Suburbia

In the first video, “Radiant City: Suburban Landscape” we see how the landscape across suburban areas are very homogeneous. All of the structure looks like its compressed. According to the speaker in the video, Gary Burns, “suburbia separates the elements of daily life” which means the homes from the offices, and the shopping areas. There is a statistic that mentions “traffic injuries or death care three times more common in the suburbs than in the inner cities” All of this contributes to even more pollution being created because to get anywhere, you need some sort of mean of transportation, in this case, automobiles.
In the second video, “Radiant City: Commuting”, it shows how thousands of working people are stuck in terrible traffic jams to get into the cities and work. “The average North American spends 55 8-hour work days driving” If this statistic goes for every commuter, then imagine all of the CO2 emissions being released into the air.
The next video called “1950s”; we see the changes that took place after WWII. All of the American soldiers came back home, and wanted a nice, calm place to live. This is where the “American dream” began. The development of growing sky scrappers, and the “inflation of downtown real-estate prices lead to downtown becoming more dedicated to business’s” Although we heard about how great the 50’s were, and how it brought “ new hope, new life, new homes, and new families” we don’t really the see the horrific things happening to the minorities around the country. The African Americans and other minority groups, the people that weren’t able or weren’t allowed to live in the suburbs, were suffering under segregation and unfair civil rights.
The next video, called “Gangs and White Flight” it shows the history behind the first black gangs, and how they appeared. “When you cant go where you want to go, and when you cant live where you want to live, without some one saying something to you, there is a problem. “ said a former gang member in LA. When you have these people tormenting you because you are different you end up starting with a bad attitude toward your problems. In this case, it resulted in violence. They got in groups and stuck together when they got stoned or abused by the white kids in their school. When the African Americans came from the south of the US and into cities they were confused about prejudice. During the White Flight, people began to leave schools and move out of the cities and into suburbs, which lead to the schools becoming more integrated.