Why to not Live in the Suburbs

    Suburbs have been around since the 1950s after people returned from the war.  They were a response to veterans coming back and the government creating a bill that helped them pay for housing upon their return.  This sparked a surge in construction in the rural areas surrounding cities.  The ability to purchase a home for cheaper than normal was a great incentive to move out of the city.  It also happened because the young people were being told to do this by the construction companies and the government so to them it seemed like the right move to make.  Most of the veterans are people who have no real work experience outside of their time in the war.  They grew up in their town and when they enlisted around the age of 18 to 25 if they did not lie on their enlistment papers then they would have missed out on some knowledge in the world.  This knowledge maybe would have changed their opinion on if they wanted to settle down or not.

    As someone who has grown up in a small down within a neighborhood and then in planned community it makes me agree with the satirical description of suburbia and not want to live in it, at least not at the early part of my life.   A quote from the reading: "The Suburbs: the New American Nightmare" states that "it is and has always been the nature of young people to be mobile."  I agree with that statement and one reason that the returning veterans were ready to settle down could have been because they had been moving around constantly when they were abroad at war and could have associated moving around with being at war still.  As someone who is still considered young to me at least wants to stay mobile and see more that the world has to offer and not settle down in a certain city for the long run.

    My grandfather was a WWII veteran and the house that I would go to to visit him was the house that he got when he came back from fighting.  The description in the reading is an accurate description of his house.  It was not a large house on some large piece of land.  It was a small house that then housed a large amount of people.  It was crowded during family gathering and could never handle the amount of people present.  

    I think that the shift from cities to suburbs and back to cities will be constant and repeat over time.  It just depends where a generation was raised and if they had a good experience within that certain situation.