Automotive Suburbs

A major product of the automotive revolution in transportation was the suburban explosion in housing, of which Los Angeles provides the classic example. The availability of privately owned cars divorced real estate development from public transit, and land that was inaccessible by trolley could easily be cut up with roadways and sold in more spacious lots. The top left photo shows Westwood Village in 1929, an early center in the development of Los Angeles' fashionable west side. The mass production of the automobile was eventually followed by the mass production of housing. The first large-scale development of this kind was Lakewood, shown at bottom left in 1951. Lakewood, located north of Long Beach, was a pioneer of the planned community. The city contained the largest subdivision of its time—with more than 17,500 homes built in two years—and was built around the first regional shopping mall in the West. The planned community has come of age with residential minicities such as Westlake, shown on the right during the mid-1970s. Westlake is buffered from the urbanized San Fernando Valley by 15 miles of sparsely developed land. The Ventura freeway (center of photo) ties the community to the Los Angeles metropolis, while a lavish master plan protects it from encroaching urban sprawl. (Westwood photo courtesy of UCLA, Department of Geography/Spence Collection; Lakewood photo courtesy of City of Lakewood; Westlake photo courtesy of the Prudential Insurance Company.)