Industry and residence: The decentralization of New York City, 1900-1940

Growth changes the form as well as the size of cities. Of critical importance is the changing distribution of workplaces, and their relation, through the journey-to-work, to residential patterns. In the early-twentieth century, urban growth depended upon manufacturing. Following an era of mergers, corporations reorganized production and moved factories to the urban fringe. Jobs drew blue-collar workers into the suburbs, where lax building regulations enabled many to acquire homes by building their own. These processes were most evident in young industrial cities, but they also reshaped older centres such as New York City. For New York City, and exceptional combination of sources make it possible to disentangle the changing distribution of workplaces, homes, and commuting patterns through the first half of this century. Office growth pushed manufacturing out of the centre, but this trend was resisted by the inertia of fixed capital investments, and by a distinctive mix of labour-intensive industries. In this context topography, and a new subway system, presented a peculiar set of residential opportunities to New York's work force. Unlike most North American cities, in New York clerical and skilled blue-collar workers moved to the boroughs while a "modern" situation of social polarization had emerged in Manhattan by 1940.