds. According to a National Urban Coalition study, "suburban gains in political power through court-ordered redistricting have been steady since 1966." Charles Richard Lehne, a Rutgers political scientist, foresees that the suburbs will pick up 25 seats in the House of Representatives as a result of redistricting based on the 1970 census...
Harris found, however, that few people change their political registration on moving to the suburbs, so the suburban migration does not necessarily mean a gain for the Republicans. (Though suburbia voted for Nixon in 1968, it now gives him a 52% negative job rating.) Reapportionment helped the cities get fairer representation in the state legislatures, but it also boosted the number of legislators from the expanding suburbs. Now urbanologists fear that suburban representatives may combine with rural lawmakers to perpetuate the historic discrimination against cities in the allocation of state funds...
...battle of the cities will be fought on the suburban front," says Robert Wood, president of the University of Massachusetts and author of the political and governmental study Suburbia. The cities have already been diminished by the movement of people and industry to the suburbs. "This trend," says Harris, "if not reversed, will have major consequences for urban America: declining tax bases within cities, less incentive for the cities themselves to develop efficient mass transportation, greater reluctance in the state capitals to provide aid for cities. In short, the isolation of the central city." That need not happen, however; planned...