Multigenerational Suburbia

When most Americans have never lived in a city

I keep a long notes document on my phone, where I digitally scribble lines, ideas, bits and pieces of what might become articles. Here’s one I’ve been thinking about lately:

“We’re at a point now where we’re at an inverse of Allan Sherman’s ‘Here’s to the Crabgrass,’ where most Americans have never lived in a city.”

I wrote about Allan Sherman, the witty and often quite perceptive 1960s parody songwriter, here:

Give a listen to 1963’s “Here’s to the Crabgrass” (to the tune of English folk tune “Country Gardens”) in which a city family decamps for the “sweet simplicity” of suburbia, only to be overwhelmed by home maintenance and boredom—the appliances, which we remember as reliable tanks, break down frequently—and move back to the noise and crush of the city.

In some ways, it’s a familiar story—a year ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an article on wealthy homeowners who were already regretting their pandemic-induced flight from the city—but in 1963, it was describing the phenomenon of suburbanization itself, still a live issue and ongoing process. The number of families who had never lived in the suburbs, who perhaps had never even been to the suburbs, was then still well above zero.

It’s not obvious today, but Sherman is writing from the perspective of an urban family, which has never lived in suburbia before, and which runs into what are, or seem to be, uniquely suburban problems.