Zoned in the USA by Sonia A. Hirt

Zoned in the USA by Sonia A. Hirt

Author:Sonia A. Hirt
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2015-01-26T00:00:00+00:00


Wright’s belief was that the new city should be centered on one thing only, precisely the thing that his contemporaries put on the top of their zoning pyramid: “We come, now, to the most important unit in the [Broadacre] city, really the center and the only centralization allowable. The individual home” (Wright 1932, 80, my italics).

Guarding Exclusive Domesticity through Private Rules

But the vision of an America of family homes in leafy settings was not easy to defend. Well before Wright (and before zoning for that matter), the proud dweller in the individual home faced a perpetual problem: unwanted change, or what Fogelson (2005) calls “bourgeois nightmares.” Since not everyone could afford a spacious home yet many craved its park-like surroundings and since many an entrepreneur figured out that money could be made by making or selling things in such surroundings, serene single-family neighborhoods were under permanent threat of “invasion”—by undesirable establishments and by lower-class residents.15 In textbox 5.2, one of Wright’s contemporaries, who, like many others, saw the situation as a key rationale for adopting municipal zoning, describes the problem.

TEXTBOX 5.2 The Perpetual “Invasion” of Residential Districts by Undesirable Land Uses, as Planners Saw It the Early Parts of the Twentieth Century.

The Home Site

It used to be quite customary to refer to a man’s home as his castle. This implied that his home was a place to which he could retire when he wished to be secure from intrusion and where he would be free to carry on his life according to his own desires. In the early days of any country there was justification for this idea. When a person picked up a desirable piece of land, bought it and a built a house thereon he could feel fairly certain that he had established a residence that would continue to please him.

As population has increased… conditions have changed.… It was pointed out in the preceding chapter that by far the greater part of urban land is used as sites for homes. Without a city plan most of this area has been developed in a hit and miss manner.… As a result, the seclusion of many a country estate or suburban home established with a rural setting has been destroyed.

This destruction has taken place as a result of various kinds of “invasions.”

There may be a need for a grocery store, a dry-goods store or a laundry.… Such a local store is apt to be ugly and generally comes right out to the street line, although residences alongside may have deep front yards. As a result, homes next door or across the street will no longer be desirable… the blighted area increases. How much better it would be if the location of a neighborhood business district could be determined well in advance of its needs.… This would prevent business structures from shutting off light and air from adjoining residences and spoiling their appearance.

A still more serious type of invasion by new uses would be the establishment of an industrial part such as a factory or warehouse, a brick yard or a coal-yard, or perhaps a junk-yard.



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