banization is a complex process with many components, however I have identified four physical things and one Limmer (3)psychological factor that changed American cities. The wave of technological innovation such as the automobile, changes in government policy which brought about the interstate highway system, the segregation into racial and social classes, and the overall shift of economic activity. The one psychological factor that I have identified is that overall, suburbanization represents a change in the attitudes of the American people. These five Apillars@ that I have identified I believe at least triggered the suburbanization process in Detroit.In 1880, the city of Detroit had just over 116,000 residents and was ranked eighteenth in total poplulation (Zunz 3). At that time the city of Detroit was primarily a commercial center in the Great Lake system. In the next forty years, the city would change to a heavy industrial city, thanks to Henry Ford=s utilization of the assembly line. In Zunz book on the Changing Face of Inequality, he introduces seven propositions for the transformation of the city, with each proposition leading to the next one.The first proposition is how in 1880 Detroit was primarily a multiethnic society, with groups clustered together spatially due to a common ethnic background and the social status was on the back-burner. During the turn of the century the city experienced a Asilent social revolution@ and slowly by 1920, groups began to cluster together by social class as well and individual residents in each group would influence the others based solely on social status.The second proposition is that the evaporation of ethnically bounded neighborhoods were caused by upward mobility in the economic system of Detroit. Zunz argues that ethnic divisions were reinforced through upward mobility within a particular ethnic group during the turn of the century and wouldn=t disappear until the evolution of auto...
