The reduction of urban vulnerability: Revisiting 1950s American suburbanization as civil defence

Cold War History

Volumn 2, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 1-32

  Tobin, Kathleen ^a  

^a PURDUE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34247452310     PISSN: 14682745     EISSN: 17437962     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/713999949     Document Type: Review

References (116)

1. Peter G. Rowe, Making a Middle Landscape (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1991), pp.3-4
2. For more on general trends in the 20th century, see 'Suburbia - and Beyond', chapter 16 in Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations and Its Prospects (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1961), pp.482-524;
3. Leo F. Schnore, 'Metropolitan Growth and Decentralization'
4. and Donald J. Bogue, 'Urbanism and Metropolitanism', chapters 1 and 2 in William M. Dobriner (ed.), The Suburban Community (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1958), pp.3-25;
5. Jon Teaford, The Twentieth Century American City (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
6. The States and the Metropolitan Problem: A Report to the Governor's Conference (Chicago: The Council of State Governments, 1956), pp.11-12.
7. Donald N. Rothblatt and Daniel J. Garr, Suburbia: An International Assessment (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), pp.2-3;
8. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), p.169.
9. Charles Abrams, The Future of Housing (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946), pp.11, 301.
10. Rothblatt and Garr, Suburbia, p.209;
11. May, Homeward Bound, p.170;
12. David Popenne and David Popenoe, The Suburban Environment: Sweden and the United States (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977), chapter 5.
13. Also see David C. Thorns, Suburbia (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1972), chapter 4
14. and John R. Meyer, John F. Kain and Martin Wohl, The Urban Transportation Problem (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), chapter 2 (cited in Rothblatt and Garr, Suburbia).
15. Abrams, The Future of Housing, p.11.
16. Barry Checkoway, 'Large Builders, Federal Housing Programmes, and Postwar Suburbanization', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 4/1 (1980), p.39.
17. Also see Clifford Edward Clark, The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), p.213;
18. Kenneth T. Jackson, The Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p.249.
19. Paul S. Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light (New York: Pantheon, 1985), pp.77, 144-5, 148, 152, 175-6, 287, 320-21, 324, 327.
20. Margot A. Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove's America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p.96.
21. Allan M. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp.112-14.
22. For a discussion of the evolution of the US Civil Defense Program, see John Dowling and Evans M. Harrell (eds.), Civil Defense: A Choice of Disasters (New York: American Institute of Physics, 1987);
23. and Guy Oakes and Andrew Grossman, 'Managing Nuclear Terror: The Genesis of American Civil Defense Strategy', International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 5/3 (1992), pp.361-403.
24. Oakes and Grossman, 'Managing Nuclear Terror', pp.361-5;
25. Campbell Craig, Destroying the Village: Eisenhower and Thermonuclear War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), chapter 2
26. 'General War Becomes Thermonuclear War, 1948-1952', pp.24-37;
27. Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove's America, p.92.
28. United States Strategic Bomb Surveys, Morale Division The Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japanese Morale, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1946);
29. Stanford Research Institute, Impact of Air Attack in World War II: Selected Data for Civil Defense Planning; Division III; Social Organization, Behavior, and Morale Under Stress of Bombing, Vol. 1: Public Attitudes and Behavior (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1953);
30. and Irving L. Janis, 'Psychological Problems of A-Bomb Defense', in Eugene P. Wigner (ed.), Survival and the Bomb: Methods of Civil Defense (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969), pp.52-78
31. (Consists of excerpts from a 1950 report to the RAND Corporation of Santa Monica, California. Also see Irving L. Janis, Air War and Emotional Stress (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951).
32. For more on American apathy and public response to civil defence programmes, see Jiri Nehvevajsa, 'The American Public and Civil Defense', in Wigner (ed.), Survival and the Bomb, pp.24-51.
33. Mobilization of the National Economy in the Face of Atomic Attack, Oral Presentations (Washington, DC: Industrial College of the Armed Forces, 1953-1954), p.22.
34. Stephen B. Withey, 4th Survey of Public Knowledge and Attitudes Concerning Civil Defense; A Report of a National Study in March, 1954 (Ann Arbor, MI: Institute of Social Research, University of Michigan, 1954), pp.1, 9.
35. Arnold Wolfers, 'The Atomic Bomb in Soviet-American Relations', in Bernard Brodie (ed.), The Absolute Weapon (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946), p.125
36. cited in Guy Oakes, The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp.18-19.
37. Philip M. Hauser (ed.), Population and World Politics (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1958), pp.211-12.
38. Robert A. Heinlein, 'The Last Days of the United States', in New Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein: Expanded Universe (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1980), pp.145-7, 156, 158;
39. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud, p.112.
40. Editorial, 'The Only Real Defense', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 7/9 (Sept. 1951), p.242;
41. Donn Emery Hopkins, 'Urban Dispersal in the United States for Military Purposes' (MA Thesis, City Planning, University of California, Berkeley, 1956), p.20.
42. J. Marshak, E. Teller and L.R. Klein, 'Dispersal of Cities and Industries', Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 1/9 (15 April 1946), pp.13-15, 20
43. cited in Hopkins, 'Urban Dispersal in the United States for Military Purposes', pp.14-16.
44. Ralph Lapp, Must We Hide? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1949), pp.8-9, 151-9;
45. Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light, p.321.
46. Lapp, 'The Strategy of Civil Defense', Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 6/8-9 (Aug.-Sept. 1950), pp.241-3.
47. See Oakes, The Imaginary War, pp.10-32
48. for a general evolution of fear during this era. 30. William L. Laurence, The Hell Bomb (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), pp.18-19.
49. Augustin M. Prentiss, Civil Defense in Modern War (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1951), pp.13-23.
50. Fred Charles Iklé, The Social Impact of Bomb Destruction (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), p.80;
51. also see Reduction of Urban Vulnerability, Part V of Project East River (New York: Associated Universities Incorporated, 1952)
52. Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Commerce, United States Senate, on S. 1385, A Bill to Provide for Aid in Industrialization of Underdeveloped Areas, and for Other Purposes (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1946), p.1.
53. H. Clay Tate, Building a Better Home Town: A Program of Community Self-analysis and Self-help (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954), pp.9-10.
54. Ikle, The Social Impact of Bomb Destruction, pp.80-82.
55. Also see Gershon Cooper and Roland N. McKean, 'Is Dispersal Good Defense?'Fortune, 50/5 (Nov. 1954), pp.126 ff.
56. Royal Daniel Sloan, Jr., 'The Politics of Civil Defense: Great Britain and the United States' (Ph.D. Dissertation, Political Science, University of Chicago, 1958), p.219.
57. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Interim Report on Civil Defense, 1955, p.11.
58. Sloan, 'The Politics of Civil Defense', p.219n.
59. Iklé, The Social Impact of Bomb Destruction, p.81.
60. Brodie (ed.), The Absolute Weapon, p.101.
61. Ansley J. Coale, The Problem of Reducing Vulnerability to Atomic Bombs (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1947), p.x.
62. Lapp, Must We Hide?, p.161.
63. Mobilization, p.21.
64. Reduction of Urban Vulnerability, p.18.
65. Industrial Dispersion Guidebook for Communities (Washington, DC: US Department of Commerce, Domestic Commerce Series No.31, 1952).
66. The National Security Resources Board, Executive Office of the President, A Case Study in Peacetime Mobilization Planning (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1953), pp.126-7.
67. US Congress, The National Security Act of 1947, Public Law 253, 80th Congress, 1st session (Passed 26 July 1947).
68. Thomas L. Martin, Jr. and Donald C. Latham, Strategy for Survival (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1963), pp.174-8.
69. US Congress, The Joint Committee on the Economic Report, The Need For Industrial Dispersal, Report by the Staff of the Joint Committee on the Economic Report, 82nd Congress, 1st Session (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1951), 56 pp.
70. National Security Resources Board, Is Your Plant a Target? (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1951), 16 pp.
71. These responsibilities were later taken over by the Federal Civil Defense Administration. See Office of Defense Mobilization, Defense Mobilization Order I-18, January 11, 1956, by Arthur S. Flemming, Director, cited in University of Maryland Bureau of Business and Economic Research, 'Industrial Dispersal', Studies in Business and Economic Research, 9/4 (March 1956), 12 pp.
72. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 7/9 (Sept. 1951), p.263.
73. University of Maryland, Bureau of Business and Economic Research, 'Industrial Dispersal', Studies in Business and Economics, 9/4 (March 1956), 12 pp.;
74. Oscar Sutermeister, Reduction of Vulnerability in the Milwaukee Area, Second Printing (City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County: Sept. 1954), p.72.
75. US Bureau of the Census, 'Estimates of the Populations of Continental United States by Regions, Divisions, and States, ... : July 1, 1950-1954', Current Population Reports. Series P-25, No.124 (24 Oct. 1955), p.4.
76. United States Federal Civil Defense Administration, A Report on the Washington Conference of Mayors and Other Local Government Executives on National Security (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1954), p.11.
77. Save Our Cities: Survival in the Atomic Age Depends on Intensified Planning Now (New York: National Municipal League), p.31
78. reprinted from National Municipal Review, June, July, Sept. 1954.
79. William J. Platt, 'Industrial Defense: A Community Approach', Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (1953)
80. n.p., cited in 'Editorial Comment: Opportunity Appears in Strange Disguise', in Save Our Cities, pp.7-8.
81. US Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, A Staff Report on Civil Defense and Urban Vulnerability (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1955), p.4.
82. Also see American Society of Planning Officials, Planning Advisory Service, The Role of the Planning Commission in Civil Defense, Special Report (Chicago, 1950);
83. and H.D. Hauf, 'City Planning and Civil Defense', Architectural Record (Dec. 1950).
84. Donald and Astrid Monson, 'How Can We Disperse Our Large Cities?' American City (Dec. 1950), pp.90-92;
85. 'Private Suburban Shopping Centers Urged As Defense Points', news release, American Institute of Architects, 8 May 1951;
86. 'How U.S. Cities Can Prepare for Atomic War', Life, 18 Dec. 1950, p.77.
87. Monson and Monson, 'How Can We Disperse Our Large Cities?', p.92;
88. Recommendations on Government Housing Policies and Programs, A Report of the President's Advisory Committee on Government Housing Policies and Programs (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1953), p.129.
89. 'Planning Cities for the Atomic Age: Mere Survival Is Not Enough', American City (Aug. 1946), pp.75-6;
90. Tracy B. Augur, 'Dispersal is Good Business', Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (Aug.-Sept.), pp.244-5;
91. Also see Augur, 'The Dispersal of Cities - A Feasible Program', Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (Oct. 1948)
92. and 'The Dispersal of Cities as a Defense Measure', Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (May 1948).
93. Augur, 'The Dispersal of Cities', p.131.
94. Checkoway, 'Large Builders, Federal Housing Programmes, and Postwar Suburbanization', p.31.
95. US Congress, The Housing Act of 1954, Public Law 560, 83rd Congress - 2nd Session (Passed 2 Aug. 1954), Title VIII, Section 811.
96. Also see US Congress Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Development, Evolution of Role of the Federal Government in Housing and Community Development (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1975).
97. Clifford Edward Clark, Jr., The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), pp.201-5.
98. Leo F. Schnore, 'The Growth of Metropolitan Suburbs', American Sociological Review 22 (1957), p.171.
99. Christine Hunter, Ranches, Rowhouses, and Railroad Flats: American Homes: How They Shape Our Landscapes and Neighborhoods (New York: WW Norton & Company, 1999), p.170.
100. Cue For Survival (Washington, DC: US Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1955), pp.4
101. James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape (New York: Touchstone, 1994), pp.106-7.
102. Clark, The American Family Home, p.213;
103. Jackson, The Crabgrass Frontier, p.249.
104. For more on funding and the legislative process, see Mark H. Rose, Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1939-1989 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990).
105. Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere, p.107;
106. Federal Civil Defense Administration, 'Remarks of General Lucius D. Clay, Chairman, President's Advisory Committee On a National Highway Program', Washington Conference of Mayors, pp.44-9.
107. Mark Gottdiener, The Social Production of Urban Space (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), pp.241-2.
108. Jervis J. Babb, Guiding Metropolitan Growth (New York: Research and Polity Committee, Committee for Economic Development, Aug. 1960), p.7
109. this booklet was reprinted in Charles N. Glaab, The American City: A Documentary History (Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press, Inc., 1963), pp.461-73.
110. Babb served as chairman of the Committee for Economic Development, Area Development Committee. For more on metropolitanism, see 'Metropolitanism and Metropolitan Areas', chapter 4 in Otis Dudley Duncan et al. (eds.), Metropolis and Region (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960), pp.82-104.
111. Babb, Guiding Metropolitan Growth, p.7;
112. Rowe, Making a Middle Landscape, p.4;
113. US Bureau of the Census, 1900-1980, Censuses of Population (Washington, DC: US Department of Commerce).
114. For more early examinations of problems and the extent of sprawl, see Benjamin Chinitz, ed., City and Suburb: The Economics of Metropolitan Growth (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964)
115. Jean Gottmann and Robert A. Harper (eds.), Metropolis on the Move: Geographers Look at Urban Sprawl (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1967)
116. and 'The Myth of Megalopolis', chapter 17 in Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformation, and its Prospects (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1961), pp.525-67.