ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the particular circumstances which created the pressures for suburban growth in the United States, Israel and the Netherlands. However, as in other nations, suburbanization in the United States was in no way the sole domain of the impersonal forces which determined the direction of a free market economy. The mechanics of Veterans’ Administration/Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance made it possible to own a family-sized, new suburban house for less than the cost of renting a central city apartment. Federal involvement in suburban residential growth was specifically geared to accommodate the large builder who was instrumental in the formulation of FHA construction standards, the indispensable prerequisite for mortgage insurance. One can perceive the increments of growth of each period in the two centuries that the county has been inhabited by other than its indigenous population of the California Indian group, collectively known as Costanoan.
