ABSTRACT
Cities in the early twentieth century stood at the center of broad metropolitan districts, regions where wide belts of suburban territory were linked to the economic and cultural life of the urban core. The South became America's most rapidly urbanizing region, after nearly a century of lagging behind the rest of the nation. During the 1930s, competition for scarce jobs led to an increase in Anglo-American resentment of Mexican immigrant workers. By 1930, according to the US Census, people of Mexican ancestry made up more than half the population of El Paso and more than a third of San Antonio and Los Angeles. In the 1930s, New Deal faith in the beneficial effects of modern suburbanization prompted Rexford Tug well, head of the US Resettlement Agency, to plan a network of garden suburbs that he visualized as Green-Belt cities. The mass-consumer culture that characterized the nation in the 1920s concentrated in cities.
