DQ: Suburbs

• How did the rise of suburbs and the creation of highways relate to one another?

The Interstate Highway Act (1956)

• Read President Eisenhower’s quote and describe in your opinion why the IHA was important to him

President Eisenhower"Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods. The ceaseless flow of information throughout the republic is matched by individual and commercial movement over a vast system of interconnected highway crisscrossing the country and joining at our national borders with friendly neighbors to the north and south.

Together, the united forces of our communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in very name we bear-United States. Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts."

IHA• Act authorized funds to build 41,000 miles

of highway, consisting of multilane expressways that would connect the nations major cities

The Move to the Suburbs

• Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs)name give to dense populations of cities and suburbs connected together

• By 1980, ¾ of U.S. population lived in suburbs or cities

• Megalopolishuge sprawling cities