Flashback -- Levittown -- First Mass-Produced Suburb -- Archetype for Postwar Suburbs (Were There Pre-War Suburbs?] -- Bakken Relevancy

The other day I posted a note about housing issues in Williston. I used another city as an example, but DH reminded me of a better example: Levittown. 

From wikipedia:

Levittown gets its name from its builder, the firm of Levitt & Sons, Inc. founded by William Levitt, who built the district as a planned community between 1947 and 1951. William Levitt is considered the father of modern suburbia. Levittown was the first truly mass-produced suburb and is widely regarded as the archetype for postwar suburbs throughout the country.

The building firm, Levitt and Sons, headed by Abraham Levitt and his two sons, William and Alfred, built four planned communities called "Levittown" (in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico), but Levittown, New York, was the first. Additionally, Levitt and Sons designs feature prominently in the older portion of Buffalo Grove, Illinois, Vernon Hills, Illinois, Willingboro, New Jersey, and the Belair section of Bowie, Maryland.

The Levitt firm began before World War II, as a builder of custom homes in upper middle-class communities on Long Island. During the war, however, the homebuilding industry languished under a general embargo on private use of scarce raw materials. William "Bill" Levitt served in the Navy, and developed expertise in mass-production building of military housing using uniform and interchangeable parts. During this same period, he was insistent that a postwar building boom would require similar mass-production housing, and was able to purchase options on large swaths of onion and potato fields in undeveloped sections of Long Island.