American elites reversed their judgment of tract housing within a single generation

Evidence

The radical rereading of Garnett’s work reflected a dramatic change in the way many Americans reckoned the costs and benefits of suburban development. In the years after World War II, the nation’s biggest homebuilders were hailed as heroes: By making the United States a nation of homeowners, the boosters argued, tract housing would help lay the foundation for a booming mass-consumption economy. Yet, just a generation later, a host of critics were calling the sprawl of suburbia an environmental disaster – and arguing that the problem of environmentally destructive development demanded far-reaching government action. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 33