Several
factors led to growth of the suburbs in the 1950s and have been mentioned in other answers,
including the rapidly rising U.S. standard of living, in which pay steadily outstripped
inflation, and the availability of low-cost mortgages, especially to veterans. A housing
shortage in major cities, such as Manhattan, also led people to look outside of their
"comfort zones" for housing, and the widespread availability of cars made living away
from the streetcar or subway line a viable possibility.
Innovations in home
construction that brought down the cost of the average house to an affordable level also
contributed to the suburban exodus. Pioneers in this were the Levitt brothers, who brought mass
production techniques to home building, enabling them to build 30 homes in a week. They used
precut parts and built on concrete slabs, allowing them to construct a small starter home for
just under $10,000. The first Levittown opened in 1947 on Long Island. These new housing
developments, built by the Levitts and a host of other builders, were wildly popular, but
generally excluded blacks, meaning that suburbanization remained largely a white phenomenon in
the 1950s.
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