Why did fast food move into urban centers in the 1960s?

Fast food moved into the urban centers late in the late 1960s and part of this was a result of the fact that they had saturated the suburbs and needed to expand. And this had a lot to do with the Civil Rights era, which is a fascinating sort of intersection in the story.

How did restaurants change over time?

In other developments, old restaurant formats such as automats, diners, cafeterias, and drive-ins disappeared or shrank drastically in numbers. Fast food and dinner house chains, relatively scarce at the beginning of the decade, flourished by its end. Black Americans began to make headway in gaining civil rights in restaurants.

Why did American restaurants become more popular?

Americans grew wealthier, traveled more, and demanded more exotic cuisine. Yet there were few trained restaurant cooks. Convenience food – in the guise of continental dishes (as in pineapple = Hawaiian) – offered the solution for many restaurants as the decade wore on.