POST-WWII CANADA:SUBURBIA & BABY BOOM

What are the cultural values that characterized the 1950-1960’s?

  What values, needs did people think

suburbia would fulfill? Did it succeed?  

How did television and marketing influence consumption patterns and what are the

consequences today?

“The place of wide lawns and narrow minds” (Ernest Hemingway)

Stereotypes of Suburbia:RepressionWhitenessPatriarchalConformity

Suburbia ‘covering up’ a twisted, dark reality underneath: Edward Scissorhands, American Beauty, The Stepford

Wives (1975/2004), Pleasantville, Blue Velvet

SUBURBIA

POST-WWII CANADA:

• The “Baby Boom”

• Soldiers returning home• Strong economy, high consumer

confidence• Family allowances (“baby

bonuses”) - 1945• Social security, unemployment

insurance act - 1940

• 12 million in 1946 18 million 1961 (50% growth in 15 years)

• Immigration: 1952 limited by ethnic origin• Demand for labour more open policies• 2.5 million new immigrants between 1945-1947:

many refugees and displaced persons from Europe

• Pre-WWI immigrants settled in western prairies/farmlands

• Post-WWII immigrants mostly settling in cities

POPULATION GROWTH

URBANIZATION

• Construction boom: housing, schools, factories• Growth of cities: immigrants, where most new jobs

are

• Urbanization: the movement of people from rural to urban• ~1900, 2/3 of people live in rural areas• ~1970, 2/3 of people live in urban areas• Cities become more crowded, dirty• Those who want (need) to work in city, but also

want to have more space, a detached single family home, a garden• Large housing developments built just

outside cities: Suburbs

• Traditional family, family focused• Some women lose jobs to returning veterans, some

still work• Emphasis of traditional femininity, domestic

goddess (advertising)• Big homes need stuff: household appliances,

gadgets, furniture, décor • Environment: low density housing, large lots,

pesticide use for perfect lawns/gardens, individual automobile commute to work and services

• Dependency on cars: more affordable, more access made suburbs possible

SUBURBIA

• Optimism, consumer confidence• The good life = the latest technology and products

(status)• Competition with neighbours (“Keeping up with

the Joneses”)• Conspicuous consumption:

The spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services to publicly display economic power

Not to satisfy any physical need, but rather to gratify the psychological craving for status or the esteem of others.

MATERIALISM

ADVERTISING

• Boomer generation: purchasing goods for kids• Shopping as a past time, shopping mall as

cultural gathering place• 1950’s: most families have a TV in the home• Growth of advertising industry• Less regulation on truth of claims (safety,

health risks, promised results)• Increased rate of new products, versions

(planned obsolescence)

• 60’s/70’s: protest generation• Echo boom (Gen Y, 1982-1995)• Demand for social services as they age through

the system

LEGACY OF THE BABY BOOM

• Today: 2/3rds of Canadians live in suburbs• How they are known, remembered, parodied in culture

– what they have come to symbolize in national memory• Environmental impact: patterns that persist today (car

culture)• Urban sprawl and loss of farmland• Building on sensitive lands: erosion, groundwater

contamination• Consumerism: waste, planned obsolescence• Suburbs today: more ethnically diverse

LEGACY OF THE SUBURBS