Today, we have replaced the farmer working in the field with the weekend warrior battling dandelions. Dandelions illustrate our clash with the land. Homeowners will spend small fortunes on flowers to beautify the garden and then spend even more money on poisons to kill the flowers that grow for free; all in the pursuit of an artificial ideal. The physical landscape we create can be a force that affects our memory. What we see can change the very nature of who we are, and the way we see the world around us is as much a product of the world as it is the force that drives our interaction with it. As we change the world around us we change the way we remember the world. It is an endless cycle of cause and effect.
The American Century, the period following World War II, saw massive increases in the wealth and population of the United States and was the turning point when America became the dominant power in the world. Increased government spending for the war effort funneled money into the private sector, revitalized the manufacturing sector of the economy, and funded the GI Bill. Without this funding for veterans to buy new homes, the development of the suburbs might not have occurred. The country wasn’t just wealthier. The wealth was broadly distributed in American society.