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Suburbanization is a term used to describe the social urban dynamic operating within many parts of the developed world, and is related to the phenomenon of urban sprawl. Many residents of larger cities no longer live and work within the central urban area, choosing instead to live in satellite communities called suburbs and commute to work. This has set some urban areas of developed countries like the United States apart from many other countries where the majority of people live in urban areas with higher population densities.
Policies of the American Federal government, such as the building of an efficient network of roads, highways and superhighways, and the underwriting of mortgages for suburban one-family homes, had an enormous influence on the pace of suburbanization in the United States, especially after World War II, and overall encouraged the transfer of the middle-class out of the inner cities and into the suburbs.
Race played a role too in American suburbanization. During World War I, the massive migration of African Americans from the South resulted in an even greater residential shift toward suburban areas. The cities became seen as dangerous, crime-infested areas, while the suburbs were seen as safe places to live and raise a family, leading to a social trend known in some parts of the world as white flight. This view runs counter to much of the rest of the world, where slums mostly exist outside the city, rather than within them. With the increasing population of the older, more established suburban areas, many of the problems which were once seen as purely urban ones have manifested themselves there as well.
Another recent phenomenon in American suburbs is the advent of edge city in suburban areas, arising out of clusters of office buildings built around commercial strips and shopping malls. With more and more jobs for suburbanites being located in these areas, traffic patterns, which for decades centered on people commuting into the center city to work in the morning and then returning home in the evening, have become more complex, with the volume of intra-suburban traffic increasing tremendously.
By 1990, it was estimated that more than 45% of the US population lived in suburban areas. This massive shift from urban to suburban living has made the United States the world's first suburban nation.
"Suburbanization"