FLIGHT TO THE SUBURBS

Business Must Follow The Dollar

THE enormous growth of the U.S. population has meant vast new markets in everything from baby carriages to washing machines and wrist watches. Will every retailer cash in on the bonanza? Not at all. The reason is that since 1940, almost half of the 28 million national population increase has taken place in residential suburban areas, anywhere from ten to 40 miles away from traditional big-city shopping centers. Thus, to win the new customers' dollars, merchants will have to follow the flight to the suburbs.

In the ten years from 1940 to 1950, St. Louis' suburbs grew 48% while the city itself added only 6% to its population. In the same period, Philadelphia's suburbs expanded twice as fast, Boston's eight times as fast, as their already-crowded metropolitan districts. The numbers tell only part of the story. Suburbia offers not only more new customers but better customers. Suburban families are younger and have more children, thus are potentially bigger spenders than city families. Average income in the suburbs is estimated at $6,500 a year, fully 70% higher than that of the average U.S. family.

The do-it-yourself life in suburbia has also opened up a vast new market. Power-lawnmower sales, for example, shot from 42,000 (worth $5,000,000) in 1940 to 1,275,000 (worth $144.5 million) last year. Home-freezer sales zoomed from 210,000 (worth $80 million) to 1,200,000 (worth $480 million) in just seven years. Papa, puttering around in the basement, spent $150 million on power tools in 1953, and a grand total of nearly $3 billion for all his home carpentry work. Many big department stores are already taking advantage of suburbia's cash and energy, stock hundreds of items in suburban branches that would look out of place in their city stores.

The huge shopping center, surrounded by wide parking lots, has done much to build the new markets. There are already 93 such centers around the 20 largest U.S. cities, and at least 25 more on the drawing boards. The investments run high--$20 million at Chicago's Park Forest suburban development, $30 million at San Francisco's Stonestown, $100 million at Los Angeles' Lakewood. And an increasing number of big city department and specialty stores, sensing the trend, are building their own suburban branches.

The growth of suburbia has changed the pattern of U.S. retail trade so much that only a relatively few new stores have gone up in the center of big cities in recent years. Even the old, established stores are feeling the competition from the suburbs. In Boston, retail trade increased 275% faster in the suburbs than in the city in the last two decades, while in Detroit, the J. L. Hudson Co. expects to lose fully 15% of its business to its new store in its suburban shopping center. To combat such losses, downtown businessmen are offering special lures to shoppers. They hand out cut-rate bus and streetcar tokens, even carry suburbanites to & fro in special buses.

The shifting pattern of trade has brought new problems to big cities, not only for businessmen but for city officials. As trade suffers, the city becomes relatively more expensive to run efficiently. New York City alone has lost 500,000 upper-and middle-income-bracket families to the suburbs since 1943; those who remain are poorer, less able to pay taxes for expensive city services. Lower tax returns, in turn, mean more crowding and more slums. Says Detroit City Planner Paul Reid: "Newcomers, for the most part, are in the lower economic level. As they settle in the city, others who have attained medium or high wage levels move out." Furthermore, those moving to the suburbs are often among the most civic-minded citizens; thus the cities lose leadership as well as customers.

Today, the flight to the country has reached the point where some suburbs themselves are getting crowded: Taxes climb as new schools go up; roads must be paved, police and fire departments organized. Because most suburbs have little industry, the homeowners themselves must carry most of the load. But now industry is seeking the country, too, looking for large tracts of open land to build efficient one-story plants. Of 2,658 plants built in the New York area from 1946 to 1951, only 593 went up in the city proper. The great stores, factories, and office buildings are actually changing some suburbs into cities and giving the erstwhile country dwellers a second taste of the city life with all the familiar problems of heavy traffic, congestion, even slums.

There is little doubt that the move to the suburbs will continue. As today's suburbs fill up, the migrants to greenery and fresh air will move farther out, spawning a new boom in home swimming pools, tree nurseries, basement carpentry and dozens of other businesses.

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