Chapter 13,The Baby Boom and the Age of the Subdivision, pp. 231 - 245Chapter 14, The Drive-in Culture of Contemporary America, pp. 246 - 271There is nothing too troublesome here. You’ve seen Leavittown in the suburb DVD, and subdivisions are still springing up all around us. The scale of these is important to consider, as is the employment of the same kinds of mass production techniques as went into the automobile which made them possible.Your generation grew up in an American world where the interstate highway system was a given. Consequently you’re probably not entirely aware about how super roads altered the domestic landscape. This chapter will articulate some of the changes in living patterns these highways caused. I’ve already indicated that a decision by the book designers of Crabgrass Frontier made decisions which made the illustrations for this book less useful than the might have been. You’ll have to hunt for the principal ones in the second picture collection between pages 250 and 251. However, you may not need these illustrations at all. You’ve experienced superhighway suburbs all your lives. We’ll explore a number of phenomena of this era, including box stores, “the mall” and we’ll also see how one can calculate whether a suburban era was largely created in the superhighway era or earlier by the presence (or absence) of a particular landscape feature. Need a hint? Here’s a one word one... “hopscotch”.
