Urban Anxieties during the Cold War

     In the article, “Disaster and decentralization: American cities and the Cold War,” Matthew Farish contends,

However, this process also operated in reverse: discussions on the status of cities        were specifically appropriated and encouraged by the development of Cold War   geopolitical uncertainty, and by technology-inspired changes to the theory and practice of warfare. It was precisely the domestic geography of Cold War risks that led to the scientific planning schemes – some more drastic than others – designed to order and manage urban spaces while concurrently maintaining the various symbolic distinctions between central city and suburb (141).

       This quote encompasses many of Matthew Farish’s points, including the spacial relationship between cities and suburbs, the vulnerability and scapegoating of cities, and the encompassing change in American decision-making calculus due to development of nuclear technology. Looking at the bigger picture, this quote is significant insofar as it links a potential nuclear attack to the discussion of increased discourse on the susceptibility of cities as high population density areas, mentions the increased importance of scientific planning and research, and highlights the narrative of maintaining distinctions between the city and the suburb. On the last point, the discussion of cities as “declining sites” (128) or a “place of extremes” (129) contrasted with the notion that the suburban nuclear family was the “locus of normality” (130) also stresses an underlying dichotomy present throughout the analysis. However, with cities at risk of attack, many argued for de-centralization, which concerned those who did not want to coalesce urban and suburban “values.” Overall, Farish integrates these topics effectively in analyzing urban anxiety during the Cold War era.

       Similar to images of Hiroshima sparking concern in the minds of Americans about a domestic nuclear attack, the images of the falling Twin Towers elicited a fear among Americans of omnipresent danger. If as robust of structures as the Twin Towers could fall, then any place could be at risk. For most Americans, terrorist attacks seemed like a rare, foreign occurrence, but with 9/11, people lost (or knew people who lost) family or friends that day, further personalizing the disaster. These images were so powerful that they ultimately fueled the justification for the “War on Terrorism” and strict security measures at home, including the Patriot Act. Through these actions, Americans placed faith in their political leaders to ensure that such a horrendous attack would never occur again.

A Tale of Dangerous Cities

The Soviet Union was an evil empire, always expanding and threatening the American way of life. Although Moscow was thousands of miles away, there was an enemy closer to home: the city. The city was a target for nuclear attack; the densely-populated centers were more dangerous than spread-out suburbs. Or as Farish wrote,

“… postwar America was characterized by a powerful disillusion for urban life that began at the core. Central cities, …. were spaces of blight, repositories of extreme cultures, classes, and races, threatened from above and within. This language of anxious urbanism may well have been symbolic camouflage for broader fears…”

The suburbs became a retreat from the heterogeneous (i.e., non-white) cities, and thus a place of safety. This quote sums up Farish’s thesis: in Cold War America, among the changes brought by the post-World War II world and the changing demographics of America, the cities were attacked by the intelligentsia as being unsafe.

However, this disillusionment did not end with the Cold War. When the Twin Towers fell, an indelible impression was made upon the American psyche. The Twin Towers were a symbol of American might: our capitalism, wealth, strength, and ingenuity. The September 11th terrorist attacks and Hiroshima shared a lot of similarities: countless lives were lost in such a short amount of time, it was a total surprise and urban destruction.

Suppression of urban anxieties during the Cold War and Post 9/11

In “Disaster and Decentralization: American Cities and the Cold War”, Matthew Farish argues that urban anxieties arose from the threat of nuclear attack during the Cold War. He believes that as the threat of nuclear attack rose, the collective population of the United States began to identify cities as the primary attack target and thus changed the ways Americans thought of and interacted with cities. To treat these anxieties, Americans turned to scientists and government officials to alleviate these fears. Farish best describes this phenomena when he references the famous East River study stating:

“One of numerous national security studies (or ‘summer studies’) closely affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, East River not only demonstrated the importance of behaviouralist social science to the military bureaucracy, but also echoed the mantra that fear could be channelled through a combination of training, emotion management and self-surveillance. 67 East River’s diverse and authoritative cast of ‘scientists, businessmen, and educators’ (including a retired general, the study’s director) detected precisely what was wrong with American society, and what could thus doom (Western) civilization: an ‘apathetic attitude’ indicative of ‘individuals, institutions, and nations that have perished in the past because of the inability or unwillingness to adjust to major environmental changes’.”

His discussion on how many different authorities in many different fields authored the East River study displays how Americans resorted to science and government officials to give them a feeling of security and control. Although many officials knew that preventing mass casualties from a nuclear attack were was too expensive to actually implement successfully,  they continued to churn out study after study regarding safety mechanisms against nuclear attack. Although the majority of information produced by these nuclear attack experts did not contribute to great safety increases for the American public, Americans still placed their faith in this research to give them a feeling of control and comfort over the constant threat of nuclear attack.

Images of the Twin Towers falling on 9/11 are America’s version of the mushroom cloud and post apocalyptic destruction witnessed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the first nuclear bombs were dropped. Similar to coping strategies during the Cold War, Americans turned to scientific and governmental authorities after the collapse of the Twin Towers. New claims similar to that made during the Cold War, such as the new One World Trade Center being invincible to airplane crash, evoke the idea of science trying to alleviate concerns by providing supposed security. Whether we will actually know if the new building is plane invincible will not be known for sure until another attack happens.  Although Americans now worry less about images of mushroom clouds and more about collapsing skyscrapers, Americans are still looking to authority figures such as scientists and policy analysts to provide comfort and certainty against these terrifying images of mass destruction in America.

 

Fear of Attack: The Cold War Era and Post 9/11

 

“In the United States, a nation with a higher urban to non-urban ratio than Cold War rivals like China and the Soviet Union, a city was, as Bernard Brodie put it, ‘a made-to-order target, and the degree of urbanization of a country furnishes a rough index of its relative vulnerability to the atomic bomb’.”

 

In his article, “Disaster and Decentralization: American Cities and the Cold War,” Matthew Farish explain the reasons behind the fears surrounding urban areas during the Cold War. The quote stated above epitomizes this fear by calling a city “a made-to-order target.” After the Cold War, several scientific studies concluded that urban areas—especially highly dense urban areas—were much more concentrated, and thus more vulnerable to an atomic attack. Commenting on a country’s “degree of urbanization” implies that the more developed a country is, the more likely it is to become a target. Indeed, it is much harder to cause the same amount of damage by striking a lowly-populated suburban area than a populous urban area. This fear and research influence a wave of American suburbanization, as people hoped that distance from a city center would equate to increased safety.

 

When thinking of the recurring images Americans see of 9/11, it is useful to remember the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Especially in disasters where damage and death toll is significant, people are unable to fully conceptualize how grave a situation is unless they are faced with it themselves. Images of the Twin Towers falling persistently provide that visualization. If recurrently see images from 9/11, the event and the chaos during the event is very hard to forget. Thus, similarly to images of Hiroshima after the Cold War, images of the September 11 attacks keep the possibility of attack on Americans’ minds.

Rural Life as Described by Matthew Farish

“[T]he antithesis of the degraded city was the small, independent farm; but by 1950 this image… was an anachronism, replaced by the high modernist pastoralism of the postwar suburbs… It was these suburban ‘citadels’ that infiltrated the discourse of Cold War geopolitics: they were the quintessential sites of American life, the spaces where history was being actively rewritten.”

This quote is supporting the claim that America evolved during the Cold War away from a city-centric nation. The mass casualties and destruction of Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II justified in the minds of many the slow movement of people out of the urban setting and into rural America. Rural America became the secondary home for much of the population, it was “suburban.” As technology advanced in a way that made commutes more efficient, access to the city from its outer neighborhoods became easier and, rapidly, the bucolic countryside inhabited more families. These suburbs were extensions of the cities and eventually became municipalities of their own. As the population moved away from the city, so did American history, academia, art, literature, and money.

This transition fed into the hysteria of the Cold War. In was suburbs there was space for families to construct nuclear fallout shelters in their spacious yards. In the suburbs there were fewer people per square mile, meaning fewer targets for a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. In the suburbs, the children were raised in an ideal environment shaped by their parents and therefore had no reason to question the marginalization of people of color or homosexuals in American culture. Children were taught to respect the system into which they were born.

This respect for the system has progressed into modern day. After the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, stories of the bravery and heroism of police officers and firefighters spread around the country. Images and videos of the falling Twin Terrors and the rubble in New York City were juxtaposed with tales of American resilience. In the years following 9/11, America rediscovered its love for its cities as it realized how it had neglected to defend its population centers in favor crafting perfect suburban communities. The image of the Twin Towers falling shattered American perceptions of safety and renewed American pride.

Blog Post 2: Space in terms of defense and sentiment

“His argument was a relatively simple one: space was the best military defense against the bomb, and congested, poorly organized cities were inviting targets.”

In his essay, Farish highlight the rationales behind the increased infatuation with suburban living during the 1950’s, and how suburbia was a literal defense against cold war threats. He focused a large portion of his essay on the idea of dispersion, which is why the quote above is so relevant. Farish argues that space, or separation from the crowd, is America’s best method of defending itself from soviet attacks. While “poorly organized cities” were seductive to soviet intruders, spacial suburban complexes were practically free from worry.
Farish’s essay also draws parallels to political rhetoric today. This quote, along with more explicit lines throughout the essay, viewed space in a romantic and sentimental sense, alluding to the classic independent American farmer of the 19th century. Much of the rhetoric surrounding de-urbanization seems to remind the audience of America’s ‘roots’, which truly took hold in small communities instead of disorganized cities. This sentimental rhetoric closely resembles Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again”, which attempts to convince the American audience that it must return to the country’s original state and culture to become stronger.

The incessant imagery of the twin towers falling during 9/11 has had a powerful and long-lasting effect on the imagination of America. Most interesting to me, the effects of 9/11 imagery show up time and time again in America cinema. Antagonists, aliens, and evil characters constantly chose to attack New York out of every city/place in America. While New York has always been a hot spot for American cinema locations, new york has never been so incessantly destroyed. All three Spider-man series, The Avengers, Transformers, I am Legend, and The Fifth Wave (just to mention a few) are all post 9/11 block busters which romanticize the destruction and downfall of New York City. Because of 9/11, Americans now consider the attack of New York the most offensive and aggressive action that can be taken against the country.

TiC Research Topics – Mendoza, Faul, Sandoval

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TiC Research Topics – Cyrus, Tomas, Ishira, Amelia

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Possible Research Topics: Josh, Johanna, Anne

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