The Government Created American Suburbia

As a kid, I assumed that Americans' tendency to live in suburbs was the result of individual choices. I thought people simply preferred suburban living, and that was why it was predominant. As I got older, I figured it was the result of a frontier mindset, lots of available land relative to Europe, and our economic strength in the postwar period. What we don't see is that decades of explicit public policy powered the expansion of suburbia.