Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back

by Jane Holtz Kay

Nonetheless, federal policies still sent resources away from cities toward fresh fields. Partly to avoid the possibility of attacks by German bombs, partly for diversity, partly to build more easily on clear land, the government meted out war contracts to the South, Southwest, and Pacific Coast. Shipyards and airplane factories brought some 500,000 new residents to live in Los Angeles, and the polynucleated region was born. A whopping $332 million in aircraft contracts swelled San Diego’s population. Boeing’s aircraft industry enlarged Seattle, while shipbuilding inflated New Orleans’s population 50 percent. Other war industries made Portland, Oregon, one and a half times larger and Houston one third. Production whiz Henry Kaiser shaped a fresh town of 140,000 in Vanport, Oregon, locating eight of his ten shipyards on the West Coast.