Revolt against sprawl: Transportation and the origins of the marin county growth-control regime

Journal of Urban History

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 38-66

  Dyble, Louise Nelson ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

California; Freeway revolt; Growth control; Local government; Marin County; Planning; Regime change; Suburban development; Transportation policy

Indexed keywords

LOCAL GOVERNMENT; POPULAR PROTEST; POPULATION GROWTH; SUBURBAN AREA; TRANSPORTATION POLICY; URBAN DEVELOPMENT; URBAN HISTORY; URBAN PLANNING;

CALIFORNIA; MARIN COUNTY; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 35148818072     PISSN: 00961442     EISSN: 15526771     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0096144207308049     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. In describing this coalition and accounting for its enduring power and coherence, I turn to regime theory as delineated by Stephen Elkin in City and Regime in the American Republic. Unlike Clarence Stone's more influential concept of regime, Elkin's recognizes the importance of state structures and institutions in reinforcing and perpetuating the coalitions that construct them. The persistent disregard for the active influence of state institutions in analysis of urban politics (what Terrence McDonald has described as "functionalism"), despite the enormous influence of new institutionalism in political science and sociology generally, reflects Stone's legacy. Elkin's more complex regime combines some of the most compelling elements of historical institutionalism as associated with Theda Skocpol (specifically the "feedback effect" of policy), with the basic recognition of the role of political interests in the decision-making process that is very effectively and intuitively expressed in regime as it is commonly used. Stephen L. Elkin, City and Regime in the American Republic (Chicago, 1987); Clarence N. Stone, Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988 (Lawrence, KS, 1989); Terrence J. McDonald, " The Problem of the Political in Recent American Urban History: Liberal Pluralism and the Rise of Functionalism, "Social History 10 (1985): 323-45; McDonald, "Putting Politics Back into the History of the American City," American Quarterly 34 (1982): 200-9; Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA, 1992); Skocpol, "Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research," in Bringing the State Back In, Theda Skocpol, ed., (Cambridge, MA, 1985), 3-367. Regime theory has been the subject of considerable revision since its ascent in the late 1980s. Many have sought to expand its narrow focus on a dualistic public/private alliance to include the social and cultural environments in which local politics takes place. A few have devoted attention to institutions and institutional structures in urban contexts, following Elkin's lead, including Barbara Ferman, Joe Painter, and Meredith Ramsay. Barbara Ferman, Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighborhood Politics in Chicago and Pittsburgh (Lawrence, KS, 1996); Joe Painter, "Entrepreneurs Are Made, Not Born: Learning and Urban Regimes in the Production of Entrepreneurial Cities," in The Entrepreneurial City: Geographies of Politics, Regime, and Representation, Tim Hall and Phil Hubbard, eds., (Chichester, UK, 1998); Meredith Ramsey, "The Local Community: Maker of Culture and Wealth," Journal of Urban Affairs 18 (1996): 95-118. On institutionalist theory generally, see Peter A. Hall and Rosemary C. R. Taylor, "Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms," in Institutions and Social Order, Virginia Haufler, ed., (Ann Arbor, 1998), 15-43; Colin Hay and Daniel Wincott, " Structure, Agency and Historical Institutionalism, " Political Studies 46 (1998): 951-57; James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, "The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life," American Political Science Review 78 (1983): 734-49; James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York, 1989); Donald D. Searing, "Roles, Rules, and Rationality in the New Institutionalism," American Political Science Review 85 (1991): 1239-60; Ellen M. Immergut, "The Theoretical Core of the New Institutionalism," Politics & Society 26 (1998): 5-34; Ira Katznelson, "The Doleful Dance of Politics and Policy: Can Historical Institutionalism Make a Difference?" American Political Science Review 92 (1998): 191-98; B. Guy Peters, Institutional Theory in Political Science: The "New Institutionalism," (rev. ed., London, 2005); Kathleen Ann Thelen and Sven Steinmo, "Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics," in Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Ann Thelen, and Frank Longstreth, eds., (Cambridge, UK, 1992).
2. Marin County Planning Department, Can the Last Place Last? Preserving the Environmental Quality of Marin (San Rafael, 1971), 1.
3. Tom Duane, Remarks, "Round Table: The Politics of Growth Control," presented at "On the Edge: Metropolitan Growth and Western Environments, Past, Present and Future," Conference of the Center for the Study of the North American West, Stanford University, April 17, 2004.
4. Local accounts of the Marin growth control movement generally credit the selfless environmentalism and philanthropy of a few individuals, ignoring or downplaying the powerful financial interest of property owners in maintaining the exclusivity and beauty of the landscape. Harold Gilliam, Island in Time: The Point Reyes Peninsula (San Francisco, 1962); Evelyn Morris Radford, The Bridge and the Building: the Art of Government and the Government of Art, rev. ed., (New York, 1974); John Hart, San Francisco's Wilderness Next Door (San Rafael, CA, 1979); Nancy Wise, Marin's Natural Assets: An Historic Look at Marin County (San Rafael, CA, 1985); John Hart, Farming on the Edge: Saving Family Farms in Marin County, California (Berkeley, 1991); L. Martin Griffin, M.D., Saving the Marin-Sonoma Coast: The Battles for Audubon Canyon Ranch, Point Reyes, and California's Russian River (Healdsburg, CA, 1998); Amy Meyers, New Guardians for the Golden Gate: How America Got a Great National Park (Berkeley, 2006).
5. The growth control movement is a widely recognized phenomenon, and its emergence in California has received particular attention. William Fulton describes the movement there as "on the cutting edge" of a national trend that began in the late 1960s and continues. Some notable discussions: William Fulton, "Sliced on the Cutting Edge: Growth Management and Growth Control in California," in Growth Management: The Planning Challenge of the 1990s, Jay M. Stein, ed., (Newbury Park, CA, 1993); James S. Duncan and Nancy G. Duncan, Landscapes of Privilege: The Politics of the Aesthetic in an American Suburb (New York and London, 2004); Michael F. Logan, Fighting Sprawl and City Hall: Resistance to Urban Growth in the Southwest (Tuscon, 1995); Madelyn Glickfield and Ned Levine, Regional Growth.... Local Reaction: The Enactment and Effects of Local Growth Control and Management Measures in California (Cambridge, MA, 1992); Sydney Plotkin, Keep Out: The Struggle for Land Use Control (Berkeley, 1987); William A. Fischel, "An Economic History of Zoning and a Cure for its Exclusionary Effects," Urban Studies 41 (2004): 317-40; Jon C. Teaford, Post-Suburbia: Government and Politics in the Edge Cities (Baltimore, 1997), ch. 6; Bernard J. Frieden, The Environmental Protection Hustle (Boston, 1981); Michael N. Danielson, The Politics of Exclusion (New York, 1976).
6. Compared to the substantial literature on urban freeway revolts (see n. 66), little scholarly research has been done on the phenomenon outside of cities. Examples of successful suburban challenges in the late 1960s and early 1970s include the halt of the Southwest expressway (I-95) by the Greater Boston Committee on the Transportation Crisis, which included a significant contingent of suburban residents who were concerned about preserving open space. In the Hudson River Valley in upstate New York, a middle-class freeway revolt helped consolidate a strict growth-control regime. In California, local opposition defeated freeways that would have brought new suburban development to rural areas of Napa, San Mateo, and Santa Barbara counties, as well as planned routes near Mt. Diablo and Lake Tahoe. In addition, public protest protected wilderness areas throughout the country from the intrusion of interstate highways. Alan Lupo, Frank Colcord, and Edmund P. Fowler, Rites of Way: The Politics of Transportation in Boston and the U. S. City (Boston, 1971), esp. ch. 16; Michael K. Heiman, The Quiet Evolution: Power, Planning, and Profits in New York State (New York, 1988), 238-57; Stephanie Pincetl, Transforming California: A Political History of Land Use and Development (Baltimore, 1999), 148-49; Richard A. Walker, Country in the City: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area (Seattle, 2007), 159-181; American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, The States and the Interstate, 63-69; Ben Kelley, The Pavers and the Paved (New York, 1971), 91-125.
7. John Logan and Harvey Molotch famously describe American cities as "growth machines," with political systems dominated by profit-driven real estate developers backed by socioeconomic elites. John R. Logan and Harvey Luskin Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (Berkeley, 1987).
8. Redwood Empire Association, Brief History of the Redwood Empire Association (San Francisco, 1926).
9. Radford, The Bridge and the Building; Louise Nelson Dyble, Paying the Toll: A Political History of the Golden Gate Bridge (Philidelphia, forthcoming 2008).
10. California Department of Finance, Population Research Unit, Estimates for California Counties: July 1947-1969 (Sacramento, 1970); California Department of Motor Vehicles, "Number of Vehicles Registered" ([Sacramento, 1951, 1961]).
11. United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Region Four Office, Report on the Economic Feasibility of the Proposed Point Reyes National Seashore (San Francisco, 1961).
12. Legislation to create Point Reyes National Seashore passed and was officially authorized by President Kennedy in 1962, but the acquisition of land took much longer. Griffin, Saving the Marin-Sonoma Coast; Laura Watt, "Managing Cultural Landscapes: Reconciling Local Preservation and Institutional Ideology in the National Park Service" (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2001); Hal K. Rothman, The New Urban Park: Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Civic Environmentalism (Lawrence, KS, 2004); Hart, San Francisco's Wilderness Next Door; United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Land Use Survey: Proposed Point Reyes National Seashore (Oakland, 1961), 21-22, 26.
13. Independent Journal, November 14, 1960.
14. California Department of Public Works, Division of San Francisco Bay Toll Crossings, A Preliminary Report to Department of Public Works on a San Francisco-Tiburon Crossing of San Francisco Bay (Sacramento, 1957); California Department of Public Works, Division of Highways, The California Freeway System: A Report to the Joint Interim Committee on Highway Problems of the California Legislature (Sacramento, 1958); David W. Jones, California's Freeway Era in Historical Perspective (Berkeley, 1989), 240-41. On the federal freeway program, see Mark H. Rose, Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1939-1989, (rev. ed., Knoxville, 1990); Tom Lewis, Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life (New York, 1997).
15. United States Army Engineer District, San Francisco Corps of Engineers, Future Development of the San Francisco Bay Area 1960-2020, prepared by the United States Department of Commerce, Office of Area Development ([Washington, D.C.], 1959); Independent Journal, November 28, 29, 30, December 1, 2, 1960.
16. Mel Scott, The San Francisco Bay Area: A Metropolis in Perspective, (2nd ed., Berkeley, 1986), 238.
17. California Department of Public Works, Division of San Francisco Bay Toll Crossings, Preliminary Report; California Department of Public Works, Division of San Francisco Bay Toll Crossings, San Francisco-Marin Crossing; Independent Journal, March 11, 12, 21, 1955, January 14, February 9, 1956, January 7, 1957, March 7, 1957; San Francisco Examiner April 30, 1957, May 8, 1957, July 18, 1957; San Francisco News June 4, 1957; San Francisco Chronicle May 9, 1957. See also Walker, Country in the City, ch. 4.
18. William Issel, "'Land Values, Human Values, and the Preservation of the City's Treasured Appearance': Environmentalism, Politics, and the San Francisco Freeway Revolt," Pacific Historical Review 68 (1999): 611-46; Jones, California's Freeway Era.
19. Independent Journal, October 22, 1966.
20. San Francisco Chronicle, March 22, 29, 1966; California Department of Public Works, Division of San Francisco Bay Toll Crossings, San Francisco-Marin Crossing, 107-10; Dyble, Paying the Toll.
21. The first effort to establish a county transportation agency was vetoed by Governor Edmond Brown, who argued that it would hinder the creation of a region-wide agency. Independent Journal, May 2, 10, 11, 15, 18, 1962 and July 19, 27, 29, 1963; Marin County Transportation District, Report on Public Transportation in County of Marin, prepared by Coverdale and Colpitts (San Rafael, CA, 1966); Robert L. Harrison, "The Financial Resources of the Marin County Transit District," (MA thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1968); Arthur C. Jenkins, "Report on Western Greyhound Fare Case," (1964).
22. Independent Journal, September 7, 1963; People for Open Space Farmlands Conservation Project, A Search for Permanence: Farmland Conservation in Marin County, California (San Francisco, 1981); Griffin, Saving the Marin-Sonoma Coast, 71-78; Marin County Planning Commission, West Marin Master Plan, prepared by Mary Sumners, Dan Sumners and Dan Coleman Associates (San Rafael, 1964).
23. Independent Journal, February 5, 1964.
24. Hart, San Francisco's Wilderness Next Door, 49; Independent Journal, January 22, 1966.
25. Independent Journal, September 20, October 4, 6, 10, 11, 1966; Pacific Sun, September 14, October 6, 1966.
26. Independent Journal, October 10, 14, 1966.
27. Historians Bruce E. Seely and Mark H. Rose have shown that the ideological proclivities and professional interests of engineers made them relentless advocates of road and highway construction, largely unconcerned about dissent. They have also pointed out the surprise, and even shock, most highway engineers felt at encountering opposition in the 1960s. Nevertheless, by this time the power of Bay Area anti-freeway coalitions could not easily be ignored. Mark H. Rose and Bruce E. Seely, "Getting the Interstate System Built: Road Engineers and the Implementation of Public Policy, 1955-1985," Journal of Policy History (1990): 24-55; Bruce E. Seely, Building the American Highway System: Engineers as Policy Makers (Philadelphia, 1987); American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, The States and the Interstate: Research on the Planning, Design and Construction of the Interstate and Defense Highway System (Washington, DC, 1991): 61-63. California Highways and Public Works 43 (July/August 1964): 55; Pacific Sun, September 24, 1966, November 23, 1966; Marin County Board of Supervisors, Resolution No. 8903 was passed on May 3, 1966, and affirmed on May 24, 1966.
28. People for Open Space, Search for Permanence, 10; Independent Journal, October 11, 14, 26, November 10, 11, 20, 1966.
29. Pacific Sun, November 12, 1966; Independent Journal, November 16, 18, 1966.
30. Independent Journal, November 12, 1966.
31. Independent Journal, November 14, 1966.
32. Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 159 (1994): 554-55; California Highways and Public Works 32 (March/April 1953), 53.
33. California Department of Public Works, Division of Highways, Marin 17: Route 101 to Nicasio ([Sacramento], 1966); Independent Journal, November 21, 1966
34. Independent Journal, December 9, 1966.
35. Pacific Sun, November 23, 1966.
36. Independent Journal, November 22, 1966.
37. Marin County Board of Supervisors, Resolution No. 9161, December 6, 1966; Pacific Sun, November 26, 1966.
38. Pacific Sun, December 10, 1966.
39. Pacific Sun, December 3, 1966.
40. Independent Journal, November 30, 1966.
41. Independent Journal, December 8, 1966.
42. Independent Journal, December 9, 1966.
43. Zachary Schrag also points out that when the right people protest, hearings make a difference. Zachary Schrag, " The Freeway Fight in Washington, DC: The Three Sisters Bridge in Three Administrations, " Journal of Urban History 30 (2004): 648-73.
44. Brian D. Taylor, "Public Perceptions, Fiscal Realities, and Freeway Planning: The California Case," Journal of the American Planning Association 61 (1995): 43-56.
45. Pacific Sun, October 15, 1966. The editor of the Pacific Sun, which was founded by Merril D. and Joann S. Grohman in 1963, claimed that it was "perhaps the most consistently conservationist public press in the Bay Area." Pacific Sun, November 5, December 10, 1966. For a retrospective on the paper by its publisher and editor Steve McNamara, who took over the paper in December 1966 and became a vehement supporter of growth-control, see Pacific Sun, August 18, 2004.
46. Pacific Sun, September 21, 24, 1966; Independent Journal, November 9, 1966
47. Independent Journal, December 26, 1969, September 24, 1970; Peter H. Behr, oral history interview by Ann Lage (Sacramento, 1988), 28- 29, 91-98.
48. Paul C. Zucker relates his experience in Marin in his memoir, What your Planning Professors Forgot to Tell You: 117 Lessons Every Planner Should Know (Chicago, 1999), 73-114. Alan Bruce is often mentioned as influential in promoting planning during this critical period as a top bureaucrat and the county "budget writer." E. G. Hart, Farming on the Edge, 31; Point Reyes Light January 2, 1997. Margaret W. Azevedo was one of the important behind-the-scenes players in this controversy, as well as in many other Marin County and Bay Area struggles. At the time of the hearings on Route 17, she was ambiguous about the proposed freeway, publishing a lengthy commentary in the Pacific Sun under the headline "Razing of Paris, Marin Style." Although she contributed significantly both to the "Balanced Transportation Program" and the restrictive 1972 Countywide Plan and has recently been lauded as a champion of open space in Marin, she never entirely embraced the growth-control agenda. After sixteen years on the planning commission she was "sacked" in 1979 because of her support for high-density housing. Pacific Sun, December 14, 1966; Independent Journal, June [27], 1969; San Francisco Examiner, August 8, 1979.
49. Marin County Planning Department, An Evaluation of Local Plans: Balanced Transportation Program (San Rafael, CA, 1970).
50. Marin County Planning Department, A Transportation Plan for Marin: Balanced Transportation Program, Phase II (San Rafael, CA, 1972), x-xii.
51. Marin County Planning Department, Can the Last Place Last?; Hart, Farming on the Edge, 33-35.
52. Marin Countywide Plan 1973, Section 2, p. 17.
53. Marin County Open Space District, Policy Review Initiative (San Rafael, CA, [2004]).
54. Marin Countywide Plan 1973, p. 139-50.
55. Marin County Board of Supervisors, The Viability of Agriculture in Marin, prepared by Baxter McDonald & Smart, Inc. (San Francisco, 1973).
56. Thomas Melvin Dodson, "The California Land Conservation Act of 1965 (Williamson Act): Its Effect on Land Stabilization in Marin, Sonoma and Mendocino Counties" (MA Thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1973); Hart, Farming on the Edge, 58-64; People for Open Space, Search for Permanence.
57. Jeffrey I. Chapman, Proposition 13 and Land Use: A Case Study of Fiscal Limits in California (Lexington, MA, 1981); Terri A. Sexton, Steven M. Sheffrin, and Arthur O'Sullivan, Property Taxes and Tax Revolts: The Legacy of Proposition 13 (Cambridge, MA, 1995); Sexton, et. al., "Proposition 13: Unintended Effects and Feasible Reforms," National Tax Journal 52 (1999): 99-115.
58. Point Reyes Light, June 6-7, 1987; Marin County Board of Supervisors, Resolution no. 88-298, November 8, 1988; [Marin Agricultural Land Trust], "The Story of MALT" (http://www.malt.org/articles/ maltstor.htm, accessed March, 2005); Mary E. Handel and Alvin D. Sokolow, Farmland and Open Space Preservation in the Four North Bay Counties (Davis, CA, 1994), 24-29; Marin Agricultural Land Trust, Tenth Anniversary Report (Point Reyes Station, CA, 1990); Marin Agricultural Land Trust, Easement Report (Point Reyes Station, CA, 1990); Phyllis Faber, "The Land Trust Experience in Marin County," in California Farmland and Urban Pressures: Statewide and Regional Perspectives, Albert G. Medvitz et al., eds., (Davis, CA, 1999).
59. Marin Agricultural Land Trust, MALT Map, http://www.malt.org/farming/ map.html, accessed May 2006.
60. Marin County Planning Department, The Marin Countywide Plan: Countywide Plan Update Program (San Rafael, CA, 1982), i, iv, 4-5.
61. San Francisco Chronicle, October 26, 1988, March 11, 1989, April 7, 1989, July 7, 1989, July 19, 1989; Marin Independent Journal, July 7, 1989; Pacific Sun, August 4, 1989; Bay Area Rapid Transit District, San Francisco-North Bay BART Connection: A Conceptual Study, prepared by Bechtel, Inc. (San Francisco, 1989); Marin County Planning Department, Marin Countywide Plan (1983), Section 4, 1.
62. Marin Community Development Agency, Marin Countywide Plan 2004, 3-149.
63. For a discussion of relations between Marin and Sonoma in this period, see Frieden, " The Exclusionary Effect of Growth Controls, " Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 465 (1983): 123-35.
64. Marin's per capita income was $65,642 in 2003; the next highest was San Francisco's $55,720. 51.3 percent of Marin residents had a bachelor's degree or higher in 2000; San Francisco followed with 45 percent. A total of 95.5 percent of Marin's population was white in 1970; in 2004 the county was 78 percent white. Most of the shift was due to an increase in the "Asian or Pacific Islander" population, though the number of Hispanic residents has also increased in the last ten years, particularly in West Marin's agricultural corridor. Marin's African American population had remained steady since the 1940s at 3 percent. Of Marin's 7,000 African-American residents, approximately 1,150 live in Marin City, a poor, unincorporated community founded for shipyard workers during World War II, and 2,500 are inmates in San Quentin State Prison. United States Census Bureau, Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates, county-level estimates, income year 2000, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/saipe/; Census Bureau, County and City Data Book 2000, table B-5; California Department of Finance, California Statistical Abstract (Sacramento, 2006); County of Marin Assessor-Recorder, Annual Marin Real Estate Sales for 2005, http://www.co.marin.ca.us/depts/AR/main/sales2005/Salesannual.cfm, accessed April 9, 2006; California Department of Corrections, Data Analysis Unit, Prison Census Data: California State Prison, Offenders by Ethnicity and Gender as of December 31, 2005 (Sacramento, 2006).
65. The West Marin Stagecoach operates two routes four times a day, Monday through Friday. On the history of mass transportation in West Marin, see Golden Gate Recreational Travel Study, Golden Gate Recreational Travel Study: Summary Report ([Berkeley], 1977); Hart, San Francisco's Wilderness Next Door, 127-33; Ted Wurm and Al Graves, The Crookedest Railroad in the World, (rev. ed., Glendale, CA, 1983).
66. Richard O. Baumbach and William E. Borah, The Second Battle of New Orleans: A History of the Vieux Carrâe Riverfront Expressway Controversy (University, AL, 1981); Raymond A. Mohl, "Race and Space in the Modern City: Interstate-95 and the Black Community in Miami" in Urban Policy in Twentieth-Century America, ed. Arnold R. Hirsch and Raymond A. Mohl (New Brunswick, NJ, 1993); Issel, "Land Values, Human Values, and the Preservation of the City's Treasured Appearance" Lewis, Divided Highways, 179-211; Schrag, "The Freeway Fight in Washington, DC"; Raymond A. Mohl, "Stop the Road: Freeway Revolts in American Cities," Journal of Urban History 30 (2004): 674-706; Jon C. Teaford, The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America, 1940-1980 (Baltimore, 1990), 93-99, 162-65; Gary T. Schwartz, "Urban Freeways and the Interstate System " Southern California Law Review 49 (1976), 406-513. Neglect of freeway opposition outside of central cities may in part reflect scholarly reaction against the technological determinism of many early histories of suburbanization, such as Sam Bass Warner, Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900 (Cambridge, MA, 1978); Robert M. Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850-1930 (Cambridge, MA, 1967).
67. Joel Garreau, Edge Cities: Life on the New Frontier (New York, 1988); Paul Mattingly Suburban Landscapes: Culture and Politics in a New York Metropolitan Community (Baltimore, 2001); Marian J. Morton, "The Suburban Ideal and Suburban Realities: Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 1860-2001" Journal of Urban History 28 (2002): 671-98; Becky M. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (Chicago, 2002); Andrew Wiese, Places of their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, 2004). For discussion, see Ann Durkin Keating, "Cities, Suburbs, and Their Regions," Journal of Urban History 27 (2001): 650-57; Richard Harris and Robert Lewis, "The Geography of North American Cities and Suburbs, 1900-1950: A New Synthesis," Journal of Urban History 27 (2002): 262-92; Margaret Pugh O'Mara, "Suburban Reconsidered: Race, Politics and Property in the Twentieth Century," Journal of Social History 39 (2005): 229-44.
68. Duncan and Duncan, Landscapes of Privilege.
69. The interdependence of cities and suburbs, particularly in the post-World War II period, has been relatively neglected by urbanists, despite repeated calls for regional context and regionalist perspectives. For example, Raymond A. Mohl, "City and Region: The Missing Dimension in U.S. Urban History," Journal of Urban History 25 (1998): 3-22; Keating, "Cities, Suburbs and their Regions" Michael N. Danielson and Paul G. Lewis, "City Bound: Political Science and the American Metropolis," Political Research Quarterly 49 (1996): 203-20; H-Urban discussion thread: "New Suburban History Course Reflections," December 2003.
70. This interdependence is also something that the new suburban history tends to downplay in portraying independent and varied suburbs. The idea of a "polynucleated metropolis," for example, deemphasizes the relationships between places in the metropolis. See Amanda I. Seligman, "The New Suburban History," Journal of Planning History 3 (2004): 312-23.
71. For example, Robert Bruegmann Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago, 2005).