Suburban Development

Definition

Suburban development refers to the growth and expansion of areas on the outskirts of cities, primarily residential, that occurred after World War II in the United States.

Analogy

Think of suburban development like a game of SimCity. As your city grows and expands, you need more space for people to live. So, you start building houses outside the main city area. This is essentially what happened in real life during the post-WWII era.

Related terms

Urbanization: The process by which towns and cities are formed and become larger as more people begin living and working in central areas.

Levittown: A planned community built in 1947 as a suburb of New York City, it was one of the first mass-produced suburbs and is often used as a symbol for postwar suburban developments in America.

White Flight: The social phenomenon where white populations move out from diverse urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions.