ABSTRACT
Housing and the decline of the American city in the postwar period cannot be explained without a discussion of the lure of the suburbs, the dominance of the automobile, the abundance of cheap energy and racial segregation. A smaller body of work has concerned itself with the public cost and economic insustainability of sprawl. Much has been written about suburban life style, lonely housewives, the American love affair with the automobile and the reduction of social capital through suburbanization and dispersal. The dispersal pattern devastated Baltimore's economy: In Maryland, where cities largely depend on property taxes for their revenue, fewer and poorer people have to support the basic services of city government with ever higher taxes. As a result of the dispersal pattern, Baltimore is a shrinking city in a growing region. While the city itself lost one-third of its residents, the region roughly doubled in population.
