Progressivism gone awry? IV: A Tale of Two Houses
No, Not the House of Commons and the House of Representatives.
Sometimes it is better not to keep a promise, but I said this little series would have four parts and for parts it shall have. So far, in my account of unintended consequences of progressive political reforms of a century or so ago, I've taken a look at ballot reforms like the Secret Ballot, Initiative, Referendum, and Recall, and the direct election of Senators. Let me close with something completely different-zoning and city planning ordinances, which date from about 1916. Let me begin with some visual aids and a question. Here are two houses, built roughly the same time. Both were built for the same upper middle social class-houses to be operated by the family without live-in help.
Here is the question: Which is the American house and how can you tell?
There are, of course, lots of differences, but the one to which I'd like to draw attention is that the upper house, which is from Maida Vale, part of Greater London is a double house, while the lower, is a single house, is in the North Brookline neighborhood, part of Greater Boston. You'll have to take my word for it that the individual units in the double house are roughly the size of the Brookline single-what the unit lacks in breadth it makes up for in depth. The garages in Maida Vale are add-ons, as well. In back, are gardens--modest by our exurban standards, but large enough to enjoy an evening's calm and with ample puttering space. As you can perhaps tell, each half of the double house is individually owned, and the owners have made their own decisions as what to do about matters like painting. How odd...yet it isn't odd at all in the English context.
One finds these double houses all over England: indeed, all over Western Europe. One finds them in American cities of the 19th century as well: and not just in cities. We have a handful of them in my town, dating to the early 19th century. We also have triple deckers dating to the same period-an easy walk to the factories constructed about the same time.
Briefly put:
I won't bore you with all the details, but zoning regulations go beyond this simple three part division; establishing among other things, criteria for number of units of occupancy, number of unrelated persons living together, minimum lot size, and maximum "footprint" of the property on the lot. New York City's discussion of Zoning, from its earliest comprehensive plan to today, is very good. I recommend clicking through to it.
As was the case with other political reforms of this era, city planning and its tools were created with the best of intentions. But as was the case so often, the best intentions were those of a specific class of reformers. In this instance, economic interests (of course) allied with aesthetic interests (The City Beautiful Movement), to create a specific vision of what a city should look like and how it should "work". While I don't think anyone would argue for the creation of a City Ugly Movement, the idea of beauty being in the eye of the beholder may apply here.
Regardless...good intentions do go awry. It would be fairly easy to defend any of these propositions, and I shall, if anyone wants me to:
Et Cetera, Et Cetera. Anyhow, reformers today are working to reverse some of byproducts of zoning ideas of one hundred years ago. Disciples of Jane Jacobs (who was anathema to planners like Lewis Mumford) advocate a New Urbanism. Paradoxically, the new interest in liveable cities continues to displace the poor through gentrification. A yuppy/dinky city would be as uninteresting to me as contemporary suburbs are. Those of you who are interested in these ideas might want to check out James Howard Kunstler's blog.
Thanks for your patience, and I return you to Sarah Palin or whatever else fancies your tickle.
There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.
Jane Jacobs.
Sometimes it is better not to keep a promise, but I said this little series would have four parts and for parts it shall have. So far, in my account of unintended consequences of progressive political reforms of a century or so ago, I've taken a look at ballot reforms like the Secret Ballot, Initiative, Referendum, and Recall, and the direct election of Senators. Let me close with something completely different-zoning and city planning ordinances, which date from about 1916. Let me begin with some visual aids and a question. Here are two houses, built roughly the same time. Both were built for the same upper middle social class-houses to be operated by the family without live-in help.
Here is the question: Which is the American house and how can you tell?
There are, of course, lots of differences, but the one to which I'd like to draw attention is that the upper house, which is from Maida Vale, part of Greater London is a double house, while the lower, is a single house, is in the North Brookline neighborhood, part of Greater Boston. You'll have to take my word for it that the individual units in the double house are roughly the size of the Brookline single-what the unit lacks in breadth it makes up for in depth. The garages in Maida Vale are add-ons, as well. In back, are gardens--modest by our exurban standards, but large enough to enjoy an evening's calm and with ample puttering space. As you can perhaps tell, each half of the double house is individually owned, and the owners have made their own decisions as what to do about matters like painting. How odd...yet it isn't odd at all in the English context.
One finds these double houses all over England: indeed, all over Western Europe. One finds them in American cities of the 19th century as well: and not just in cities. We have a handful of them in my town, dating to the early 19th century. We also have triple deckers dating to the same period-an easy walk to the factories constructed about the same time.
Briefly put:
Traditional zoning has [recently] proven less than popular in many cities. Zoning typically segregates land uses into three main categories - residential, commercial, and industrial. Thus, if a section of a city is zoned residential, then no commercial uses are allowed in the area so a grocery store cannot be built within a housing area. While zoning has served to protect property values and has enhanced the use of the automobile, it has created less than appealing cities.
Zoning: Residential, Commercial, or Industrial? By Matt Rosenberg, About.com
I won't bore you with all the details, but zoning regulations go beyond this simple three part division; establishing among other things, criteria for number of units of occupancy, number of unrelated persons living together, minimum lot size, and maximum "footprint" of the property on the lot. New York City's discussion of Zoning, from its earliest comprehensive plan to today, is very good. I recommend clicking through to it.
As was the case with other political reforms of this era, city planning and its tools were created with the best of intentions. But as was the case so often, the best intentions were those of a specific class of reformers. In this instance, economic interests (of course) allied with aesthetic interests (The City Beautiful Movement), to create a specific vision of what a city should look like and how it should "work". While I don't think anyone would argue for the creation of a City Ugly Movement, the idea of beauty being in the eye of the beholder may apply here.
Regardless...good intentions do go awry. It would be fairly easy to defend any of these propositions, and I shall, if anyone wants me to:
- Zoning practices have led to far greater economic segregation than would have been the case otherwise, and economic segregation will be far harder to eradicate than racial segregation.
- Economic segregation has had baleful social consequences, not the least of which are a lack of cross/class empathy and educational inequality.
- Zoning has increased reliance on the automobile and increased the carbon footprint of American Urban areas...it aids and abets global warming.
- Zoning makes communities less resilient in times of economic disturbance. If one's economic circumstances change and one finds one's self unable to support the lifestyle of an upper class suburb, one can't remain in the community-everyone is upper class, to move to cheaper digs means leaving one's community and one's social institutions-churches, schools, and the like.
- Urban sprawl now occupies some of the most fertile farmland in the United States, especially east of the Mississippi. Cities developed where they did for two primary reasons-water for transportation and arable croplands.
Et Cetera, Et Cetera. Anyhow, reformers today are working to reverse some of byproducts of zoning ideas of one hundred years ago. Disciples of Jane Jacobs (who was anathema to planners like Lewis Mumford) advocate a New Urbanism. Paradoxically, the new interest in liveable cities continues to displace the poor through gentrification. A yuppy/dinky city would be as uninteresting to me as contemporary suburbs are. Those of you who are interested in these ideas might want to check out James Howard Kunstler's blog.
Thanks for your patience, and I return you to Sarah Palin or whatever else fancies your tickle.
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AMike -- I will be back, with more links. But in the interim, may I say thank you for so beautifully illustrating and linking the unforeseen madness in American zoning that was honorably intended to prevent blight but which, instead, decimated neighborhood and community.
I spent most of today trying to write a proposal for a variance to restore mixed use in a particular place -- to eliminate isolation, to restore community.
Thank you for this post.
July 10, 2009 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks very much WW. I'm looking forward to the links. I teach a course on Urban America and any additional information I can get I will relish.
I also started the undergraduate program in Historic Preservation at my university, and we've always had a fondness for the kind of vernacular buildings which communities need to make them work.
I'll have to find a way to share my link bucket with you. :-)
July 10, 2009 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amike -- it's been a long, arduous day, so supportive links will be forthcoming in the early am, tomorrow. But you can reach me anytime, personally, at: wwstaebler @gmail.com
July 10, 2009 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think a worse problem is the suburb which has allowed Americans to remove themselves politically from social problems. The freeway goes right along allowing people to whiz on by never seeing a poor person along the way. Of course, the chickens are coming home to roost as some suburbs become little different from the urban areas people abandoned.
July 10, 2009 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is one of the points I was tryhing to make. The American suburb was made possible by zoning for use. Undesirable uses were zoned out, and by controlling for lot size, so were certain economic classes. The minimum lot size in my small town is 11,000 square feet. At the time my house was built the minimum size was 7,000 square feet. But it isn't hard to find suburbs zoning lot sizes of a minimum of 1/4 acre. Heck, I know of suburbs where the minimum lot size is 3 acres. Figure out the number of houses per square mile, allowing for roads, and you'll be able to figure calculate the income level necessary to live in that place. (A lot more than mine).
July 10, 2009 10:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are so right about the suburbs, Bluebell. Especially when you refer to whizzing by the ones that are ironically jammed up against a highway -- what a terrible way to live, isolated in a house bubble, a neighborhood bubble or an automobile bubble, constantly assailed by high speed traffic noise and pollution.
July 11, 2009 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
AMike:
I hope we can start an ongoing dialogue on urban planning issues -- if not here, then elsewhere, as surprisingly few people on TPM seem to be engaged by the subject at the moment: Donal and Miguelito care (both trained as architects), Quinn cares, and there a few others. Sadly, I suspect the numbers of those who are interested will increase as the economy worses, fuel prices go up, McMansions are foreclosed and more people lose their jobs.
Until then, could I interest you in working together to assemble informational links that would build into some sort of resource compendium? (I used to write about design for the NYT and the related subjects of urban planning and architecture and the sociology they create or hamper has been my passion for thirty years.) And maybe Donal and Miguelito would contribute on architecture as Donal and Quinn might on green issues, about which they seem to be experts.
Like you, I am completely committed to fostering the survival of urban neighborhoods, real villages and small towns that are low-rise and walkable -- real communities in which zoning does not preclude a lively, mutually supportive mix of old and young, black and white, rich and poor, residential/retail/other services.
One has only to compare the plan of a viable small town like downtown Charleston SC (or Savannah, GA) to the average suburb outside them to see the advantages of the former over the latter. Both towns in which there are plenty of single family houses -- yes -- in addition to duplexes, quadraplexes, condos, etc.. but all are on small parcels in the square footage range you cite which still provide plenty of privacy within their gardens without the horrendous upkeep and chemical toxification that seems to be endemic for the multiple acre parcel-zoned grandiose and isolated 'burbs.
But what about all those poor bastards currently stuck in the suburbs? Here is a link to a TPM post I wrote a few months ago on what might be done to use the suburbs we have in place, for now, for greater utility and cost effectiveness (though admittedly some of my suggestions would never fly):
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/wwstaebler/2009/02/shared-housing.php
For starters, I regularly track what Bill McDonough, Cameron Sinclair and Brian MacKay-Lyons are doing at any given time. I think Alain de Botton's series on architecture is excellent, as was his recent book...and so on. .
Please do feel free to contact me through email. Are you at Brown? Or RISD? If you don't want that information out there in a public forum, then please use: wwstaebler@gmail.com.
Thank you, AMike, for starting something useful.
July 11, 2009 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Be delighted. This is stuff that I care much about.
July 11, 2009 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guessed that the top picture was not American because of the chimneytops, the Tudor and the pavment right up to the garden walls.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/obituaries/06blake.html
I once read an article, I think it was by Peter Blake, that referred to "myths of modern architecture." One of those was the myth of zoning. I had never thought much about zoning as a determinant of form, but have paid attention ever since.
Last year I attended a lecture by a woman on the commission to rewrite the Baltimore Planning Code, which they're calling Transform Baltimore, and pointed out that most of people's favorite neighborhoods in Frederick, Baltimore and probably most cities are now impossible to duplicate under current zoning. Had they been enforced in the past, well-meaning parking requirements, setbacks and separation of uses that would have made walkable areas like Federal Hill, Downtown Frederick or Georgetown resemble more sterile, car-centric neighborhoods like Columbia MD.
July 11, 2009 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink