page_title: 1950s American automobile culture
section_title: Decline of the inner city
hierarchical_section_title: 1950s American automobile culture / Suburbanization / Decline of the inner city
caption_attribution_description: English: "Car of the Future" as conceived by Studebaker's Director of Styling, Raymond Loewy, in the August 1950 issue of Science and Mechanics. Loewy wrote about the new styling for "tomorrow's rocket age population" but dismissed the idea of clear plastic tops and turbine engines. The three point front end was a design feature on the 1951 Studebaker. Some of the other elements of this concept model influenced the 1953 Studebaker Starliner. The cover art was done by Arthur C. Bade, a staff illustrator for Science and Mechanics from 1944 to 1955. This magazine cover was lightly soiled and had a few minor folds, scratches and cuts. It was scanned with an Epson Perfection V500 scanner and saved as a 400 dpi tiff file. The restoration was done in Adobe Photoshop Elements. The magazine size is 6.5 by 9.25 inches (165 by 235 mm) and has 224 pages. Español: "Automóvil del futuro" concebido por el diseñador industrial Raymond Loewy, y que en agosto de 1950 ilustró la tapa de la revista Science and Mechanics. Loewy escribió acerca del nuevo estilo concebido para "la población de la edad del cohete del mañana", pero rechazó la idea de las tapas plásticas claras y de los motores de la turbina. El extremo delantero de tres puntos que se observa en la figura, fue una característica del diseño del Studebaker 1951. Algunos de los otros elementos de este modelo, también influenciaron el Studebaker Starliner de 1953. La cubierta corresponde a un diseño de Arthur C. Bade (1899–1975), un ilustrador de la revista "Science and Mechanics" que allí trabajó desde 1944 a 1955. La portada de la revista de la imagen, estaba ligeramente sucia y tenía algunos pliegues menores, arañazos y cortes. Fue escaneada con un aparato Epson Perfection V500, y guardada como un archivo tiff de 400 ppp. La restauración se realizó utilizando Adobe Photoshop. El tamaño de esta revista es de 6.5 por 9.25 pulgadas (165 por 235 mm), y tiene 224 páginas.
context_page_description: 1950s American automobile culture has had an enduring influence on the culture of the United States, as reflected in popular music, major trends from the 1950s and mainstream acceptance of the "hot rod" culture. The American manufacturing economy switched from producing war-related items to consumer goods at the end of World War II, and by the end of the 1950s, one in six working Americans were employed either directly or indirectly in the automotive industry. The United States became the world's largest manufacturer of automobiles, and Henry Ford's goal of 30 years earlier—that any man with a good job should be able to afford an automobile—was achieved. A new generation of service businesses focusing on customers with their automobiles sprang up during the decade, including drive-through or drive-in restaurants and more drive-in theaters.
  The decade began with 25 million registered automobiles on the road, most of which predated World War II and were in poor condition; no automobiles or parts were produced during the war owing to rationing and restrictions.
context_section_description: More people joined the middle class in the 1950s, with more money to spend, and the availability of consumer goods expanded along with the economy, including the automobile. Americans were spending more time in their automobiles and viewing them as an extension of their identity, which helped to fuel a boom in automobile sales. Most businesses directly or indirectly related to the auto industry saw tremendous growth during the decade. New designs and innovations appealed to a generation tuned into fashion and glamour, and the new-found freedom and way of life in the suburbs had several unforeseen consequences for the inner cities. The 1950s saw the beginning of white flight and urban sprawl, driven by increasing automobile ownership. Many local and national transportation laws encouraged suburbanization, which in time ended up damaging the cities economically.
  As more middle-class and affluent people fled the city to the relative quiet and open spaces of the suburbs, the urban centers deteriorated and lost population. At the same time that cities were experiencing a lower tax base due to the flight of higher income earners, pressures from The New Deal forced them to offer pensions and other benefits, increasing the average cost of benefits per employee by 1,629 percent. This was in addition to hiring an average of 20 percent more employees to serve the ever shrinking cities. More Americans were driving cars and fewer were using public transportation, and it was not practical to extend to the suburbs. At the same time, the number of surface roads exploded to serve the ever-increasing numbers of individually owned cars, further burdening city and country resources. During this time, the perception of using public transportation turned more negative. In what is arguably the most extreme example, Detroit, the fifth largest city in the United States in 1950 with 1,849,568 residents, had shrunk to 706,585 by 2010, a reduction of 62 percent.
  In some instances, the automotive industry and others were directly responsible for the decline of public transportation. The Great American streetcar scandal saw GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack Trucks and other companies purchase a number of streetcars and electric trains in the 1930s and 1940s, such that 90 percent of city trolleys had been dismantled by 1950. It was argued that this was a deliberate destruction of streetcars as part of a larger strategy to push the United States into automobile dependency. In United States v. National City Lines, Inc., many were found guilty of antitrust violations. The story has been explored several times in print, film and other media, for example in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Taken for a Ride and The End of Suburbia.
caption: Auto-related magazines became common in the 1950s
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "1927", "Image ImageLength": "2740", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "LZW", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image ImageDescription": "The 1953 Studebaker Commander Starliner was influenced by this concept design.", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 9.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2011:10:24 10:22:25", "Image Artist": "Arthur C. Bade", "Image ExifOffset": "380", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "518", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9458", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1927", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2740"}