Demographic
Change in the Twentieth Century
By
Herbert F. Janick
Population
movement has always been an important factor in Connecticut history.
In the eighteenth century many young men left marginal farms to
make a new start in the West. During the nineteenth century, millions
of European immigrants streamed into the state. A more complex
population shift has taken place in the twentieth century. Many
prosperous members of the white middle class have abandoned Connecticut
cities in search of larger homes, better schools, and higher status
in the suburbs. Simultaneously, a large number of corporations
have traded city taxes, traffic, and urban blight for spacious
suburban headquarters. Beginning in the 1950s, aggressive urban
renewal programs enticed other corporations and retail outlets
into sleek, high-rise complexes that replaced downtown, low-income
housing. These factors have produced deteriorating Connecticut
cities that by the 1970s had become almost the exclusive home
of poor blacks and Hispanics.
The
migration to the suburbs was made possible by the mass production
of the automobile and the construction of a hard-surfaced highway
system. In the 1920s towns on the periphery of large cities began
to reverse the long-standing trend of population decline. This
development was particularly true in southern Fairfield County
in the path of flight from New York City. The exodus to the suburbs
was especially intense in the two decades after World War II.
Between 1950 and 1960 the three largest Connecticut cities lost
population while towns surrounding them grew dramatically. Hartford,
for example, declined by 40,000, while Bloomfield, immediately
to the north, more than doubled in size from 5,746 in 1950 to
13,613 in 1960. This shift of residence ultimately led to the
decentralization of retail and recreational facilities.
Fairfield
County, more than any other area, experienced the transformation
of the Connecticut economy from dependence on industry to firms
concerned with service functions and corporate administration.
Many corporations, in order to be accessible to highway transportation
and their middle-class employees, opened new campus-style buildings
in the suburbs or in the center of once small cities. Stamford
in the 1970s became the fifth largest city in the state with a
population of 100,000 because companies like Champion International,
Olin-Mathieson, Pitney Bowes, General Telephone, Singer Corporation,
and Xerox relocated there. Even places as remote as Danbury felt
the corporate influx. In the late 1970s Union Carbide opened a
sprawling headquarters for 3,000 employees at the edge of the
city.
In
the past quarter century, Connecticut cities have become places
of extremes. The downtown cores of Bridgeport, Hartford, and New
Haven have been revitalized by modern office and retail construction.
Constitution Plaza, consisting of offices, retail stores, a hotel,
and parking for 1,800 cars, was completed in 1962. The Plaza,
along with the Civic Center and a new crop of skyscrapers constructed
in the 1970s and early 1980s, draws suburbanites and visitors
into Hartford for recreation, shopping, and business. At the same
time, Hartford has become the home for more than half of the population
of the metropolitan region earning less than $3,000 per year.
Eighty percent of these poor are black or Hispanic.
For
Further Reading
Hartford
exemplifies the trends described in this essay, and three volumes
provide ample detail on the Hartford experience. Everett C. Ladd,
Ideology in America: Change and Response in a City, a Suburb,
and a Small Town (Ithaca, New York, 1969), compares the impact
of demographic and economic forces on Hartford, Bloomfield, and
Putnam. Sandra Astor Stave, ed., Hartford, the City and the
Region: Past, Present, and Future (Hartford, 1979), is a collection
of papers delivered at a 1979 conference. A geographer, David
R. Meyer, shows how economic growth and population change have
affected Hartford, Tolland, New Haven and Middlesex counties in
From Farm to Factory to Urban Pastoralism: Urban Change in
Central Connecticut (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1976).
*
Entry under revision.
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