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The USA, 1955–92: Conformity and Challenge

Urbanisation and affluence

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 2

Overview

Recall questions on white flight and redlining, the Interstate Highway Act, the Sun Belt, the urban crisis and the riots, and the Kerner Commission.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

What characterised American affluence in the late 1950s?

Who and when

How did American cities change after 1955?

Key term

What was white flight?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What characterised American affluence in the late 1950s?

    Model answer

    Suburban growth, consumerism, rising car ownership, white-collar jobs and new domestic technology.

  2. 2

    How did American cities change after 1955?

    Model answer

    White middle-class families moved to the suburbs while poorer black and Hispanic populations concentrated in the centres, eroding the urban tax base.

  3. 3

    What was white flight?

    Model answer

    The movement of white residents out of racially mixing neighbourhoods to the suburbs, accelerated by federal mortgage policy that redlined black areas.

  4. 4

    What was the Interstate Highway Act?

    Model answer

    Eisenhower's 1956 programme to build 41,000 miles of highway, the largest public works project in American history, which enabled suburban commuting.

  5. 5

    How did highway building affect the cities?

    Model answer

    Urban expressways drove through poor and often black neighbourhoods, displacing communities and hastening the movement of business to the suburbs.

  6. 6

    How affluent was America by the early 1960s?

    Model answer

    Real family incomes had risen by about half since the late 1940s, most families owned a car and a television, and home ownership had risen above 60 per cent.

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