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For most of the period (roughly 1890-1920) that most streetcar suburbs were built there was no zoning to separate land uses
Then why do so many of them have business districts and residential districts, separate from one another? Zoning has been around a lot longer than you think, as has the preference to not live on a busy commercial street but instead to live on a residential side street.
Quote:
Originally Posted by capoeira
Who needs an excuse for living in a suburb??
Stick around long enough, and you'll see why.
Quote:
Originally Posted by memph
Isn't the transition between pre-WWII and 1945-1960 neighbourhoods pretty gradual in most cities?
Not in my experience; not much was built between the early 1930s and 1945 because of the depression and the war. Employment initiatives under the New Deal focused on public projects; most housing built during the war was designated for people working at defense plants.
In the suburb I grew up in, the high school was built on the "edge" of town in 1926. On my street, beyond the high school, only two houses existed before the war, one a farmhouse and another a 1920s bungalow. Several other houses were built in the late 1940s, and the rest were built in the mid-50s. So the transition is as abrupt as moving from 1920s bungalows on one street to 1950s ranches and split levels on the next.
^^Not only has zoning been around longer than some may think, but "de facto" zoning has been around even longer, as Ohiogirl81 put it.
@memph- I lived in a neighborhood that had late 40s/early 50s houses, the real "little boxes". I described the house DH and I rented in Champaign, IL and even posted a picture of it on another thread. Built on a slab, no garage, originally built w/o a central furnace, very "basic" kitchen w/metal cabinets, living room, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. It did have a little "mud room" off the back door for the washer, dryer, water heater, and later on, furnace.
Then why do so many of them have business districts and residential districts, separate from one another? Zoning has been around a lot longer than you think, as has the preference to not live on a busy commercial street but instead to live on a residential side street.
Not disputing that zoning existed at the same time as the development of many streetcar suburbs.
But the decision of how and why to separate out commerical areas and residential areas was just good business for the developer and also good urban design for the times.
Put the commercial buildings at the bigger street car stops which were also at intersections of major streets. Commuters could get off the street car, pick up groceries and laundry and walk home (one to five blocks max). No need to surround the commercial areas with many acres of parking, you wanted the stores close to the residentail because everyone walked.
And many streetcar lines developed picnic areas or amusement parks at the rural end of the streetcar route to get city dwellers to ride out to the edge of town on the weekend, an otherwise dead time for business. Often times the streetcar company was also the land developer.
The reason these neighborhoods work so well today is they are walkable, with small scale, local businesses,
and the residential areas have front porches instead of three+ cars in the front yard.
Not all post ww2 suburbia is bad. Creve Coeur (st.louis ww2 suburb) has a growing nightlife scene and they have actually tried to urbanize the city. Regardless streetcar suburbs are suburbs so if you want to talk about suburbia (which by your standards means anything thats has grown from automobiles and highways) then say post ww2 auto centric suburbs.
Zoning did not exist at the time of the development of most streetcar suburbs. The first Zoning Ordinance was passed by New York City in 1916, by which time most streetcar suburbs had been developed. Other cities developed their zoning somewhat later, especially after the legality of zoning was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1926. http://zoningmatters.org/facts/prime...g/facts/primer
That's not to say that streetcar suburbs were not an attempt to have increased separation of land uses. The old central city areas were characterized by more mixed use. In Manhattan, for example, elites kept fleeing uptown because commercial and industrial uses caught up with their neighborhoods. Subdividers would put restrictive covenants on lots in streetcar suburbs, which might control the size of the lot, the minimum cost of the house, the uses it could be put to, and the race of the buyer. In this, streetcar suburbs were following the example of earlier, less common and more elite ferry-based and commuter rail based suburbs.
Cities were using non-zoning tools to seek land use separation in the pre-zoning era. For example, many cities structured their building codes to make it difficult to build apartment buildings.
Separated land uses were not always the way in American cities, so why do they feel so "natural" (to Americans at least)? Because most of our built environment was built in the zoning era. In 1930 there were 123,000,000 Americans, in 2010 there were 309,000,000, an increase of 150%. Or, put another way, almost 2/3 of housing stock was built in the zoning decades.
But even that understates it, for a couple of reasons. One is that average household size has fallen significantly since 1930. So it takes more dwellings to house the same number of people, meaning that the number of dwellings needed for today's population is greater. And by no means all of the pre-1930 population is housed in pre-1930, pre-zoning housing. Plenty of neighborhoods have been razed and rebuilt under zoning rules. That has happened due to both market forces (e.g. Adams Point, near Downtown Oakland) and public action (Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, a major urban renewal project).
Then why do so many of them have business districts and residential districts, separate from one another? Zoning has been around a lot longer than you think, as has the preference to not live on a busy commercial street but instead to live on a residential side street.
Most older commercial districts have apartments above stores, at least my town does. The businesses do concentrate in the center of town, but there were also valid business reasons not to scatter (increased visibilty). Once you left the center of town, it is mostly residential but in a few cases there a few businesses scattered.
Zoning did not exist at the time of the development of most streetcar suburbs. The first Zoning Ordinance was passed by New York City in 1916, by which time most streetcar suburbs had been developed. Other cities developed their zoning somewhat later, especially after the legality of zoning was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1926. http://zoningmatters.org/facts/prime...g/facts/primer
That's not to say that streetcar suburbs were not an attempt to have increased separation of land uses. The old central city areas were characterized by more mixed use. In Manhattan, for example, elites kept fleeing uptown because commercial and industrial uses caught up with their neighborhoods. Subdividers would put restrictive covenants on lots in streetcar suburbs, which might control the size of the lot, the minimum cost of the house, the uses it could be put to, and the race of the buyer. In this, streetcar suburbs were following the example of earlier, less common and more elite ferry-based and commuter rail based suburbs.
Cities were using non-zoning tools to seek land use separation in the pre-zoning era. For example, many cities structured their building codes to make it difficult to build apartment buildings.
Separated land uses were not always the way in American cities, so why do they feel so "natural" (to Americans at least)? Because most of our built environment was built in the zoning era. In 1930 there were 123,000,000 Americans, in 2010 there were 309,000,000, an increase of 150%. Or, put another way, almost 2/3 of housing stock was built in the zoning decades.
But even that understates it, for a couple of reasons. One is that average household size has fallen significantly since 1930. So it takes more dwellings to house the same number of people, meaning that the number of dwellings needed for today's population is greater. And by no means all of the pre-1930 population is housed in pre-1930, pre-zoning housing. Plenty of neighborhoods have been razed and rebuilt under zoning rules. That has happened due to both market forces (e.g. Adams Point, near Downtown Oakland) and public action (Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, a major urban renewal project).
It may have been called something else, but if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a damn duck! See below, from this very thread:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiana
Zoning has been around for a long time.
Zoning in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia During the 1860s, a specific state statute prohibited all commercial activities along Eastern Parkway (Brooklyn), setting a trend for future decades.[citation needed] In 1916, New York City adopted the first zoning regulations to apply city-wide as a reaction to construction of The Equitable Building (which still stands at 120 Broadway).
http://www.michbar.org/publicpolicy/...toryzoning.pdf
Before Zoning: Building Regulations Early building regulations in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, regulating the physical
characteristics of buildings were upheld by the courts, and by 1926, the Supreme Court could
say:
http://landuselaw.wustl.edu/powerpoi...11-01-2006.pdf Early Land Use Controls
• 1885—San Francisco bans public
laundries in most areas—aimed at
Chinese
• 1886—U.S. Supreme Court invalidates
S.F. ordinance in Yick Wo v. Hopkins,
118 U.S. 356
It may have been called something else, but if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a damn duck! See below, from this very thread:
Those are pre-zoning efforts to separate land uses (and sometimes to punish stigmatized racial groups). Their efforts towards land use separation helped form the procedural and political precedent for zoning. What's special about zoning is that it is a comprehensive system that applies to all land uses within a city, not just special cases. It divides the city into zones. You wouldn't need zoning permission to build under those older regulations.
@memph- I lived in a neighborhood that had late 40s/early 50s houses, the real "little boxes". I described the house DH and I rented in Champaign, IL and even posted a picture of it on another thread. Built on a slab, no garage, originally built w/o a central furnace, very "basic" kitchen w/metal cabinets, living room, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. It did have a little "mud room" off the back door for the washer, dryer, water heater, and later on, furnace.
Yeah, that's the kind of housing I was thinking of. Even though very little was built from 1930-1945, the housing from the late 40s/early 50s in Toronto seems to have just picked up where it left off in the late 20s with modest little bungalows on relatively small lots (or dense attached triplexes in the case of Montreal) for returning veterans and their families (as well as European immigrants escaping the ruins of war) and gradually transitioning to larger bungalows on larger lots through the 50s and 60s.
Also, I find sprawlites almost always discount the actual time to city center. e.g. Austin is a medium sized city and you couldn't reach true country at rush hour in under an hour in most directions. Invariably - people argue that their 30 mile commute at 8am takes no longer than 15-20 minutes (tops!!! they invariably add enthusiastically - as if adding three exclamation points makes is true) - when in reality it takes me 15 minutes at rush hour in my 2-3 mile commute at rush hour and they might be able to do 15-20 minutes at 3AM in a Ferrari.
You assume all "sprawlites" (as you so kindly dub people who chose to live places you disprove of) work in the city center. I don't and neither does my husband. Why would we want to pay a premium price for living 2-3 miles from it? If we want to go uptown during the evenings or weekends to eat or attend an event, commute time is 20 minutes. My current commute to work is nothing since I work at home and my husbands is 10 minutes. Our suburban location makes both better environmental and economic sense.
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