Opening Up the Suburbs: Notes on a Movement for Social Change

Abstract

In the short space of three years, a handful of attorneys operating through a dozen or so major civil rights organizations have created a national movement to break down suburban land-use restrictions and open these areas to low-income families and racial minorities. Supported principally by a small number of private foundations, these activists have generated the legal and economic doctrines which underpin the movement and have begun to establish these doctrines through case law, legislation, administrative regulation, and educational efforts. These activists have also stimulated other institutional powers, such as the federal government, private industry and, to some degree, the poor and racial minorities themselves, to take at least limited acti0n in support of opening the suburbs.