The Reduction of Urban Vulnerability: Revisiting 1950s American Suburbanization as Civil Defence

Abstract

Though suburbanization in the United States during the 1950s is a well known story, scholars still consider postwar prosperity and basic desire on the part of the American people to move further away from problems of the inner city as its primary causes. While it is true that various factors contributed to phenomenal growth of the suburbs between 1945 and 1960, historians have thus far paid little attention to policymakers' fears of atomic attack as a significant factor in population dispersal. This article examines how sociologists, scientists, and other experts considered the reduction of urban vulnerability a Cold War priority, and worked to encourage dispersion of people and factories as a civil defence measure.