The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community 9780231542647

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Tables
Foreword
Preface to the Morningside Edition
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction. The Setting, Theory, and Method of the Study
Part 1 - THE ORIGIN OF A COMMUNITY
One. The Planners of Levittown
Two. The Levittowners— and Why They Came
Three. The Beginnings of Group Life
Four. The Founding of Churches
Five. The New School System
Six. The Emergence of Party Politics
Seven. The Origin of a Community
PART 2— THE QUALITY OF SUBURBAN LIFE
Eight. Social Life: Suburban Homogeneity and Conformity
Nine. The Vitality of Community Culture
Ten. Family and Individual Adaptation
Eleven. The Impact of the Community
PART 3— THE DEMOCRACY OF POLITICS
Twelve. Political Communication
Thirteen. The Decision- making Process
Fourteen. Politics and Planning
Fifteen. Levittown and America
Appendix. The Methods of the Study
References
Index

Citation preview

THE LE V ITTOWNERS Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community

Legacy Editions Edited by Howard S. Becker and Mitchell Duneier Learning to Labor: How Working-Class Kids Get Working-Class Jobs, Paul Willis, with foreword by Stanley Aronowitz The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community, Herbert J. Gans, with foreword by Harvey Molotch On Becoming a Rock Musician , H. Stith Bennett, with foreword by Howard S. Becker Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States, by Viviana Zelizer, with foreword by Kieran Healy

The Levittowners Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community

Herbert J. Gans WITH A FOREWORD BY HARVEY MOLOTCH

Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 1967 Herbert J. Gans Preface to the Morningside Edition © 1982 Columbia University Press Foreword © 2017 Columbia University Press All rights reserved under International and Pan- American Copyright Conventions. Originally published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. New York, and Random House, Inc., New York and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Reprinted by arrangement with Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. ISBN 978-0-231-17887-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-0-231-54264-7 (e-book) Library of Congress Control Number: 2016947590

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acidfree paper. Printed in the United States of America Cover design: Mary Ann Smith Cover image: © Joseph Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

CONTENTS

List of Tables

vii

Foreword by Harvey Molotch

ix

Preface to the Morningside Edition

xix

Preface

xxxi

Acknowledgments

xxxv

Introduction

The Setting, Theory, and Method of the Study

xxxvii

Part 1—the origin of a community One Two Three Four Five Six Seven

Part

The Planners of Levittown The Levittowners— and Why They Came The Beginnings of Group Life The Founding of Churches The New School System The Emergence of Party Politics The Origin of a Community

3 22 44 68 86 104 124

2—the quality of suburban life

Eight

Social Life: Suburban Homogeneity and Conformity Nine The Vitality of Community Culture Ten Family and Individual Adaptation Eleven The Impact of the Community

153 185 220 252

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Part

Contents

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3—the democracy of politics

Twelve Political Communication Thirteen The Decision-making Process Fourteen Politics and Planning Fifteen Levittown and Amer ica

305 333 368 408

Appendix

435

The Methods of the Study

References

452

Index

465

TA B L E S

1. Principal Reason for Moving from Previous Residence, by Type of Community

33

2. Principal Reason for Buying in Levittown, by Type of Previous Community

35

3.

39

Principal Aspiration for Life in Levittown, by Sex

4. Visiting among Adjacent Neighbors, by Amount of Visiting

157

5. Amount of Boredom in Levittown

228

6.

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Amount of Loneliness in Levittown, Women Only

7. Changes of Behav ior and Attitudes in Levittown

256–257

Foreword WELCOME TO THE LEV ITTOW NERS! Harvey Molotch

For those of us escaping the conventions of post-war America, there was gratification in knowing what we were not: suburbanites. We were not living in tract houses, being shaped into emptyheaded conformists. Instead, we could enjoy a popular ditty called “Little Boxes,” sung by beloved folk singer and activist Pete Seeger, which gave voice to our heroic derision: There’s a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one, And they’re all made of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. Type “Seeger Little Boxes” into YouTube and check it out. Maybe you’ll see why people at music festivals and campus auditoriums relished joining in. But while others were mocking the suburbs, social researcher Herbert Gans moved into one. He chose an archetype: Levittown, one of several huge residential subdivisions built by Levitt and Sons, Inc., this one in the New Jersey hinterlands beyond Philadelphia. There he could answer for himself: does the ticky tacky create humans who become all “ just the same”? Is it really the case that, as Gans puts it, “mass produced housing leads to mass-produced lives” (171)? In raising it as a serious question, Gans went against the fashion of his day—and our day too. The suburban milieu, we fret, lacks “culture”—like ■

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museums and orchestras—and the rich diversity that comes from dense urban living. In a way, Gans’s study was a perfect storm of classical sociological theory meeting up with stunning changes in land use. The nineteenth- and early twentieth-century social science thinkers had dwelt on the hazards of modern life, including how it disrupted social bonds, bred conformity, and even deformed personality itself. Citizens were at risk of “anomie” (Durkheim’s word) or “alienation” (in the Marxian lexicon). Levittown added to the distaste by being a gigantic capitalist thing. A developer had cleared out the woods and farmlands to build cookie-cutter dwellings for people leading stultified lives. What’s to like about that? Plenty, as it turned out. Mr. and Mrs. Gans moved in and stayed for two years (October 1958–September 1960). They were among the first twenty-five homebuyers of an eventual twelve thousand. Getting in early meant that Gans saw firsthand—not from developers’ boasts or critics’ laments—how “a new community comes into being” and with what result (xxxi). Unlike other locales where the researcher met up with longstanding ethnic enclaves, or factory towns where people at least had in common their place of employment, in Levittown Gans could see how individuals who did not know one another created social lives where none existed before. So in addition to evaluating a particular community outcome, Gans could address a profound sociological question brought to the fore by the Levittown circumstance. Everyone is a stranger out in the boonies—an awkward and impractical situation that Levittown residents took steps to remedy. Somebody had to start it off, had to “break the ice” and actually talk to a stranger. There were no social workers, no mixers or developer-sponsored get-togethers. For some, it was easy to reach out to their neighbors, in part due their gregarious personalities. (Personality is usually a realm of psychologists; Gans is one of the few sociologists who brought it up.) So a neighbor reached out to somebody next door who did the same to their other adjacent neighbor, and a daisy chain of linkage took form—the start of a social unit. The personality of buyers had some systemic effects. Those more likely to keep to themselves broke spatial linkages and aborted community. Without intending to do so, the less sociable (or the excluded in some cases) defined boundaries. Gans went everywhere in Levittown. He attended the meetings of the school board, the township council, the charities, the neigh-

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borhood associations. He visited, as they came into existence, the local churches and the synagogue. He repeatedly interviewed leaders of many of the organizations, politicians, and the town’s developer. And he hung out: on his block, at the shops, and where teens went to find each other. He mowed the lawn. To gather evidence or find new leads, Gans fielded surveys, at a time when surveys were coming into full bloom as a method of sociological research. Remarkably, he convinced the Levitt organization to send questionnaires to buyers prior to their move-in, with the results sent directly to an office at his university. The return rate was an astounding two-thirds (2100 households). The survey asked the usual questions about occupation, religion, family, and ethnicity, but it also asked about buyers’ attitudes toward their old neighborhoods and their reasons for moving to Levittown. What had they liked or not liked about their prior home and its setting— and what was good (or bad) about what they expected in the new one? How did they spend their leisure time? To which organizations did they belong? In a methodological tour de force, there were then follow-ups after buyers’ move-ins, with another wave of questionnaires as well as face-to-face interviews conducted by graduate assistants. There was special focus on residents who had been in Levittown for two years or more. This allowed Gans to determine how suburban living differed from city life and whether living in Levittown changed residents’ evaluations of one place versus the other. Pulling all his research together, Gans blew the roof off the suburban myth. He argued that suburbs represent “old lifestyles . . . on new soil” (149). As before in the city, men went to work, and most women stayed home and took care of the house and kids. Some breadwinners were ambitious and some not so much. Some were beset by financial problems, others by family tension. People got together in clubs, churches, and at one another’s homes (couple visiting had increased in the suburbs). From his on-the-ground participant observation (you couldn’t get this from a survey), Gans judged many to be lively, curious, and even fun. In the general mixture, Levittowners were, in other words, not so special. The settlers came to pursue the same basic goals found in the city, indeed found most everywhere. They came for the goods; Levitt offered the “best house for the money” (41). They reported enjoying the land and the additional privacy it afforded. They wanted, Gans said, “a tiny farm (not to be farmed)” (287). Although

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virtually all residents were white, Gans learned that they were not in white flight. That is, they were not trying to “escape” racial change in their prior neighborhoods, nor were they running from high crime or slum-like conditions. They were, on the whole, looking ahead . When they had lived in the city, most of them in Philadelphia, they had access to all the great institutions: museums, symphony, and universities. But since residents had only seldom visited these institutions, they did not feel the loss. Instead, simply put, they got what they came for: their new houses. There was a lot of do-it-yourself home improvement. At a basic level, this brought family members together, sometimes in common projects on the yard and garden—perhaps even pulling them away from the sensationally appreciated television. Being able to fi x things, build furniture, and carry out modest remodels could also win approval from the neighbors. So there was a sense of “keeping up” and probably some mutual envy. Neighbors also appreciated anything thought to bolster property values. They disapproved of anything that they thought might threaten the value of their own houses, like neighbors’ weeds or an apartment project proposed by the developer. In addition, working with one’s hands, developing craft, might have brought some intrinsic rewards. Through Gans’s study, we see how people live through mixed and multiple goals, in a suburb as anywhere else. Besides accidents of proximity and personality, some of the more common social characteristics also figured in to who would connect to whom. Many residents were young mothers. Children’s play patterns brought them into quick and easy interaction, including exchange of tips and strategies for dealing with parenthood. One of Gans’s fi ndings is that the real social unit is not the neighborhood at all or even the block. It is the “sub-block,” the cluster of houses where residents have good sight lines, direct contact, and where kids can spontaneously meet up (since, safe from cars and crime, Levittown children could roam freely). Even with proximity, however, those different from their immediate neighbors were less likely to connect. For example, the senior citizens moving into Levittown had more trouble connecting with their younger neighbors. Being distinctively of higher or lower socioeconomic status also inhibited fulsome interaction. For a variety of Levittowners, it took a good long time—months or even more—to find friends and neighbors with whom they felt comfortable.

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The outside world could help overcome connectivity challenges. Postmen, milkmen, and other purveyors were intermediaries who informed neighbors of their commonalities with one another: who had a boy child or girl child of a certain age, who played which sport, who had a specific allergy. Who—this had to be handled deftly—was Jewish or Catholic, who had special skills or knowledge, who had useful organizational or political contacts. What we now call “weak ties,” in this case between customers and providers, thus stimulated further connections and opportunities. Gans used the term “sorting” to talk about the process through which people find one another beyond their immediate neighbors. Some outside organizations make it their business to help this happen. With an eye toward building memberships, their officials track demographic trends. The Catholic diocese, to take one clear example, is massively and competently set up for this purpose. So are other Christian institutions. As part of its land-use plan, Levitt had set aside acreage for some religious denominations (provided free of charge) but not others, based on who had populated the builder’s prior developments. Not having been anticipated, several fundamentalist churches had to raise money on their own to make a Levittown land purchase. In this sense, the religious texture of Levittown was a feature of the developer’s land management program; it proved harder for some denominations compared to others to make it in Levittown. In confronting challenges of whatever kind, the churches were social: besides attending services, co-religionists participated in building committees, women’s auxiliaries, school set-ups, or in recruiting a new pastor or rabbi. Land had not been set aside for other types of organizations, like Boy and Girl Scouts, but state and national presence offered a ready template and support system to help them form. As usual, parents met one another through their offspring for further social involvement. Influence between locals and organization was not just in one direction. Once their children joined the troop or they became active in the church, residents could make their own impact. It was not always a smooth process; locals had to deal with their own internal divisions and bickering before they could prevail. In one case, residents managed to get rid of the church pastor who the hierarchy had dealt them; in another, an upper-middle-class group of parents helped oust a school superintendent they considered insufficiently attentive to the needs of their college-bound children.

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Again, there were variations in who was active and in what, with the more affluent residents doing the most joining and pressuring. Gans noticed that it was a small group of such people who formed an “interlocking directorate”—individuals who played significant roles in more than one organization at a time. Levittowners, Gans found, were not ideological and indeed their political positions seemed not to conform at all to notions of left or right, liberal or conservative. What he did fi nd—among some—was an ideology to “be active.” For believers, being active was a way toward being upstanding and was a good in itself. Many commentators have responded to Tocqueville’s nineteenth-century classic Democracy in America (419) to argue that joining voluntary associations is somehow an essential quality of American character. Maybe. But here we see how voluntary associations operated in a very concrete and practical way to bridge individuals who otherwise might have been problematically isolated. These groups furthered outside institutions’ expansionary goals while simultaneously serving residents’ personal needs and expanding their networks for business and professional advance. Gans did arrive at some local discontents. Teenagers reported being “bored” (do they ever not?) and Gans empathized with their plight, one that could have been ameliorated through decent public transit (there was none). But more pressing from a social problems perspective were the larger issues of gender and race—and how they landed in Levittown. Some Levittown women expressed frustration at their isolation and lack of occupational fulfillment— Mad Men –style lives in a daytime world of women at home, be it ever so pleasant. Betty Friedan famously called it “the problem with no name” in her classic The Feminine Mystique, published a year after Levittowners. It may be that Gans was picking up on second-wave feminism, which was perhaps also stirring in Levittown. As Gans sensed the emergent reality, consistent with his overall perspective, he added that “if there is malaise in Levittown, it is female but not suburban”(226). Further, for Gans, the problem was not psychoanalytic (another source of quick diagnoses of the time); the shrink is not the one to see. Short of changing gender roles and improving occupational options for women, the worthy local resource was the companionship that suburban women offered one another—particularly the coffee klatch of life sharing around the kitchen table. Sisterhood, in its suburban form we might say, should not just be

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the basis for some television sitcom laughs—a mainstay genre in the Levittown era (244). Some Levittowners did miss their families back in the city and also their former churches, taverns, and clubs. In any event, as judged by responses to the surveys, interviews, statements at meetings, and articles in the local press, few wanted to move back. Far short of manipulation or creating false needs, the Levitt fi rm had, in Gans’s view, simply given people what they wanted. In a way that seems inconceivable in today’s world of real estate consultants and market analysts, Levitt had done zero study of regional demand or customer preference. Instead the firm’s owners relied on their own instincts and delivered a product they themselves liked. Standardized components lowered costs. Architecturally, this new Levittown was done in “early American” or “colonial American” style—or, as reflected in the imposing Levitt office headquarters, “Selznick colonial,” a facetious reference to the plantation style of the Selznickproduced all-time hit movie Gone with the Wind. That grand movie saga shared with mundane Levittown not just architectural motif but also strict racial hierarchy. The stars were white and the ideas were white. At Levittown, whatever consumer choice was operating for white people, black people had none of it. The Levitt salesmen assured white prospective buyers there would be no “Negroes” and delivered on the promise. The Levitts were behaving no differently than the vast majority of their competitors. Although city populations, in the aggregate, might have been diverse, city neighborhoods were—and largely still are—homogenous in terms of race and class. To read racial diversity into the urban past, and to contrast it with suburban homogeneity, is to engage in the kind of romantic nostalgia Gans abjures. Anticipating the suburban boom that was to only gain momentum, Gans wrote that it was “urgent” for African Americans to be cut into the deal precisely because suburbia was desired and, in the ways he spells out, desirable . He looked for opportunities that would be effective given the hyper-racism of his time. In an approach often decried by those insisting on more untainted moral deportment, Gans opted as a practical matter to settle for half a loaf. Going forward with new subdivisions, he suggested letting the smallest scale neighborhood units—parts of a block—be racially homogenous. But then at the larger geographic scale, maybe of the block, certainly of the neighborhood, the developer should

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do all possible to foster integration. Gans calls this a policy of “selective homogeneity” (172). Never, Gans flatly states (174), in what seems perhaps a contradiction difficult to reconcile, should an individual be denied a house because of his or her race. In 1960, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that Levitt had to sell to black people. In a clever strategy to avoid the loss of white buyers but still comply, Levitt and Sons, Inc., offered prospective African American purchasers first choice in lot selection. This meant they got best locations with the highest amenities in the tracts on offer. When white prospects were then told the race of the adjacent owners (and they were so informed by company policy), whites had the choice, in effect, of indulging their racist attitudes or settling for a property farther away and hence less desirable. Most did not; they took the best lot. South Jersey’s realtors then began steering African Americans to Levittown—a suburb from which they would no longer be excluded. For this and other reasons, black exclusion gave way to a very substantial inclusion. By the 2010 census, black residents accounted for three-fourths of the township population. Inside sorting dynamics combined with external forces to yield an unlikely outcome. Integration, alas, was again being thwarted. Just as he was willing to face some uncomfortable truths about how people do their various forms of sorting, so Gans also reveals some uncomfortable information about his research methods. He did not want his Levittowner neighbors and informants to know of his linkage to the surveys sent to them by the developer for fear that this knowledge would change what they told him when they were together. When a resident asked him point-blank about it, he “disclaimed” any connection to the surveys. He lied, something today’s university human subjects committees would not permit. Operating before there were such committees, Gans simply explains, “The researcher must be dishonest to get honest data.” Gans again runs against the maxims of those with easy answers or strict moral recipes. And once again, others have something to question. There is also the reasonable test of whether or not all the research effort, including its risks and compromises, was worth it in the end. In my view, the answer is a resounding “yes.” Beyond explaining what went on in one actual suburb and at least to a degree in all suburbs, Gans shows how to interrogate myth. He displays how leading commentators and scholars can get it wrong. There is a warning here. Just as many once took pleasure in the denigra-

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tion of suburbia, now there is enthusiasm for the great return to the city—the “triumph of the city,” as the title of a recent bestselling book proclaims. Only the great metropolitan centers have the right mix—high density, diversity and size—to yield innovation, creativity, and start-ups. But what about modestly-scaled Ann Arbor, or Boulder, or the sprawl of Silicon Valley? Once again, people may be drinking the same potions and too easily accepting the au courant pronouncements of where it’s at. Running against the grain of his day, with Levittown as his method, Gans used rugged empiricism to resist. Even from his big city university perch, then at the University of Pennsylvania in central Philadelphia, there was something about reality itself that held him from looking down at other types of people and their places. From sociology or some other source—personality?—Gans came armed with enough self-insight to avoid following the herd.

Preface to the Morningside Edition

According to the U.S. census, about 45  percent of all Americans now live in suburbs. That plurality turns into a majority if one includes the populations of the growing Sunbelt cities, which are actually huge suburban agglomerations; and the majority grows larger if one also includes the participants in “non- metropolitan growth,” the people moving into suburban- like tracts in small town and rural areas currently attractive to industry. By now, Amer ica has become a suburban society— and this study of a suburban new town is perhaps more topical now than when it was fi rst published. Nonetheless, the book deals with several additional topics as well, for I moved to Levittown also to look at innovation processes and the effects of planning; the social consequences of housing and residential mobility; and the interplay between planning, politics and democratic theory. Part 1 of the book reports how the various facets of a new town were planned and orga nized, by entrepreneurs, experts and public officials. New towns are not being built these days, but my analy sis of how formal and informal groups, churches, schools, political institutions and public ser vices are founded applies still to all kinds of communities, new and old. So does my description of how people modify the work of the entrepreneurs and experts to fit their own preferences. Part 2 of The Levittowners traces the effects of moving from city to suburb, and from old neighborhoods to a new town, although it concludes that people change relatively little as a result of the move. What really affects them and their lives is obtaining a single-family house and becoming home owners. This is a politically and otherwise significant issue in a time when the national economy can apparently no longer supply such houses to anyone but the affluent, ■

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even though they are as eagerly sought by today’s young families as by those I studied twenty years ago.

Part 3 of the book analyzes how local politics adapts, and adapts to, the democratic ideal, but also treats politics as another aspect of the process by which the population, and the politicians, modify the work of the original planners. However, as my case study of racial integration in Chapter  14 suggests, the savvy planner who knows how to work with the power holders and interest groups that dominate local politics can still put planning expertise to good use. Like most other community studies, the book delves into yet other subjects. It is a study of American middle class ways of life and politics generally, at least those found in homeowner communities all across the country. Moreover, it is an evaluation of these ways—and of suburbia as well. Further, it analyzes how social, cultural, and economic aspects of class pervade virtually every sphere of community life and politics. Finally, the book examines the Levittowners’ adversarial relationship to the national society, and their desire to minimize involvement in it, devoting themselves instead to family life and to being what I call sublocals on p. 189. Today, when the national economy and the federal government affect every- day life more directly and often, that adversarial posture is perhaps even stronger, but it may get in the way of national policies needed to solve the country’s economic problems. II One of my major findings, that new towns are merely old social structures on new land, suggests that the book can continue to serve what appears to have been its prime purpose: as suburban ethnography. Of course, Levittown is not a typical suburb, but when so many Americans, of almost all ages and incomes, are suburban, there is no such thing as a typical suburb. In fact, suburbia may simply be a substitute phrase for low- density settlement, and such settlements are here to stay, some recent predictions about the end of suburbia notwithstanding. It seems to me that the residential history of Amer ica is marked by the continuing pursuit and achievement (so far) of lower density, which began when the first successful American city dwellers built themselves houses on the edges of their cities in the 18th century.* * My favorite illustration of the long history of suburbia is an excerpt from a letter reported in Ivar Lissner’s The Living Past (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1957), p.  44. “Our property seems to me the most beautiful in the world. It is so close . . . that we enjoy all the advantages of [the city] and yet when we come home we are away from all the noise and dust.” The city referred to is Babylon, and the letter, in cuneiform on a clay tablet, was composed in 539 B.C.

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Over the last two centuries, both pursuit and achievement have trickled down to the lower- middle and upper-working class populations, and today, the suburbs remain a potent aspiration for those forced by poverty or racial segregation to remain in urban apartments. Even so, the extent to which the American Dream is dominated by low- density living is still not entirely realized or accepted. The first energy crises of the 1970s led to a fairly widespread illusion that many suburbanites would now pack up and come back to the cities in which they properly belonged. Of course, they did not come back and bought smaller cars instead; and besides, the cities turned out to be less energy- efficient than first hoped. Even if gasoline someday costs $5 to 10 per gallon (in current dollars), few Americans are likely to accept high- density living but will then commute in tiny light-weight cars powered by motorcycle- size engines. Another 1970s’ fantasy proposed that childless couples and the ever-increasing number of singles were sufficiently urbane to stay in the cities. However, many of them also like low density, and while they spend evenings out far more often than families with children, their favorite leisure-time facilities are as footloose as all other American institutions. Singles bars can spring up in the suburbs as well as downtown; and suburban religious and other organizations quickly learn to schedule programs for singles tired of singles bars as the newest technique for increasing their memberships. Of course, some neighborhoods in almost all American cities are currently experiencing gentrification, but the available studies indicate that few gentrifiers are returnees from the suburbs. Most are young professionals who dislike apartment house living, and instead establish ways of life— and politics—which are not very dif ferent from suburban ones, although far more affluent than those described in The Levittowners. What has been labeled as the suburban way of life can actually be practiced in most American cities, since they were built up at low densities and provide few apartments, particularly high-rise ones, except for the poor. Why the pursuit of lower density continues without abatement deserves to be studied anew. To some extent it remains a demand for a new and modern house— and neighborhood; and also for cheaper housing than is available in the city. Some continue to seek escape from urban problems and low- status neighbors as well. Part of the non-metropolitan growth spurt can be explained by economic factors, this being where the jobs are at the moment, although many of those taking these jobs, and others, are concurrently looking for a quasi-rural existence or for the proximity to water and other active recreational opportunities. Nonetheless, the

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search for lower density is also another expression of the desire for individual and familial autonomy and the previously mentioned attempt to reduce involvement in the organized national society. III

I do not mean to argue that the suburban, or low- density, town is a perfect solution, either for those who choose it or aspire to it, or for the country. Adolescents are at last report as unhappy beyond the city limits as when I wrote this book, although if they are asked where they want to live as adults, they almost invariably point to communities of yet lower density. Still, perhaps some unhappy suburban adolescents become urban gentrifiers as adults. The people who don’t like to live up to the rules of homeownership, and those who do not fit in for other reasons, are often dissatisfied, too: working class families in middle class suburbs, middle class people in working class towns, and a variety of other social, cultural, and numerical minorities. (Most suburbs are still sufficiently dominated by the two-parent family to make living there hard on singles, and especially on women heads of households.) However, people who defy majority norms or lack the prevalent personal and social characteristics have similar troubles in many urban home owner neighborhoods. While the stereotypical suburb and city may differ, real neighborhoods do not vary just because they are located on opposite sides of the city limits. As a result, the people who suffer most in the suburbs are, as in the cities, the poor, racial minorities, members of single-parent families and, now, the households beset by rising unemployment and the continuing increase in the cost of housing. Even so, I have not changed my mind about the desirability of the suburbs for those who choose them, although I personally prefer a Manhattan high-rise apartment. Nor have I altered my relativistic attitude toward housing and community choice generally. Of the available housetypes and settlement forms, only some types of slums and slum areas have been proven harmful to anyone, persuading me that every household is entitled to its own preference, unless it is clearly harmful to others. The question of whether the suburbs harm anyone continues to be debated, with little change in the arguments which I discussed in Part 2 and Chapter 15 of the book. I shall, however, question one of the few new anti- suburban arguments, and discuss further one of the old ones. The new argument has been proposed by several feminists: that suburbia and the single-family house are male inventions which keep women in economic dependency and inferior positions, far

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from jobs and mired in housekeeping chores. This charge bears some resemblance to an earlier argument, that women are bored and lonely in the suburbs, which I discuss in Chapter 11, for both conclude that women would be happier and more productive in the city. Although I have no quarrels with feminist thought generally, this particular argument is questionable on several grounds. While feminists are right that too many women still lack access to jobs because they are far from mass transit or without cars, this is no longer a critique of the suburbs. Such women are increasingly found in urban neighborhoods, for viable urban mass transit systems are unfortunately becoming as rare as suburban ones. Moreover, the jobs themselves are sometimes more plentiful in the suburbs than in the cities these days. Insofar as the feminist charge is accurate, it is class-bound, for the urban jobs which are inaccessible to some suburban women are professional positions open only to highly educated upper-middle class women. Such jobs still seem to be more numerous in the city, or at least in Manhattan and a few other large central cities. However, most suburban women are not upper-middle class, and may therefore find the feminist argument irrelevant to their concerns. Undoubtedly some of these women feel, as did many Levittowners twenty years ago, that as long as the jobs available to them are unpleasant or underpaid or both, and as long as their husbands are bringing home enough money, full-time housewiving—with unpaid political, social, or charitable activity (or coffeeklatsching) on the side—is preferable. No one knows how many women, in the suburbs and elsewhere, feel this way today, but there are still many who remain full-time housewives. Some national census data analyzed by Andrew Hacker show that in 1979, 36  percent of women with employed husbands did not work at all, and only 28  percent had full-time year-round employment.* A number of the former would surely take jobs, especially if decent ones were available, but their unavailability should not be blamed on the suburbs. Second, although single-family houses (and suburbs) are normally designed by men for households in which women do most of the housework, I have not seen any houses in which the work could not be shared, or done entirely by men. Conversely, I see no intrinsic connection between women’s liberation from housework and urban apartments. Some apartments may be easier to take care of than houses, but their design does not preclude men from doing * Andrew Hacker, “Farewell to the Family?,” New York Review of Books, March 18, 1982, pp. 37–44; data at p. 41.

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the work. There are urban public facilities which can free women (or men) from some housework— and childcare, and feminists are right to demand that more should be available. Even so, such public facilities are in walking or mass transit distance only in a few high- density cities, and are as difficult to establish in other cities as in suburbs. In short, I see no irreconcilable conflict between feminism and suburban living, although homeownership remains problematic as long as women are underpaid for their work. Unfortunately, some feminists, like some socialists, believe that one cannot be a proper movement member unless one lives in the city. I suppose that this belief is functional for the movements because, at the moment, they still flourish more in cities than in suburbs, or at least in cities and college towns with a critical mass of middle class activists. Still, the belief also reflects an anti- suburban bias, which is not functional for the movements, because so many potential members or supporters live in the suburbs. The older argument concerns the harm which the suburbs, and the post–World War II suburban exodus of the last 35 years, have done to the cities, especially the older cities of the industrial Northeast and Midwest. That these cities are in dire economic and other straits is beyond question, but I doubt whether they would have remained economically healthy if the postwar suburbanization had not taken place. To begin with, the exodus was probably unavoidable. True, it was financed to a considerable extent by direct and indirect federal subsidies, and in theory, the government could have spent these subsidies on new housing in the cities. However, the white middle class for whom these subsidies were intended wanted to head for the suburbs, and as I noted on pp. 287–288, the politicians who sought the votes of the returning war veterans and other young families could not have backed legislation to house them in urban apartments instead. More important, even if the politicians had been able or willing to channel the postwar housing demand into city dwelling units, only some of the city’s economic problems would have been prevented. The decline of downtown central business districts, and urban retailing generally, would have been reduced, and the departure of offices and office jobs to the suburbs might have been slower. But the movement of manufacturing jobs, first into the metropolitan area, then to low-wage regions of the country, and fi nally to Third World countries, would have occurred anyway, because it took place independently of, and for dif ferent reasons than, the residential exodus. Still, urban economies would have remained healthier, and cities with predominantly white middle class popula-

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tions would have retained more political clout in Washington, thus obtaining more federal aid. The urban poor—white, black, or Hispanic—would not have been better off, however. In fact, poor inmigrants would not have found enough vacant housing in the cities and many might have been sent to establish low-income suburbs resembling those found in many foreign countries. Those already in the city would have been restricted to the same deteriorating neighborhoods as they are today, perhaps at higher density, and they would have received the same inferior public ser vices. There is no reason to believe that had the white middle class remained in the city, it would have been willing to undertake class or racial integration and to become generous in funding public programs for the poor. Most likely, it would have demanded more effective barriers between middle class neighborhoods and poor ones, as well as a more sharply divided dual system of public ser vices and facilities. The so- called white noose that developed in the suburbs would have been located inside the city limits, producing virtually the same segregation and polarization by race and income in the cities that now divide cities from suburbs. In other words, the suburban exodus was a symptom of Amer ica’s economic and racial inequality, and not the major cause of the urban crisis. During the 1950s and much of the 1960s, it was the conventional policy wisdom to attack suburbs and suburbanites as causes, delaying recognition of the fact that poverty and racial segregation are national problems which have to be eliminated by national action. That recognition began to emerge toward the end of the 1960s, but unfortunately, it was soon followed by the first signs of the stagflation that has gripped the country ever since. As a result, job creation as well as other antipoverty and desegregation programs faced considerable political opposition long before the Reagan administration took power. Admittedly, today that opposition is compounded by the suburbanization of Amer ica, for suburban voters and politicians see no need to help the urban poor and racial minorities. However, nor do most of the white middle class voters who have remained in the cities. IV

The Levittowners is now fi fteen years old, and some of its observations are not applicable at the moment. First and foremost, the book’s implicit assumption about the permanence of economic growth and affluence, and its consequent optimism that economic and racial inequality could be reduced, are at present unjustified. Likewise, my advocacy of suburban new towns for the less affluent is today moot, partly because the public funds are unavailable, but

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also because the suburban jobs for the urban poor which were expected in the 1960s never materialized. Racial discrimination and the reluctance to hire poor people of any color existed even in suburbs which were then experiencing labor shortages, just as they exist today in the booming parts of the “New South” and elsewhere. Suburban new towns for the middle class and the rich are currently obsolete as well. Columbia, Maryland, which was under construction when I wrote the book, was completed successfully, but more than a dozen planned new towns, most initiated by an ambitious federal new town program, did not survive the recession of the early 1970s. Today the new town idea itself seems to be moribund, even though economies of scale in new town construction could reduce some housing costs still. The new town idea died partly because the suburban housing boom, which many of us expected when the children born during the post–World War II baby boom came of home buying age, never materialized. Two factors seem to be responsible. One is the longterm depression of the housing industry, due in part to the tight money policies of the last several presidents, as well as the rapid inflation in all of the other components of housing, land, materials, labor etc., which have now priced new and even second-hand houses out of nearly everyone’s reach. The other factor is the change in American family formation. The post–World War II norm of early marriage and a family of three-to-four children turned out to be a temporary phenomenon, and earlier, longer-term trends toward later marriage and smaller families have reappeared. Consequently, some baby-boom children became singles, others have remained childless, and many are postponing children, finally having two or just one. While many of today’s young people still want a single-family house in a suburban or quasi-rural setting, they have for the moment settled for what they can afford: rowhouses, garden apartments, subdivided older suburban houses, and mobile homes. Some will never be able to afford anything else, especially in areas of the country where economic decline has spread beyond the city limits. However, the new ring of suburban developments that was already predicted in the 1960s has been springing up more or less on schedule in the growing Sunbelt cities. Meanwhile, of course, the postwar suburbs have themselves changed. Young families have become middle-aged and older; white working class families who had remained in the cities until the late 1960s have moved in; and more affluent black and Hispanic families have begun to gain admission to some suburbs, although mostly pre-war, inner ones. Obviously a suburb full of teenagers and some old people is different than one of young par-

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ents and small children; likewise, family life changes when women go to work. Organized community life has changed too, because women volunteers are scarcer these days, and because the public funds with which to replace their unpaid contributions are scarcer, too. Rising crime and the emergence of problems that come with the aging of communities, residential turnover, and the arrival of lower- status residents have led some observers to talk about the urbanization of the suburbs, but except in very poor suburbs, problems are minor compared to those of cities. Suburban crime is far less frequent and serious than urban crime, for example. How much the suburban way of life has changed is an unanswerable question, however, because a single suburban way of life has never existed, except as a stereotype. V

I have purposely refrained from discussing Levittown, i.e. Willingboro, New Jersey, up till now, because while I have visited the community from time to time over the past fifteen years, and carried out a number of interviews there in the fall of 1981, I have not restudied it. Willingboro is today a township of about 11,000 houses, a thousand less than the Levitt organization had planned, but 6000 less than William Levitt had hoped to build. Sales began to slow down in the mid-1960s, and eventually, he sold the firm and left the community. Up to now, no one else has appeared to build on the remaining vacant land. In 1980, the town’s population was 40,000, down from 43,400 ten years earlier. Still, it is a far larger community than the one I studied, and also includes a couple of rowhouse areas and a “country club district” of more expensive homes. However, the homes and neighborhoods I knew best do not look very different today. Since Levitt built only three- and four-bedroom houses, people did not need to expand and rebuild them. (In the other Levittowns, he had built many two-bedroom homes.) The trees and shrubbery have matured, of course, doing away with what remained of the town’s mass-produced appearance, and making it more attractive as well. Most houses are well-maintained, as should be expected in a middle-income community in which 90  percent of the houses are owner- occupied. Like other suburbs, Willingboro has some empty schools, a few of which have been converted into offices. Its two big shopping centers are in serious economic difficulty, however, having lost department stores, supermarkets and other stores, partly to commercial overbuilding in the general area, partly to the recession. The

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latest threat is a huge new Rouse Company shopping center being built a few miles away, nearer to the New Jersey turnpike exit and in the middle of an area currently experiencing rapid and highpriced residential development. While Willingboro has aged, and the median age has risen from 20 to 27 in the last decade, 40  percent of the population remains under 18 and only 3 percent is over 65. As in the other Levittowns, the socio- economic status of the population as a whole has declined gradually over the years; many of the aspiring young professionals and other upper-middle class families left for more expensive environs once they became successful. Nonetheless, the town remains largely middle-income and white collar, with a slight decline in the proportion of blue collar workers between 1960 and 1970, and, it is thought, with a further decline in the last decade, as well. 1980 Census income and other economic data are not yet available at this writing, but in 1977, the town’s per capita income was $5596,86 percent of the New Jersey per capita. In 1969, it had been 90 percent of the state figure, however. Although Levittowns, like other new towns, are thought to be unusually transient, annual turnover is far below the U.S. rate of 20  percent. No one knows how many of the original homebuyers still live in Willingboro, but a township official estimated that between 10 and 15  percent of the initial residents of Somerset Park, the first neighborhood, which had been settled in 1958 and 1959, are there today. Annual turnover in Willingboro, which had been about 10 percent in 1964, had risen to 12–15 percent during some years in the 1970s, but was about 7  percent in 1981, the county average. The reduction may have resulted from the general paralysis in the area housing market, however. The town’s vacancy rate has normally been 1 percent. The major change in the community is its racial composition, for in 1980, 38 percent of the population was black. In 1970, it had been 11 percent black. Willingboro resembles other suburban new towns built during the 1960s in this respect: Columbia, Maryland; Reston, Virginia; and Park Forest South, Illinois are also racially integrated. Undoubtedly the size and visibility of these new towns virtually required that they be open to black residents, which then made it even easier for smaller communities and subdivisions to remain invisible, and therefore all-white. South Jersey suburbia is highly segregated, and I was told that black families were both attracted by and steered into Willingboro. As in most integrated communities, the black population is younger than the white; and as a result, the town’s school population is just over 50 percent black. Family income was thought to be about the same for both races, but the proportion of twobreadwinner households is considerably higher among blacks. (In

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1970, 42 percent of black wives with children under six were in the labor force, as compared to 17 percent of white wives with similarly aged children.) The community’s original integration plan, which sought to prevent the development of predominantly black areas, has been adhered to, by informal consensus as well as official action. Some years ago, the second and third oldest neighborhoods were becoming predominantly black, after which a community-wide school busing program was initiated. Today, the two areas are close to the town’s overall racial proportions again, perhaps as a result. I was told that while interracial social life is rare, all churches, organizations and voluntary associations are integrated. So are municipal offices, and in 1980, the elected township council named its first black mayor, a woman lawyer. The higher-level municipal jobs are still held by whites, however, despite township efforts to recruit blacks and Hispanics for them. “Incidents” have taken place from time to time, mostly as a result of noisy teenage parties, but none have had serious repercussions. The increasing black population has, however, helped to reduce further Willingboro’s status-image in the county, although it was already lower than the town’s actual status when the population was lily-white. Being “poor-mouthed” in the rest of the county has discouraged white buyers, despite the fact that the houses remain a bargain, although whites are continuing to move in, particularly those stationed at the two nearby military bases. The original occupants of Somerset Park who have remained will soon be able to burn their mortgages. Some see this as a good reason to stay, others cannot afford to move; and some would now like to move to a more prestigious community. As in other racially integrated areas, there is much speculation about the future, and a few people predict the early arrival of “Philadelphia slum dwellers.” Evidence to justify this prediction does not exist, however, and at the moment, interest rates are too high to enable anyone other than people transferred by their employers to move out of or into the town. Organizational and political life struck me as having changed the least over the last two decades. The number of voluntary associations has not increased very much since I finished my study, and has certainly not kept up with the growth in population. Yet public ser vices and community facilities have been significantly increased and diversified. The community activists I describe as cosmopolitans in the book are long gone, and so are most of the pre- Levittown residents and the fi rst newcomers who initially dominated town politics. However, some of both are still active in county affairs. Willingboro is the largest community in Burlington county, but it

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has not achieved the political influence which I had originally expected. It contains only 10 percent of the county’s population, and 12 percent of the county’s voters; in addition, most of the county’s political organizations and leaders— and the county’s wealth— are elsewhere. Willingboro elections are now generally won by the Democrats, but they, like the Republicans, are split into factions. Community political and other meetings are sparsely attended, as they were during the time of my study. The last issue to evoke a sizeable citizen turnout was crime: a rash of breaking- and- entering cases, which was apparently dealt with successfully by increasing police patrolling and by instituting a teenage curfew. After my most recent visit to Willingboro, I left with the impression, which may not be empirically accurate, that the community is a collection of individual households who live together as good neighbors, but devote themselves almost entirely to their own concerns and interests, leaving the town as a whole in the hands of a few eager or duty-bound activists and the officials who are paid to run its facilities. As one of my erstwhile neighbors pointed out: “There are no neighborhoods here and no community, just a bunch of hardworking people who come home to putter around the house on weekends.” He said it sadly, though not critically, but I do not share his sadness. I think he described the essence of middle class ways of life and politics all over Amer ica, and any finding to the contrary has probably been made at an aty pical time, or in an aty pical town. Once needed organizations are in place, and ser vices function at an expected or tolerated level of efficiency, people devote themselves to family, self, and social life, creating a community only when new needs develop or threats must be dealt with. This is as it should be. The test of community is not cohesion or a high level of participation, but whether, when problems arise, people do then come together, literally or figuratively, to solve the soluble ones effectively and democratically.

h.j.g. New York City June 1982

Preface

This book is about a much Maligned part of Amer ica, Suburbia, and reports on a study conducted by an equally maligned method, sociology. The postwar suburban developments, of which the Levittowns are undoubtedly the prototype, have been blamed for many of the country’s alleged and real ills, from destroying its farmland to emasculating its husbands. Sociology is accused of jargon or statistical elaboration of the obvious and of reporting unpopular truths; of usurping the novelist’s function and being too impersonal; and most often, of making studies which uphold the conventional wisdom. (As I write this, a New York Post columnist commenting on Frank Sinatra’s marriage to a woman thirty years his junior, notes: “Sinatra and his new wife would confound the . . . sociologists who smugly branded so large an age gap unbridgeable.” It was probably an unconscious aside, but to the best of my knowledge, no sociolog ical studies have ever been made of “December-May” marriages, and whatever may be wrong with sociolog ical writing, it is rarely smug.) My book is not a defense of suburbia, but a study of a single new suburb, Levittown, New Jersey, in which I lived as a “participant- observer” for the fi rst two years of its existence to fi nd out how a new community comes into being, how people change when they leave the city, and how they live and politic in suburbia. Nor is it a defense of sociology, but an application of my own conception of it and its methods. The essence of sociology, it ■

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seems to me, is that it observes what people really do and say. It looks at the world from their perspective, unlike much literary writing, which often boils down to cata loguing their shortcomings from the author’s perspective. Sociology is a democratic method of inquiry; it assumes that people have some right to be what they are. Much of the maligning of both suburbia and sociology has come from the people whom I had in mind while writing this book. Of course, it is a sociolog ical research report, addressed to colleagues, students, and other social scientists interested in community, class, politics, and social structure. It is also a report to another set of colleagues: city planners and social planners, educators, and other service- giving professionals who plan and provide a variety of ser vices to communities like Levittown. But I hope the book will also be of interest to people publishers describe as “informed laymen” and sociologists call “the upper middle class.” Although this group is probably the single most influential set of opinion leaders in American society, its knowledge of that society is often sadly deficient. It sees the lower middle and working class people with whom I lived in Levittown as an uneducated, gullible, petty “mass” which rejects the culture that would make it fully human, the “good government” that would create the better community, and the proper planning that would do away with the landscape- despoiling little “boxes” in which they live. This is upper middle class ethnocentrism, and since upper middle class people—as marketers, teachers, bureaucrats, professionals, and consultants—make decisions which affect the lives of people like the Levittowners, they need to understand them better. I am not looking for illusory harmony between the classes, but am only saying that the class conflict could be fought more productively if all sides were better informed about each other. We know so little of our society and do so little research about it that every study of one of its parts is almost always used to interpret the whole. This book is not about Amer ica, however. For one thing, it only describes how people live in one suburb, and ignores how and where they work. Although I have sought to report findings which apply to many other communities and to people like the Levittowners wherever they live, it is also not about a cross section of Americans, but only about one significant group of them. The Levittowners are young people (in a society

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which values youth) who hold the new technical and ser vice jobs that are transforming our economy; who are principally working class and lower middle class (and so neither rich nor poor); who are giving up ethnic and regional allegiances and are gradually moving toward the triple melting pot in religion. They are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews who believe in an increasingly similar God, share an increasingly similar Judeo- Christian ethic, and worship in an increasingly similar way with similarly decreasing frequency. But if Levittowners are at all typical of Amer ica, it is because people like them are the principal market for the consumer goods offered by big national corporations, the entertainment and information provided by the mass media, and the political appeals that come out of Washington. They are the customers for whom these agencies create their product— and they are the people who converse about soap and aspirin in the television commercials. People like the Levittowners are wooed by the national churches and voluntary associations and are the independent voters whom both national parties are courting assiduously. In short, they are the people whom the major creators of Amer ica’s products, ser vices, and ideas believe to be most impor tant or most typical— another reason why I hope the book interests the informed laymen, who often work for them. Needless to say, Levittown is not a typical American community either. It is a suburb, located beyond the Philadelphia and Camden city limits, and it is a bedroom community, for almost all its residents work outside Levittown. But unlike most suburbs, Levittown was developed by a single builder. Also, the Levittowners account for about 98 per cent of the population of the township within which Levittown is located, so that the usual conflict between old residents and newcomers is quite onesided. And most important, Levittown is a new and still growing community. Even now, new Levittowners are arriving daily, and the community may not be completed entirely until the end of the decade. Consequently, I do not expect my findings to fit all suburbs, and certainly not all established communities. Indeed, how many of my observations apply to other communities remains to be seen. Although it is standard practice for the sociologist to hide the community he has studied behind a pseudonym, Levittown is distinctive enough to make that impossible, and my approach

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such that it is unnecessary. Being interested in group behav ior and group influences on individual behav ior, I am rarely writing about people as individual personalities and I mention no names. Besides, most of the events described here took place between 1958 and  1962 and are now ancient history. Moreover, Levittown, New Jersey, no longer exists; after my research was completed, the voters decided to call it by the original name of the township, Willingboro. I call it Levittown because my study is not of the township but of the Levitt-built community that accounts for almost all of its population.

Acknowledgments

My primary debt is to the Institute for Urban studies of the University of Pennsylvania, under whose aegis the research and much of the writing was done, and which paid my salary when no grant monies were forthcoming. I am especially grateful to William  L. C. Wheaton, now at the University of California at Berkeley, who, as the Director of the Institute, kept fi nancial aid  and moral support coming for long years, and to Robert  B. Mitchell, who relieved me from teaching duties. A fi rst draft of the book was completed while I was on the staff of the Institute of Urban Studies of Teachers College, Columbia University; and the fi nal one, at the Center for Urban Education. I am grateful to Robert  A. Dentler, Director of both, for giving me time to write. Portions of the study were supported by grants. A mail questionnaire survey was aided by small grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Social Science Research Council. Part of an interview survey was fi nanced by a grant- in- aid from the American Philosophical Society, and one year’s data analy sis and writing was supported by Penjerdel (the Pennsylvania- New Jersey- Delaware Metropolitan Project, Inc.). The Statistical Laboratory of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania punched and tabulated the questionnaire data without charge, and I am grateful to Nancy Schnerr and Ronald Cohen for doing so. ■

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Most of the research I did myself, and am therefore responsible for all its shortcomings. My then wife, Iris Lezak MacLow, helped with the fieldwork; Ruth Blumenfeld did many of the interviews; and Phoebe Cottingham, the coding and statistical computation of the mail questionnaire data. William Michelson conducted a special study of voluntary associations under my supervision, and Alice Pierson asked some of my questions in another Levittown. Several past and present executives of Levitt and Sons, Inc., gave information on the firm’s plans and activities, and made it possible to send the mail questionnaire to home-buyers. A number of colleagues made helpful comments on earlier drafts of the book, among them Martin Meyerson, Peter Marris, H. Laurence Ross, William Michelson, Peter Willmott, and particularly Margaret Latimer. I am especially grateful to Judy Engelhardt of Pantheon Books, whose careful and close editing of a very long previous draft helped me cut the book without loss of substance; and to Martha Crossen Gillmor, for her thorough last-minute review of the final version. The major share of manuscript typing was done by Leona Cohen, Mary Ellison, Jacqueline Ferguson, Marcia Hyman, Thelma Johnson, Mae Kanazawa, and the late Theresa Barmack. But the principal coworkers of the study were the Levittowners, with whom I lived for two enjoyable years, who provided information in my endless rounds as a participant- observer, and let themselves be questioned by interviewers and by mail. I hope they will find my report on their community useful.

H. J. G. New York City August 1966

Introduction T H E S E T T I NG , T H E O R Y , A N D M ET HOD O F T HE STUDY

This study had its beginnings sixteen years ago when I concluded some research in the new town of Park Forest, Illinois, near Chicago. Having come to Park Forest when it was fourteen months old and already a community, I decided that someday I would study a new town from its very beginnings. Soon after I left Park Forest, it and other postwar suburban developments suddenly became a topic of widespread popu lar interest. Journalists and critics began to write articles suggesting that life in these new suburbs was radically dif ferent from that in the older cities and towns and that these differences could be ascribed both to basic changes in American values and to the effects of suburban life. In the fi rst and most perceptive of these reports, Whyte’s articles on Park Forest, the author described drastic increases in visiting and club activity, shifts in political party affi liation and church- going habits, and a more equalitarian mode of consumer behav ior and status competition (keeping down with the Joneses) which he explained as a decline in individualism and the rise of a new Social Ethic— most evident in and partly created by the new suburbs.1 Later reports by less searching and responsible writers followed,2 and so did a flood of popu lar fiction,3 eventually creating what Bennett Berger has called the myth of suburbia.4 Its main theme took off where Whyte stopped: the suburbs were breeding a new set of Americans, as mass produced as the houses ■

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they lived in, driven into a never ending round of group activity ruled by the strictest conformity. Suburbanites were incapable of real friendships; they were bored and lonely, alienated, atomized, and depersonalized. As the myth grew, it added yet more disturbing elements: the emergence of a matriarchal family of domineering wives, absent husbands, and spoiled children, and with it, rising marital friction, adultery, divorce, drunkenness, and mental illness.5 In unison, the authors chanted that individualism was dying, suburbanites were miserable, and the fault lay with the homogeneous suburban landscape and its population. John Keats, perhaps the most hysterical of the mythmakers, began his book as follows: “For literally nothing down . . . you too can fi nd a box of your own in one of the fresh- air slums we’re building around the edges of American cities . . . inhabited by people whose age income, number of children, problems, habits, conversation, dress, possessions and perhaps even blood type are also precisely like yours. . . . ]They are [ developments conceived in error, nurtured by greed, corroding every thing they touch. They . . . actually drive mad myriads of housewives shut up in them.”6 Subsequently, literary and social critics chimed in. Although they wrote little about suburbia per se, articles and reviews on other subjects repeated what they had learned from the mass media, dropping asides that suburbia was intellectually debilitating, culturally oppressive, and politically dangerous, breeding bland mass men without respect for the arts or democracy.7 They were joined by architects and city planners who accused the suburbs and their builders of ruining the countryside, strangling the cities, causing urban sprawl, and threatening to make Amer ica into one vast Los Angeles by the end of the century.8 I watched the growth of this my thology with misgivings, for my observations in various new suburbs persuaded me neither that there was much change in people when they moved to the suburbs nor that the change which took place could be traced to the new environment. And if suburban life was as undesirable and unhealthy as the critics charged, the suburbanites themselves were blissfully unaware of it; they were happy in their new homes and communities, much happier than they had been in the city. Some of the observations about suburbia were quite accurate, and the critics represented a wide range of political and cultural viewpoints, so that it is perhaps unfair to lump them all

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together— although I do so as a shorthand in the chapters that follow. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that a basic inaccuracy was being perpetrated by those who give American society its picture of itself, and when I learned that city planners also swallowed the suburban myth and were altering their professional recommendations accordingly, I felt it was time to do a study of the new suburbs. Lacking the grants to do a large comparative study of several communities that was— and still is—needed, and leaning toward participant- observation by my training, I decided the best way to do the research was to live in one such community. That community turned out to be Levittown, New Jersey. THE SETTING

When I fi rst began to think about the study, I learned that Levitt and Sons, Inc., then building Levittown, Pennsylvania, were planning to build yet another new community in the Philadelphia area. The firm was then, as now, the largest builder in the eastern United States, and Levittown was even then a prototype of postwar suburbia.9 Hair raising stories about the homogeneity of people and conformity of life in the first two Levittowns made it clear that if any of the evils described by the critics of suburbia actually existed, they would be found in a Levittown. Moreover, Levitt was building communities and not just subdivisions, which meant that the entire range of local institutions and facilities typically associated with a community would be established de novo; the firm was offering relatively inexpensive houses, which meant that the community would attract both middle and working class people.10 In 1955, Levitt announced that he had purchased almost all of Willingboro Township, New Jersey, a sparsely settled agricultural area seventeen miles from Philadelphia, and that building would begin as soon as Levittown, Pennsylvania, was completed. The newest Levittown was to be a full- fledged community, with at least 12,000 houses, and because Levitt had bought almost the entire township, with its own government as well. Three basic house types, costing from $11,500 to $14,500 would be built on the same street and organized into separate neighborhoods of about 1200 homes, each served by an elementary school, playground, and swimming pool. The complex of ten or twelve neighborhoods would be complemented by a set of community-

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wide facilities, including a large shopping center, some smaller ones, and of course high schools, a library, and parks; and some of these would be provided by the builder. On a sunny Saturday in June 1958, Levittown was officially opened to potential purchasers, and that day my wife and I were among hundreds of others who looked over the houses. Since I wanted to be among the very first residents, we selected the model we liked best, a four-bedroom “Cape Cod,” and made the required down payment of $100. A few weeks later, the first group of about 100 purchasers was asked to come to Levittown to pick a lot, and we chose one in the middle of a short block—to make sure that we would literally be in the middle of things. During the second week of October, we were among the first 25 families who moved into the new community—none of them, I was pleased to discover, coming to study it.11 THE THEORY OF THE STUDY

The study I wanted to do focused around three major but interrelated questions: the origin of a new community, the quality of suburban life, and the effect of suburbia on the behav ior of its residents. Later, I added a fourth question on the quality of politics and decision- making. My first task was to determine the processes which transform a group of strangers into a community, to see if I could identify the essential prerequisites for “community.” But I also wanted to test the critics’ charge that the Levittowns were infl icted on purchasers with little choice of other housing by a profit-minded builder unwilling to provide them with a superior home and community. Consequently, I intended to study how the community was planned: to what extent the plans were shaped by Levitt’s goals and to what extent by the goals of the expected purchasers. For this purpose, I needed also to study the purchasers—why they were moving to Levittown and what aspirations they had for life in the new community. Once they had moved in, I wanted to observe the community formation process from the same perspective: how much specific groups were shaped by their founders, how much by their members, and how much by the group’s function for the larger community. I hoped to know after several years to what extent the emerging community reflected the priorities of builder, founders, and other community

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leaders and to what extent the goals for which people said they had moved to Levittown. These questions were grounded in a set of theoretical issues of relevance to both social science and public policy. Sociologists have long been asking what and who bring about innovation and social change, and what role elite leaders and experts, on the one hand, and the rank-and-file citizenry, on the other, play in this process. As a policy matter, the same question has been raised by the concept of mass society, which implies that many features of American society—whether television programs, Levittowns, or Pentagon policies— are imposed by an intentional or unintentional conspiracy of business and governmental leaders acting on passive or resigned Americans who actually want something entirely dif ferent. This issue is of more than academic interest to makers of community policy, be they politicians or city planners. The city planner is an expert with a conception of the ideal community and good life, which he seeks to translate into reality through his professional activities. If a small number of leaders shape the community, he need only proselytize them effectively to establish his conception. If the residents themselves determine the community, however, he is faced with a more difficult task: persuading them of the desirability of his plans or somehow changing their behav ior to accord with them. The further and normative issue is even more perplexing: whose values should shape the new community, the residents’ or the planner’s?12 The second question of the study sought to test the validity of the suburban critique, whether suburban ways of life were as undesirable as had been claimed. Are people status- seekers, do they engage in a hyperactive social life which they do not really enjoy, do they conform unwillingly to the demands of their neighbors, is the community a dull microcosm of mass society? Are the women bored and lonely matriarchs, and does suburban life produce the malaise and mental illness which the critics predicted? And if not, what dissatisfactions and problems do develop? The third question followed logically from the second: were undesirable changes (and desirable ones too) an effect of the move from city to suburb or of causes unrelated to either the move or suburbia? My previous observations led me to suspect that the changes were less a result of suburban residence than of

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aspirations for individual and family life which encouraged people to move to the suburbs in the first place. Consequently, I wanted to discover whether the changes people reported after coming to Levittown were intended, planned by them before the move, or unintended, encouraged or forced on them afterwards by the community. If unintended changes outweighed intended ones, the community probably had significant effects on its residents. And if so, what sources and agents within the community created them—the physical environment of suburbia, the distance from urban facilities, the social structure and the people who made it, and/or the builder or organizational founder? The theoretical issue about the impact of the community has long been debated within sociology, the ecologists arguing that the local economy and geography shape the behav ior of the community’s residents; the cultural sociologists suggesting that the community and its residents’ behav ior are largely a reflection of regional and national social structures.13 The policy issue is related to the previous one. If there is no change in people’s behav ior when they move to the suburbs, then public policy which alters only the community, such as city planning, may be ineffective. The same is true if changes are mainly intended. If they are mainly unintended, however, and the community has impact on people’s lives, then policy to change the community will also change their lives. And if the sources of change can be traced to the physical environment, the city planner’s concern with altering that environment is justified; if they lie in the social environment, then social planning would be more effective. But if intended changes predominate, public policy would have to affect the aspirations with which people come to the community and the more fundamental sources of these aspirations. Of course, all this assumes that policy change is needed, which requires a prior determination of what is harmful or in need of improvement in suburban life. As part of my study of the quality of life, I had intended to research political life as well, and as part of the inquiry into origins, to fi nd out how much attention elected officials paid to feedback from the voters— whether the body politic was being created by political leaders on their own or in response to resident demands. In the course of my research I became aware of what should have been obvious all along: that the community was also being shaped by the decisions of its governing body, and that I

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needed to study who was making them and how, and to determine what role the planner and other kinds of experts played in the decision- making process. I wanted particularly to fi nd out how much leeway the decision- makers had for unpopular decisions, especially those termed “in the public interest” by experts and planners. Underlying the empirical question was another normative one: whether government should be responsive and democratic, and when it should make unpopular decisions to preserve the public interest as well as the rights of powerless minorities. All four questions ultimately boil down to a single one about the process of change and the possibility of innovation in a social system. They all ask how change can be brought about, whether the major initiators are the leaders or the led, and what role the planner or any other expert policy-maker can play. And they also ask, normatively speaking, what changes are desirable, particularly when they conflict with the actions or wishes of the majority of residents. These questions are, of course, relevant to any community, but they are raised more easily in a new community, where all social and political processes can be traced from their very beginning. I should note that when I began my research, I had not formulated the questions as clearly or compactly as they are here written, and I had no intention of limiting myself only to them. One of the major pleasures of participant- observation is to come upon unexpected new topics of study, and these are reflected in the occasional tangential analyses that occur throughout the book. THE METHODS OF THE STUDY

The main source of data was to be participant- observation. By living in the community for the first two years, I planned to observe the development of neighbor relations and social life and to be on hand when organizations and institutions were being set up. In addition to observing at public meetings, I would also be able to interview founders and members, and once having gotten to know them, follow their groups as they went through their birth pains. Meanwhile I would do much the same with churches, governmental public bodies, and political parties; I would talk to doctors, lawyers, local reporters, and the Levitt executives, as well. Eventually I would get to know all the impor tant people and

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a sizeable sample of other residents, and interview them from time to time as the community building process unfolded. The nature of everyday life I would discover principally on my own street, where I could observe my neighbors and myself in our roles as homeowners and block residents. These plans came to fruition, and I spent most of my days making the rounds of the community to find out what was happening, much like a reporter. For a year after organizations first sprang up, I went to at least one meeting every week night. Although observation would also provide some data on the community’s effects on people, and on their feelings about Levittown and their problems, it would not allow me to contact a large and random enough sample. Consequently, I planned to interview such a sample shortly before moving in, to fi nd out what aspirations they were bringing to the community, and again two years later, to determine what intended and unintended changes had occurred in their lives. The shortage of funds made the sample smaller than I had wished, but forty- fi ve respondents were interviewed twice, mainly by gradu ate students from the University of Pennsylvania. As the sample included too few former city dwellers for even a rudimentary statistical analy sis, fi fty- fi ve ex- Philadelphians were interviewed as well, but only once. And being unable to persuade the builder to give me the names of purchasers before they moved in, I had to schedule the initial interview with the fi rst sample shortly after they arrived.14 The builder did, however, send out a prearrival mail questionnaire for me, which ultimately went to 3100 purchasers (a record- breaking two thirds of whom fi lled it out), and provided much of the data on the Levittowners, their moving reasons, and aspirations reported in Chapter Two.15 Whenever I report statistical fi ndings about people’s behav ior, the data come from the mail questionnaire (particularly in Chapter Two), and from the interviews (particularly in Part Two). Further details about the questions themselves and about the limitations of the mail questionnaire, interview, and participant- observation fi ndings will be found in appropriate places in the text and in the Appendix. My previous participant- observation research had convinced me that my role in Levittown would be more an observer’s than a participant’s. Participating is undoubtedly the best way to discover what is really going on, but becoming a participant in one

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group automatically excludes the researcher from learning anything about what is going on in competing or opposing ones. Consequently, I decided I would participate only in the life of my own block and as a member of the public at meetings, but that other wise my role would be that of an observer and informal interviewer. As soon as I moved in, I told people I was on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and that I would do a study of the community formation process in Levittown. Having learned from previous experience that it is difficult to explain sociology meaningfully to people, I usually described my research as a historical study. I did not go into detail about it—I was rarely asked to— and I did not tell people on my block that I was keeping notes on their (and my) activities as homeowners and neighbors. To have done so would have made life unpleasant for them and for me. I disclaimed association with the mail questionnaire or the interviews on behav ior change, fearing (probably unnecessarily) that I might be rejected as a participant- observer. Finally I did not tell people I had moved to Levittown in order to do the study. Actually, it would not have occurred to them that I was not simply interested in a good low- priced house and the chance to enjoy suburban living. Aside from these deceptions, being a participant- observer was almost always enjoyable and often exciting. I liked most of the people I met and had no trouble in getting information from them. Identifying myself as a researcher did not inhibit them from talking, but then I asked few personal questions; being as curious as I about the evolution of a new community, they were willing and often eager to have me sit in at meetings or interview them. After a while, I became a fi xture in the community; people forgot I was there and went on with their business, even at private political gatherings. I was always welcomed at public meetings, especially when citizen attendance was low. Needing an audience, public officials were glad to forget I was there as a researcher. Indeed, I was once publicly praised for my steady attendance. Most people enjoy being studied; it means they are important and it flatters them. Since I was always collecting information but never published anything, however, people could not check on me as they can on a reporter, and some of the politicians became suspicious of what I would eventually write. “ Will it be like

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Peyton  Place? ” a couple of them once asked jokingly. I wisecracked back that I would be glad to include similar material on local incest if they could provide the data, but realizing that their jokes hid some concern about my publishing political and other community intrigues, I made it clear that I would not use names in the book. I tried not to act like a formal researcher and rarely took notes during the thousands of informal conversational interviews. Instead I memorized the answers, made quick notes as soon as I could, and later wrote the whole interview in my field diary. (Although a famous novelist has recently garnered considerable publicity for memorizing his interviews, this has long been standard practice for many sociologists.) Social occasions were a fruitful source of data about community attitudes, but I was always careful not to ask too many questions or questions inappropriate to the neighborly role. I recall feeling frustrated about this at one social gathering, only to hear a neighbor ask exactly the questions I felt I could not ask. This made me wonder about the similarity between sociology and gossip, but then she was the block’s nosy neighbor. Actually, in life on the block I often acted spontaneously as a neighbor, and only after I got home would I become the researcher again, writing down my and my neighbors’ conversations and activities. The main problem in being a participant- observer is not to get people to give information, but to live with the role day after day. As a researcher, I could not afford to alienate any present or potential sources, or become identified with any single group or clique in the community. Consequently, I had to be neutral, not offering opinions on controversial local issues or on national politics if they were too dif ferent from prevailing opinions—as they often were. Even in social situations, I could never be quite myself, and I had to be careful not to take a dominant role. The life of the party makes a poor participant- observer, but being shy anyway, I did not have to pretend. I also had to restrain the normal temptation to avoid people I did not like, for had I given in, my sample would have been biased and my conclusions inaccurate. The participant- observer must talk to a fairly representative cross section of the population. I had to be sure not to act like a professor, for fear of losing access to people who feel threatened by academic degrees or by their own lack of education. This was not too difficult, for I am not entirely comfortable

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in a professional role anyway. And having enough interest in small talk about sports, sex, automobiles, weather, and other staples of male conversation, I had no difficulty in participating in the regular evening and Saturday morning bull sessions on the front lawn. Relaxed conversation with women was more difficult, except in a group of couples, and observing women’s meetings was out of the question. Perhaps they would have let me in, but we would all have been uncomfortable. However, women enjoyed being interviewed—they liked having their housework interrupted— and I could always go to see anyone I wished to fi nd out what happened at their meetings. A participant- observer is much like a politician, for he must always watch his words and his behav ior, think about the next question to ask, and plan strategy for studying a prospective event. There was anxiety too, about figuring out what to study and what not to study, and particularly about the possibility of missing something impor tant that could not be retrieved in the rapid flow of events. I also felt guilty sometimes about not telling people why I was asking questions and about the deceptions that inevitably accompany the research role, but I felt secure in the knowledge that none of the information so gathered would ever be used against anyone. Yet even the strain of playing a role that inhibits one’s personality is more than matched by the excitement of doing research, watching society from close up, seeing the textbook social processes in operation, and constantly getting ideas about social theory from what people say and do. There was enjoyment in meeting many hundreds of people, and above all, in being in the middle of and in on things. Often, I felt I was watching dozens of continuing serials, some pitting heroes against villains, others with temporary cliff- hanger endings, but all of them stimulating my curiosity as to how they would come out. And before one serial was over, several others were sure to have begun. This is why I could never answer properly when city people asked me whether I really enjoyed living in Levittown. I did enjoy it, but as a researcher, I was not a normal resident. Had I been one, I would have enjoyed the many opportunities for community activity which came my way (partly because of my training in city planning)— all of which I had to turn down as a researcher— but sometimes I found the community personally unsatisfying because of the shortage of people and facilities to meet my own

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intellectual and cultural needs. Even so, I would not judge Levittown, or any community, negatively simply because it could not fully satisfy my personal needs. Studying the quality of life implies evaluation, and this means personal value judgments. I was guided by at least three. First and foremost, my evaluation reflects the standards of the residents themselves, for I begin with the judgment that, more often than not, they are the best authority of the quality of their own life. In a pluralistic society, there is no single standard for the good life, and in a democratic one, people have the right to set their own. For example, if Levittowners report that they find their community satisfying, as they do, their opinion ought to be respected. Although the suburban critics insist that these satisfactions are spurious and self- deceptive, they offer no valid evidence, so that their charge only indicates their differing standards for the good life. Of course, if the Levittowners’ statements include latent suggestions of dissatisfaction, something is clearly wrong. Implicit in this value judgment is a second which goes beyond the dictates of pluralism and democracy. Specifically, I believe that there are an infinite number of ways of living well and of coping with problems, all of them valid unless they hurt the people practicing them or others. Our society generates too much social criticism consisting essentially of complaints that people are not behaving as the critics would like or themselves behave. Without proof that certain behav ior is pathological for individual or society, such criticism can be rejected for what it is, an objection to diversity and pluralism. But it would be foolhardy to base an evaluation solely on what people say, for if sociology has discovered anything, it is that often people do not know all they are doing or what is happening to them. The observer always sees more than anyone else, if only because that is his job, but if he evaluates what he alone sees, he must still do so by the standards of the people whom he is observing. Of course, here and there I make personal judgments which do not practice what I have just preached and which reject one or another of the Levittowners’ standards. At the conscious level, I have limited myself to those judgments which I consider of higher importance than the Levittowners’ standards—including the practice of democracy— but unconscious judgments surely creep in too. One cannot live intimately with a community for several years without making them, and I only regret not being aware of those that might bias the study unduly.

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In later chapters, I also make a number of recommendations. Most are not spectacular, for although I can be as radical as anyone else, I feel that proposals which run totally counter to the standards of the people who are asked to implement them and which have little chance of implementation in the foreseeable future are utopian in the negative sense. Being radical can sometimes be a conformist ploy to maintain one’s social standing and self- image in radical circles. Most of the proposals relate to Levittown as it existed during the time of my fieldwork, and should not be taken as recommendations for today, unless a restudy indicates (as it probably would) that the community has not changed significantly since the beginning of the decade. Finally, I have tried to keep analy sis and evaluation separate, because I believe that the former is more than a rationalization or elaboration of my value judgments; most of my findings would have been reached by another social scientist starting from different value judgments. Obviously, the analy sis is objective only in relation to the methods and concepts I have used and to the judgments which determined them, but in that sense, I believe it is objective. The book tells, then, what I learned during the two years I lived in Levittown (October 1958– September 1960), in the year I did additional fieldwork without living there (September 1960– June 1961), and in the years covered by the effects interviews (1960– 1962). Wherever possible, I have used newspaper articles and data from Levittown infor mants to report important events that have occurred since then.

NOTES 1. The articles appeared originally in Fortune in 1953, and in Whyte (1956), Part III. For full citation of works referred to in the notes by author’s name only, see References, pages  452–462. Where several works by the same author are cited, the note reference is followed by the appropriate publication date. 2. Among the principal contributors to the popular image of suburbia were a 1950 novel by Charles Mergendahl, It’s Only Temporary (perhaps the first of the flood of fiction and nonfiction about the suburbs) and Henderson, Allen, Burton, Spectorsky, Keats, and more recently, Wyden. A Sunday supplement, Suburbia Today, was filled with articles about suburbia, pro and con. 3. There were dramatic novels, mostly about upper middle class

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suburbs, like Otis Carney’s How the Bough Breaks; melodramatic ones like John McPartland’s No Down Payment, later made into a movie; and humorous ones like Mergendahl’s; plays, for example, Man in the Dog Suit; and even an opera, Leonard Bern stein’s Trouble in Tahiti. Levittown was often the site, by implication in Mergendahl’s book, and explic itly in a half- hour televi sion comedy series, (never produced) called The Man Who Came to Levittown. While most of today’s televi sion situation comedies are set in the suburbs, they are not so identified and do not deal with problems they describe as suburban. 4. Berger (1960), Chap. 1. For other analyses of the popular image of suburbia, see Strauss, Chaps. 10 and 11; Dobriner (1963), Chap. 1; Riesman (1964); and Berger (1966). 5. On mental illness see James, and a full- length study which became a best- seller, by Gordon, Gordon, and Gunther. The myth of suburban adultery, which can probably be traced to century- old novels about upper and upper middle class unfaithfulness, has spawned a flood of strenuously erotic paperbacks which still keep coming, although the output of other suburban liter ature has now abated. See e.g., John Conway’s Love in Suburbia, subtitled “They Spiced Their Lives with Other Men’s Wives,” or Dean McCoy’s The Development, advertised as “a biting novel which strips bare the fl imsy façade of decency concealing unbridled sensual desires of Amer ica’s sprawling Suburbia.” 6. Keats (1957), p. 7. 7. Although most sociologists doubted the myth, some accepted parts of it, e.g., Gruenberg, Duhl, Riesman (1957), and Stein, Chaps. 9 and 12. Interestingly enough, “serious” novelists have not written about suburbia. George Elliott’s Parktilden Village and Bruce Jay Friedman’s Stern are set in suburban housing projects and reflect the suburban myth, but deal even less with representative and recognizable suburbanites than the popular novelists. 8. For example, Mumford, Chap. 16; Blake; and Gruen, Chap. 5. 9. Actually, most of the suburban building had taken the form of subdivisions on the fringe of established communities rather than new communities, so that Levittown was in many ways aty pical. It was a prototype largely because it had become the symbol of modern suburbia among the critics, journalists, novelists, and moviemakers concerned with the subject. 10. My study was formulated in the affluent society of the mid-1950s and I was then especially interested in whether (and how) working class people were acculturating to middle class life styles. If the move from city to suburb created major changes in people’s lives, I thought they would be most apparent among working class people moving to a middle class suburb and could best be studied there, provided one could distinguish between changes resulting from social mobility and changes resulting from the move. There were too few working class Levittowners to limit my research to

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them, but some years later, Berger (1960) studied a working class suburb, covering many of the topics in which I was interested. 11. Later, I would have welcomed sharing my task with other participant- observers, but at that time, I was unsure about people’s feelings toward a resident researcher and thought that more than one sociologist in the community would make the research too visible. I was wrong, because the community was large enough and the neighborhoods separate enough, and because after a while the researcher became part of the daily scene and faded into invisibility. 12. This question was also evoked by a study I had just participated in: on the issue of whether municipal ser vices ought to be planned according to the priorities of those who supplied them (the professional educators, recreationists, public health officials, and social workers), or of those who used them (their “clients”). My own research, which dealt with public recreation, concluded that parks and playgrounds ought to be planned for their users, and undoubtedly left an a priori bias in studying the larger issue in Levittown. 13. See, e.g., Duncan and Schnore. 14. The builder was my only source of purchasers’ names, but he had a policy of not giving them out to discourage milk salesmen and other merchants from bothering people before they moved in. The firm also had little interest in research, and some officials feared that several purchasers might change their minds about buying if I interviewed them about it. Consequently, I had to ask people to recall the aspirations with which they came, but they mentioned the same ones which appeared in the mail questionnaire that was filled out before arrival in Levittown. 15. The questionnaire was on University of Pennsylvania stationery, and answered ones were to be returned to the campus, thus alleviating any suspicion that it was a Levitt research project.

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THE ORIGIN OF A COMMUNITY

The Levittowners—and Why They Came

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other way, for 80 per cent of the purchasers, the house was the major reason for coming. This would justify Levitt’s emphasis on providing “the best house for the money.” One could even argue that from a market point of view, the firm’s site planning and other community innovations were not necessary, at least to attract the original set of purchasers. That people did not move because of the availability of schools suggests not that they were uninterested in schools, however, but only that they knew schools were being provided and were not particularly concerned about the quality of the education their children would be receiving. House-related reasons for moving and aspirations may have been higher in Levittown than elsewhere because the Levitt houses were thought to be such an unusual value. Even so, the data permit one to suggest that any plan for a new community which does not make sure that the house is as good as any other in the market area is bound to run into difficulty, particularly if novel and as yet unaccepted ideas on community planning are tried out. In the last analy sis, most people spend most of their time in the house and the community is of secondary importance. The data also suggest that the evolution of a new community may not be affected by the aspirations with which people move into it. Being most concerned with individual and family goals, they will leave the development of the community to others, reserving for themselves only the veto power over their actions. What actually happened when the purchasers moved in will be told in the next five chapters.

NOTES 1. Unless other wise indicated, these data are from a mail questionnaire returned by two thirds of the first 3000 home buyers. Generally speaking, older, poorer, and poorly educated buyers were less likely to answer, and although this was corrected for in the analysis, the findings still underemphasize that portion of the population. The method by which the questionnaires were sampled and analyzed is described in the Appendix. 2. They were also quite like the residents of the earlier Levittowns. For the population characteristics of Levittown, New York, shortly after the purchasers’ arrival, see Liell (1952); for today, see Dobriner (1963), Chap. 4. An early demographic analysis of Levittown,

Actual government, 308, 317, 339; reporters and, 323, 324, 326; see also Performing government Adolescents, 206–12; boredom of, 206; attitudes toward Levittown, 206; sex and, 207, 209, 210, 211; adults and, 207; site planning and, 207; schools and, 208; adults’ attitudes toward, 208–9; attitudes toward city living, 273; master plan and, 388; see also Juvenile delinquency Agents of change, 284–5; Levitt & Sons as, 285; population mix as, 285–6; aspirations as, 286 Altruistic democracy, 307; sources of, 357 American culture: and Levittown, 186–7, 196, 417; as source and agent of change, 289; and suburban move, 410; changes in, 418– 20; see also National society Architectural homogeneity, attitudes toward, 282 Architectural styles, attitude toward, 270–1 Architecture, sense of community and, 146 Art, attitudes toward, 203 Aspirations, 37–41; family life and, 38; social life and, 38–40; community participation, 40; houserelated, 40–1; community-related, 41; community origin and, 138, 141; as agents of change, 286; ■

planning for change in, 291; planner’s values and, 291–2, 295 Autonomy: conformity and, 180; national planning and, 400 Bedroom community: class structure, 133; power structure, 135; sense of community in, 145 Behav ior change, 275, 409; intended, xxxiv, 252–3; unintended, xxxiv, 253, 254; planning and, 252, 290; sources of, 252, 277; agents of, 252; newness as source of, 254; house as source of, 254; population-mix impact on, 275 Bias: in mail questionnaire study, 436; in interview study, 438; in participant-observation, 444, 446; of findings, 449 Block: homogeneity and, 172; social control and, 177; see also Propinquity, Sub- block Block culture, 144, 150, 161, 173; origin of, 47–8; lawn care and, 48, 177; social life and, 48–9; evolution of, 51; conformity and, 176 Boredom, 228–9; of adolescents, 206; amount of, 228; reasons for, 228–9; changes in, 229; loneliness and, 230; class and, 248, impact of houses on, 255; sources of change in, 255; community impact on, 255, 258; leisure and, 269 Bureaucracy, 418

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Catholics: schools and, 90, 98, 101; and politics, 105, 112, 120, 125, 133–5; church attendance, 264 Caucus, 308–9; school board and, 313; functions of, 317; political communication and, 318 Child-rearing: quarreling and, 159; class and, 25, 26, 27, 30, 160 Church attendance: 69, 71–2, 82; changes in, 264, sources of change in, 264–5; Jews, 261; Protestants, 264; Catholics, 264; community impact on, 265; houses’ impact on, 265 Churches: origin, 68; major, 68–9, 70–1; minor, 68–9, 71; planning of, 69, 80; Protestant, 69–70; architecture, 70; ministers, 70–1; fundamentalist, 72; external, 72, 80; Catholic, 72; definitional struggle, 73; unplanned, 80; origin of, compared with synagogues, 81; number, 82; social life and, 83; class and, 83–4; community and, 84; ethnic groups and, 85; role in racial integration, 376, 381; see also Synagogues City: moving from, 37; future of, 421, 424; problems of, 424–5; racial problems of, 426 City living: attitudes toward, 271– 2, 300; images of, 272–3; adolescents’ attitudes toward, 273; compared to suburban living, 288; Jews and, 302 City manager government: establishment, 109; attitudes toward, 109–10 City planning, see Master plan, Planning City sample, xxxvi, 153, 437 Class, 24; organizational origin and, 59; sorting groups and, 61; voluntary associations and, 61; community structure and, 64–5; churches and, 83–4; school planning and, 88, 99–100, 102; political parties and, 112–13, 115, 129; neighboring and, 131, 155, 161– 2; leaders and, 132; taxes and, 133–4; power structure and, 135; community origins and, 142;

Index houses and, 150; child-rearing and, 160; visiting and, 163; homogeneity of, 165, 166, 167; heterogeneity of, 170; competition and, 175, 179; conformity and, 175, 179; attitudes toward, 179; mass media and, 190; morale and, 226; journey to work and, 246–7; boredom and, 248; political par ty preferences and, 266; mixed house types and, 302; expert and, 367; racial integration and, 382 Class conflict, 133, 413, 419–20; definitional struggle and, 57–8, 125, 127; schools and, 92–3; taxes and, 97–8; politics and, 106–7; municipal ser vices and, 117; public recreation and, 120; neighboring and, 160; racial integration and, 373–4; pluralism and, 414–15; decision-making and, 415; metropolitan government and, 422 Class structure, 102, 131; cosmopolitans and, 132; religious conflict and, 133 Class subculture, 24–5 Coffee-klatsches, 48, 50, 155 Community, xxxi–xxxii, 6, 143, 145; churches and, 84; attitudes toward, 144, 200, 271; sense of, 144, 145–6; evaluation of, 412–13 Community, social: impact of, 283 Community change, planned, 290 Community impact, 276, 409; theory of, xxxiii; policy implications, xxxiii; on boredom, 255; on family life, 259–60; on neighboring, 261; on organizational participation, 263; on church attendance, 264–5; on leisure time, 267; on leisure activity, 268; questioned, 289; see also Behav ior change Community name change, 108, 115, 144–5, 347–8 Community origin, 124–31, 408–11; theory of, xxxii–xxxiii; policy implications of, xxxiii; processes of, 44; external process of, 53; unintended process of, 54; chronology, 59, 127–8; decisions in, 135– 7; aspirations and, 138, 141; class and, 142; prerequisites for, 142;

Index homogeneity and, 142; heterogeneity and, 142; see also Organizational origin Community spirit, 145 Community structure, 130–1; religion and, 64; class and, 64–5; politics and, 65–6 Competition, 174; attitude toward, 175; class and, 175, 179; social mobility and, 176; neighbor relations and, 176; heterogeneity and, 178–9 Conflict: as community problem, 413; see also Class conflict, Definitional struggle Conformity, 154, 174, 178; class and, 175, 179; block culture and, 176; heterogeneity and, 178–9; autonomy and, 180 Conservation, 423 Consumption: attitudes toward, 189; mass media and, 191–2; changes in style of, 269 Cosmopolitans, 19, 64, 167–8, 240; in school planning, 92, 100; educational goals, 93; in politics, 123, 346; in definitional struggle, 125–6; attitudes toward, 129–30; class structure and, 132; suburban critique and, 179; Levitt & Sons and, 335–6; values of, 346, 349; as interveners, 346–9; class conflict and, 349; hostility toward, 349; planning and, 394, 397; and participant- observer, 445 Counseling: pastoral, 243–4; agencies, 244 Counterperformance, 310; as intervention strategy, 342 Creativity, and lower middle class culture, 203 Data analysis, 448–50 Decision-makers, 333; relationship to citizens, 335, 336; recommendations on, 355–65; homogeneity and, 355–6; see also Politicians Decision-making, 333, 353; theory of, xxxiii; politics and, 307, 368; criteria for, 333–4, 336; performing government and, 333–4; kinds

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467

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of, 334–5; Levitt & Sons’ role in, 335; responsiveness of, 336–7; minority interests and, 338; performance and, 353; recommendations on, 355–65; political and nonpolitical, 368–71; nonpolitical as planning, 368, 385, 395; as rational, 371; class conflict and, 415; see also Politics Definitional struggle, 57–60, 125; class conflict and, 57–8, 125, 127; churches and, 73; synagogues and, 73, 74–5, 81; schools and, 90–2, 97; taxes and, 97; cosmopolitans and, 125–6 Democracy: homogeneity and, 171; mass society and, 185, 193; voluntary associations and, 193; attitudes toward, 308, 357; political participation and, 308, 315, 357– 8; performing government and, 311–12; per for mances and, 314; morality and, 357; pluralism and, 358; schools and, 359; planning and, 396–7, 403; public interest and, 399; minority interests and, 400 Density, impact of, 282 Depression, post- occupancy, 250 Deviant behav ior, 175, 177 Dullness of community, 200, 206 Elections, 108, 111, 116, 319; press’s role in, 320; per formance in, 321; political communication and, 321 Emotional disturbance, see Mental illness Ethnic groups: churches and, 85; neighboring and, 162 Expert: as intervener, 351; attitudes toward, 351–2; intervention strategies of, 352; class and, 367; role in racial integration, 375–6, 378, 381, 405; role of, 411 Extended family: homogeneity and, 168; loneliness and, 233; separation from, 260 Family life, 221; aspirations for, 38; origin of clubs and, 50; change in time spent together and, 221;

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Family life (continued ) journey to work and, 222; changes in joint activity and, 223; sources of change in, 259; impact of houses on, 259; community impact on, 259–60 Family size, 22, 260–1 Family structure: housing design and, 12–13, 207–8; working class, 25–6; lower middle class, 27–8; upper middle class, 30 Feedback, see Political communication Fire company: establishment, 116– 20; class conflict and, 119 Flight to suburbs, 37 Founders, types of, 54–5, 58, 138 Friendship, 162; propinquity and, 182; see also Visiting Ghetto rebuilding, 428 Government, 305; origins, 104–5; relationship to citizens, 306, 308; press and, 322–3; attitude toward, 415–16; pluralism and, 416; see also Politics; Decision-making Happiness, see Morale Health, changes in, 227, 235 Heterogeneity, 170; aspirations for, 38; community origin and, 142; neighboring and, 161; class and, 170; site planning and, 173; neighborhood planning and, 173; taxes and, 173; competition and, 178–9; conformity and, 178–9; political consequences of, 307; planning for, 432 Home ownership: impact of, 227– 8; desire for, 286; mass media and, 286; upward mobility and, 286– 7; government housing policies and, 287 Homogeneity, 154; aspirations for, 38; community origin and, 142; suburban critique and, 165; of age, 165, 167; of class, 165, 166, 167; of ethnic background, 166; of religious preference, 166; attitude toward, 167; compatibility and, 168; extended family and,

Index 168; pluralism and, 169; racial integration and, 169, 173–4; democracy and, 171; block and, 172; decision-makers and, 355–6 Houses, xxxi, 6–7; class and, 150; turnover, 196; as source of change, 254; impact on boredom, 255; impact on problems, 259; impact on family life, 259; impact on martial happiness, 260; impact on church attendance, 265; impact on leisure time, 267; impact on leisure activity, 268– 9; impact of, 277 House types: mixing of, 8, 136–7, 302; preferences for, 42; impact of, 281 Housing design, 10–11; family structure and, 12–13, 207–8 Hyperactivity, 64, 67, 138, 164 Informal clubs, 49 Innovation: theory of, xxxv; attitude toward, 147; by individual intervener, 351; potentialities of, 411; limitations of, 411; pluralism and, 412 Intermarriage, 163, 183; visiting and, 262 Interveners: types of, 345–6; cosmopolitans as, 346–7; individual, 351; expert as, 351 Intervention, 339–40; strategies of, 340; leadership as strategy of, 341, 350–1; counterper formance as strategy of, 342; political participation as strategy of, 343–4; effectiveness of, 344; cosmopolitans’ effectiveness in, 347, 349– 50; styles of cosmopolitans’, 348; recommendations on, 364 Interviews, informal, 440 Interview study, xxxvi, 153, 437–9; sampling in, 437; bias in, 438 Jews, 31, 55, 73–80, 182; origin of subcommunity, 49; religious conflicts, 74; attitude toward tradition, 75; church attendance, 76, 78, 264; social life, 77; orga nizational structure, 77; definitional

Index struggle, 81; city living and, 302; as voting bloc, 365 Journey to work, 37, 246; length of, 221; changes in, 221; attitudes toward, 222, 246; impact of, 222, 279; class and, 247; leisure time and, 267–8 Juvenile delinquency, 91, 120, 211; prevention of, 213; police and, 214; decision-making for, 370 Kindergarten issue, 92–3, 369 Lawn care: block culture and, 48, 177; leisure time and, 268 Leaders: class and, 132; types of, 139; see also Founders; Power structure Leadership, as intervention strategy, 341, 350–1 Leisure activity: change in, 267–8; sources of change in, 268; leisure time and, 268; community impact on, 268–9; houses’ impact on, 269; boredom and, 270 Leisure time: changes in, 267; sources of change in, 267; houses’ impact on, 267; community impact on, 267; journey to work and, 267; lawn care and, 268; leisure activity and, 268 Levitt & Sons: building methods, 4; planning by, 5–6, 8, 135–6; decision-making, 7; marketing strategy, 9, 11, 12–14; advertising Levittown, 9–10; values, 11; political activities, 18, 106, 335; churches and, 68; schools and, 97; political parties and, 112, 114; power structure and, 134, 354–5; as agents of change, 285; cosmopolitans and, 335–6; and master plan, 344; and racial integration, 372–3, 380; planner and, 393–4; sales by, 406; planning and, 431 Levittown, N.Y., 3–4, 20, 41, 42, 101, 102, 103, 183, 184, 217 Levittown, Penn., 3, 4, 6, 20, 32, 41, 80, 106, 108, 230, 244, 248, 296, 371, 375, 376, 378, 382, 383 Library, 116–18

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Liquor issue, 107–8, 368 Localism, and national society, 188 Locals, 19 Loneliness, 230–1; amount of, 230, 258–9; boredom and, 230; social, 230; familial, 231; chronic, 231; reasons for, 231–2; in previous residence, 232; changes in, 232, 258; extended family and, 233; chronic, 243; population-mix impact on, 258; sources of, 258 Lower middle class subculture, 27– 9; family structure, 27–8; educational values, 28; community participation, 28–9; restrictive subgroup, 29; expansive subgroup, 29; blandness of, 201–2; world view of, 203; creativity and, 203; political participation and, 204 Low status, 43 Mail questionnaire study, xxxvi, 41; methods, 435–7; bias in, 436; sampling for, 436 Marital conflict, 225, 234–7, 243 Marital happiness: changes in, 223; sources of change in, 260 Mass media, 420; suburban critique and, xxix, xxxviii; use of, 190; class and, 190–1; attitudes toward, 191; consumption and, 191–2; impact of, 192; changes in use of, 269; as sources of home- ownership desire, 286 Mass society, 185, 193, 417, 418; democracy and, 185, 193; voluntary associations and, 193 Master plan, 15–16, 386; Levitt & Sons and, 344; evaluated, 386–7, 392; goals of, 387; and recreation, 388; adolescents and, 388; and schools, 388–9; and taxes, 390; site planning in, 391 Matriarchy, 224 Mental illness, 236–9; transience and, 199; amount of, 236; changes in, 236–7; suburban life and, 237–8; new towns and, 238, 240, 250; social isolation and, 239 Metropolitan government, 400, 422; and class conflict, 422

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Minority groups, 49; organizational origin and, 59–60; and decisionmaking, 338 Minority interests, 338, 397; rights of, 294; recommendations for, 361, 400–1; planning for, 398, 401, 430; democracy and, 400 Mobiles, 34–6; characteristics of, 36; change in proportion of, 271 Morale: changes in, 226; class and, 226; sources of change in, 255; population-mix impact on, 258 Moving, reasons for, 32–4; houserelated, 32–4, 40–1; communityrelated, 34, 41; and race, 37 Municipal ser vices, and class conflict, 117 National organizations, 137, 138; attitudes toward, 188, 189 National planning, 402; and local autonomy, 400 National society: and Levittown, 187; attitudes toward, 188, 194; localism and, 188; impact of, 189, 195, 417–18; see also American culture Negroes: number in Levittown, 379; social integration of, 379; status of, 383; see also Racial integration Neighborhood, impact of, 155–6, 280 Neighborhood planning: by Levitt & Sons, 4; and heterogeneity, 173 Neighboring, 45–8, 181; changes in, 51, 155; quarrels and, 52, 159; class and, 131, 155, 161–2; propinquity and, 155–6, 181; compatibility and, 155; site planning and, 156; class conflict and, 160; heterogeneity and, 161; ethnic background and, 162; sex as barrier to, 162; competition and, 176; sources of change in, 261; population-mix impact on, 261; community-newness impact on, 262; racial integration and, 405 Neighbors, heterogeneity of, 166 Newness: as source of change, 254; impact of, 262, 284; racial integration and, 383 “New town,” 409, 422, 431; Levit-

Index town as, 146–7, 149; innovation in, 147; planning of, 148; mental illness in, 238, 240, 250 Nonresident doctor issue, 106, 312– 13, 369 Open space, 399; and suburbanization, 423; and Puritanism, 424 Organizational origin, 58–9; class and, 59; minority groups and, 59–60; aspirations and, 60–3 Organizational participation: 26–7, 28, 30–1, 63–4; aspiration for, 40; changes in, 262; amount of, 262– 3; class and, 263; types of, 263; sources of change in, 263; community impact on, 263 Organization men, 205, 417 Organization women, 205 Other- direction, 417 Participant- observation, 218, 439– 48; problems of, 441; kinds of, 439; roles in, 440; role conflict and, 442; strategies of, 443; bias in, 444, 446; sampling in, 447; politics and, 447 Participant- observer: as person, 443–4; values of, 444; cosmopolitans and, 445 Per formance, 308, 330; democratic values and, 314; political deals and, 314; by national politicians, 314–15; political participation and, 315; in elections, 321; press and, 327–8; decision-making and, 353 Per for mance break, 310, 312, 314– 15, 443 Performing government, 308, 311; democracy and, 311–12; political participation and, 312; reporters and, 323; decision-making and, 333 Physical isolation, 226, 241, 278 Planner: strategies of, 289–92; and policy-maker, 301; as elected official, 361; and Levitt & Sons, 393–4; future role of, 432 Planning: by Levitt & Sons, 5–6,

Index 8, 135–6, 431; of churches, 80; for behavior change, 252, 290; for community change, 290; strategies of change, questioned, 290– 1, 292; desirability of planning for change, 293; recommendations for goals, 294, 397; longrange, 334, 399; attitudes toward, 344, 385–6, 394; as intervention strategy, 364–5; as nonpolitical decision-making, 368, 385, 395; for racial integration, 375–6, 381, 384, 395; cosmopolitans and, 394, 397; criteria for effectiveness, 395–6; and politics, 396; democracy and, 396–7, 403; for minority interests, 398, 401; federal role in, 402; and pluralism, 403; for recreation, 423; for future suburbs, 429; for population mix, 432; for heterogeneity, 432; see also Master plan Planning consultant: values, 15, 386; relationship to community, 16, 393; role of, 385; evaluation of role, 394; see also Master plan Pluralism, 359; homogeneity and, 169; democracy and, 358; public interest and, 399; and national planning, 402–3; innovation and, 412; politics and, 414; as community problem, 414; class conflict and, 414–15; government and, 416 Policy-making, see Planning Political communication, 306, 315; types of, 316; caucus and, 317–18; elections and, 321; press and, 322–3; informal systems of, 329– 30; recommendations for, 355–65 Political participation, 26–7, 28, 30– 1, 97–8, 105–6, 195–6, 266, 306–7, 310; lower middle class culture and, 204; democracy and, 308, 357–8; performing government and, 312; performances and, 315; press and, 326, 329; as intervention strategy, 343–4; of cosmopolitans, 346; recommendations for, 355–66; see also Intervention Political parties, 105, 111–16; schools and, 94, 97; origin, 104–5, 128; religion and, 112; Levitt & Sons

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and, 112, 114; class and, 112–13, 115, 129; taxes and, 113–14; politicians and, 310; functions of, 318–19; responsiveness and, 338 Political party preferences: changes in, 266; sources of change in, 266; class and, 266; religion and, 266 Politicians, 18, 109–16, 119, 128, 306, 316; attitude toward, 129; responsiveness, 140; amateur, 306; political parties and, 310; professionals compared to amateurs, 313–14, 362–3; criteria for selection of, 319; role in racial integration, 376, 381; see also Decisionmakers Politics, 107–8, 305, 410–11; community structure and, 65–6; origin, 104–5; class confl ict and, 106–7; cosmopolitans and, 123; decision-making and, 307; press and, 322–3; planning and, 396; plural ism and, 414; and participant- observation, 417 Population: size, 22; age, 22; family size, 22; income distribution, 22; occupational distribution, 22–3; educational level, 23; class background, 23; religious preferences, 23; ethnic origins, 23–4; previous residence, 31–2; residential mobility, 32; housing expenditures, 34 Population mix, 411; impact on morale, 258; impact on boredom, 258; impact on loneliness, 258; impact on neighboring, 261; impact on behav ior change, 275; impact of, 283; social structure and, 283–4; as agent of change, 285–6; planning for, 432 Power structure, 134, 354; Levitt & Sons and, 134, 354–5; religion and, 134; class and, 135 Press, 332; role in community origin, 49, 57; role in elections, 320; government and, 322–3; political communication and, 322–3; political participation and, 326, 329; per for mances and, 327–8; rumors and, 329, 360; role in decision-making, 358–9; recommendations on, 360–1; role in racial integration, 376; see also Reporters

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472

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Problems, 234–5; financial, 234–5, 279; with children, 235; changes in, 235–6; sources of change in, 259; impact of houses on, 259 Propinquity: neighboring and, 155–6, 181; friendship and, 181–2; children and, 182; impact of, 281 Protestants: and politics, 105, 112, 120, 129, 133, 424; church attendance of, 264 Psychotherapy, 243 Public interest: determination of, 397–8; pluralism and, 399; democracy and, 399 Public recreation, 120, 214; class conflict and, 120; religious conflict and, 121; schools and, 122; planning for, 388, 423 Quarreling: neighboring and, 52, 159; child-rearing and, 159; class and, 160 Race, as reason for moving, 37 Racial integration, 14, 170, 294, 352; homogeneity and, 169, 173–4; as nonpolitical decision-making, 371; history of, 371–2; Levitt & Sons and, 372–3, 380; attitudes toward, 373, 377–8, 382; class conflict and, 373–4; planning for, 375–6, 381, 384, 395; experts’ role in, 375–6, 378, 381, 405; churches’ role in, 376, 381; politicians’ role in, 376, 381; press’s role in, 376; site planning and, 377, 383; role of real estate salesmen in, 379; and home sales, 380; reasons for success, 380–1; class and, 382; neighborhood plan and, 383; newness and, 383; neighbor relations and, 405; and suburbanization, 425, 427; recommendations for, 427–8; strategies of, 428; of suburbs, 432 “Radicals,” 126, 348, 350 Random sample, 153, 437 Rationality, and decision-making, 371 Recommendations, xxxi; for homogeneity and heterogeneity, 172; for adolescents, 214–15; on physi-

Index cal isolation, 241; on social isolation, 241–2, 244–5; on familial problems, 242; for counseling, 244; in planning for change, 293– 4; for planning goals, 294, 397; for minority representation, 294– 5, 361, 400–1; for political communications, 355–65; for political participation, 355–65; on decisionmaking, 355–65; on press, 360–1; on size of elected bodies, 361; on intervention, 364; for racial integration of suburbs, 427–8; for future of cities, 428; for planning of future suburbs, 430 Religion: community structure and, 64; political parties and, 112; class structure and, 133; power structure and, 134; visiting and, 163; political party preferences and, 266 Religious revival, 265 Rent subsidies, 429 Reporters: performing government and, 323; actual government and, 323, 324, 326; relationship to news sources, 323, 324, 329; values of, 325, 327; self- censorship by, 325, 332; relationship to readers, 327 Responsiveness, 138, 305, 339; by politicians, 140; of decision-makers, 336–7; political parties and, 338 Role conflict, and participant- observation, 442 Rootlessness, 196–8; transience and, 197 Row houses, 421; attitudes toward, 273 Rumors, and press, 329, 360 Sales, by Levitt & Sons, 406 Sampling: for interview study, xxxvi, 153, 437; in mail questionnaire study, 436; in participant-observation study, 447 School planning, 8, 19, 86, 91; by Levitt & Sons, 88; types of students and, 91; cosmopolitans and, 92; deficiencies in, 95; class and, 99– 100

Index Schools: establishment, 86–7, 128; definitional struggle, 90–2; Catholics and, 90, 98, 101; attitude toward, 90, 95, 102, 337; cosmopolitans and, 92, 100; class conflict in, 92–3; community growth and, 93; political parties and, 94, 97; overcrowding, 95, 101; budget, 95–7; 101–2; Levitt & Sons and, 97; and public recreation, 122; adolescents and, 208; relationship to citizens, 313; democracy and, 359; taxes and, 369; class culture and, 369; evaluated, 369–70; master plan and, 388–9 School superintendent, 87, 99, 122, 351 Settlers, 34–6; characteristics of,35– 6; change in proportion of, 271 Sex: as barrier to neighboring, 162; adolescents and, 207, 209, 210, 211; and suburbia, xxx, 212 Site planning: neighboring and, 156; heterogeneity and, 173; adolescents and, 207; impact of, 280; racial integration and, 377, 383; in master plan, 391 Social class, see Class Social control, 177; block and, 177 Social isolation, 51, 162, 409; class and, 51; mental illness and, 239; recommendations on, 241–2, 244–5 Social life: origin of, 44–5; evolution of, 51–2; churches and, 83; see also Neighboring; Visiting Social mobility: and competition, 176; and emotional disturbance, 199, 238 Social structure: impact of, 283–4; population mix and, 283–4 Sorting groups, 61, 137, 141; class and, 61 Sub-block, 172–3; impact of, 280–1 Suburban critics: values of, 179, 201, 240; class prejudices of, 179–80, 186, 275 Suburban critique, xxix–xxxi, xxxiii, 67, 154, 174, 185, 195, 212, 220, 234, 240, 252, 421; mass media and, xxix, xxxviii; Levittown and, 8; questioned, 37; friendship and, 163, 164; homogeneity and, 165,

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171; cosmopolitans and, 179; matriarchy and, 224 Suburbanization, 420–9; opposition to, 421, 423 Suburban move, 31–7; impact of, 274, 278; American culture and, 410 Suburbs, future of, 420–9 Suicide, 225, 236 Sunday schools, 82–3, 265 Synagogues, 73; definitional struggle, 73, 74–5; Reform, 74, 75, 78; Conservative, 74, 75; attendance, 76, 78, 264 Taste: changes in, 269–70; sources of change in, 270 Taxes, 96, 98, 100, 101, 425; definitional struggle and, 97; class conflict and, 97–8, 133–4; political parties and, 113–14; heterogeneity and, 173; decision-making for, 369; schools and, 369; master plan and, 390 Teachers, selection of, 87 Technology, 420 Teenagers, see Adolescents Tenant selection, 172 Tourism, 186 Town centers, impact of, 282 Transience, 196–8; rootlessness and, 197; mental illness and, 199 Transients, 34–6, 196–8; characteristics of, 35–6; community participation of, 197, 217; problems of, 198–9; mental illness and, 217–18 Turnover, of houses, 196, 217 Upper middle class subculture, 29– 31; family structure, 30; educational values, 30; cosmopolitan values, 30; community participation, 30–1; see also Cosmopolitans Urban and suburban, as sociological concepts, 288–9 Urbanites: characteristics of, 36; reasons for moving, 36–7; see also City living Urban sprawl, 421

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Visiting: changes in, 51, 162–5, 183; compatibility and, 163; class and, 163; religious preference and, 163; amount of, 164; sources of change in, 261; community newness impact on, 262; intermarriage and, 262 Voluntary associations: origin, 52–6, 124–5; national, 53–62; local, 53, 62; external types, 53–4; internal types, 53–4; unintended types, 54–5; organizational process, 56– 7; types of, 60; activities and class,

61; membership, 67; mass society and, 193; democracy and, 193; see also Organizational participation Voting blocs, 134–5 Working class subculture, 25–7; family structure, 25–6; educational values, 26; community participation, 26–7 Zoning, 16, 107, 385–6