Singer, songwriter, and activist Malvina Reynolds watched firsthand as new suburbs sprouted around her hometown of San Francisco. She wrote the following song, “Little Boxes,” about Daly City, a community of tract housing developed by Henry Doelger. Folksinger Pete Seeger’s version of the song was a hit in 1963, and its message continues to find an audience. Reynolds’s version was featured as the theme song to the Showtime television series Weeds.

Little boxes on the hillside,

Little boxes made of ticky tacky,

Little boxes on the hillside,

Little boxes all the same.

There’s a green one and a pink one

And a blue one and a yellow one,

And they’re all made out of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses

All went to the university,

Where they were put in boxes

And they came out all the same,

And there’s doctors and lawyers,

And business executives,

And they’re all made out of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course

And drink their martinis dry,

And they all have pretty children

And the children go to school,

And the children go to summer camp

And then to the university,

Where they are put in boxes

And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business

And marry and raise a family

In boxes made of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same.

There’s a green one and a pink one

And a blue one and a yellow one,

And they’re all made out of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same.

Source: Malvina Reynolds, Little Boxes and Other Handmade Songs (New York: Oak Publications, 1964), 28–29.