Blog #7 Kelli Grimm

As embarrassing as it is to admit, my knowledge of economics is slim. I took an econ class six years ago in high school and quite honestly retained almost none of what I was taught. My ‘science’ brain for some reason has a hard time understanding the underpinnings of the economic world, although that could also have to do with how heavily influenced it can be by crooked politics. The comic that grabbed my attention was called Little Boxes: The Suburbs and this was largely because it related a topic I have studied in sociology known as “suburban segregation” to economics.

The suburbs were created through the mass production of housing to create a space for the working class to live without overpopulating cities. People were driven out to the suburbs through enticing subsidies of mortgages and tax breaks and it didn’t make sense for people to not follow the crowd out of cities. This shift took the base of taxes out of the cities, so to counteract this loss, funding focused on ‘driving’ people back into the cities. This was accomplished through establishing roadways and car accessibility which actually caused further expansion of cities and lead to a cycle of increasing purchases of cars, further expansion of roadways, further sprawling of cities.

Through the creation of the suburbs, a classist and racist divide was established. People were discriminated from housing due to their race largely affecting African American and minority families. While segregation is no longer legal, this still perpetuates into the housing divides today. I don’t necessarily live in a suburb, but I haven’t had a neighbor that wasn’t white for the 20 years I have lived in my neighborhood. Additionally, a class divide was established through the creation of suburbs. While suburban homes were tailored to the “working class” they were marketed to the upper middle class and left the lower classes poorer living conditions, often times in neglected intercity neighborhoods. This comic shows how social factors influence the ways in which individuals are affected by certain economic decisions and how those decisions perpetuate discrimination.