Loathing cities had always been a defining American impulse, but as cities rapidly filled up with millions of black and Catholic and Jewish and otherwise not-quite-white immigrants, a lot of native-born people found cities even more loathsome. So in addition to nostalgia for the undefiled green republic, suburbs could also satisfy white people’s nostalgia for a time when they lived almost exclusively among other white (and Christian, preferably Protestant) people.
