Introduction

As a result of homogeneous suburban neighborhoods and highway commercial sprawl, a strong emphasis is being placed upon the design and form of our built environment. One of the driving influences is to design places for people instead of the car. Vast seas of asphalt in front of stores or a line of barren garage doors on a residential street is vehicle based design. Interesting streets designed for pedestrian comfort is today's vision of placemaking. This article will first look at land use growth management, its beginnings and the resulting urban form. Then an alternative growth management technique using the form of development will be examined.

Chapter One; Results of Land Use

Land use controls began in New York City in the 1870's with the Tenement Acts and have been the primary growth management method in this country ever since. Like any system, there intended and unintended consequences inherent in the application of a process. In the case of land use growth management, the results have created many soulless places oriented to the auto. This chapter explores the history of our current condition and examines our behaviours and thoughts as a consequence of land use growth control.

LAND USE AS A GROWTH MANAGEMENT PROCESS; ZONING BEGINS

1916 New York; the Equitable Building

The Equitable Building was constructed and its significantly large scale caused a public outcry. Opponents of the building were outraged at the unprecedented volume of the building which cast a 7 acre shadow on the surrounding streets. In response, the city adopted the 1916 Zoning Resolution which limited building height and required setbacks for new buildings to allow the penetration of sunlight to street level. Specifically, new buildings were required to withdraw progressively at a defined angle from the street as they rose, in order to preserve sunlight and the open atmosphere in their surroundings for the good of city residents.

Zoning Codified; Euclid v Ambler Realty, 1926

Ambler Realty owned 68 acres of land in the village of Euclid, a suburb of Cleveland. The village, in an attempt to prevent industrial Cleveland from growing into and subsuming Euclid and prevent the change in character of the village, developed a zoning ordinance based upon 6 classes of use (residential, industrial and commercial), 3 classes of height and 4 classes of area.

The property in question was divided into three use classes, as well as various height and area classes, thereby hindering Ambler Realty from developing the land for an industrial use. Ambler Realty sued the village, arguing that the zoning ordinance had substantially reduced the value of the land by limiting its use, amounting to a deprivation of Ambler's liberty and property without due process. The Court decided that the zoning ordinance was not an unreasonable extension of the village's police power, the ordinance did have a rational basis and did not have the character of arbitrary fiat and thus the zoning ordinance was not unconstitutional.

Colors on a Map

At the time of Euclid, zoning was a relatively new concept, and indeed there had been rumblings that it was an unreasonable intrusion into private property rights for a government to restrict how an owner might use property. The court, in finding that there was valid government interest in maintaining the character of a neighborhood and in regulating where certain land uses should occur, allowed for the subsequent explosion in zoning ordinances across the country.

Results of Land Use Control

Planning has long been dominated by land use issues which are an awkward means of growth control as evidenced by our miles of highway commercial sprawl and auto dominated life. The main consideration with land use control is that adjacent land uses need to be compatible with each other. As a result, vast stretches of similar land uses have been developed all in the name of compatibility. This has then caused a total reliance on the auto to travel from remote suburban homes to jobs, shops, schools and entertainment.

Suburbia begins

The word suburb was first used in the 14th century to describe a residential area outside the wall of the city; between the city and the countryside. These first homes outside the urban area were for the underprivileged and the agrarian workers outside the safety of the town. With the advent of the industrial revolution, cities not only became denser but less healthy and dirty with primitive sanitation. The rich were the only ones who could afford to escape these early urban conditions by moving to the country in the original suburban developments. The first suburbs consisted of large lots designed in the English Landscape School such as Riverside outside Chicago and Llewellyn Park outside New York. Preserved open space systems, curvilinear roadways, emphasized view sheds all in a natural setting become the suburban design model for these early subdivisions all in a very park like setting.

A Better Suburban Model?

In 1929, Clarence Stein and Henry Wright designed Radburn, New Jersey twelve miles outside New York City. Known as the first "Garden City" in America because of its open space system, Radburn promoted itself as the "Town for the Motor Age"because it was the first community that planned for the automobile. Radburn broke with the established low density suburban practice by offering small lot sizes. Average lot sizes were forty-five hundred square feet fronting on a street and on an interconnected open space system to the rear. The open space system connected to commercial or civic uses providing a strong community pedestrian circulation system which was separate from the vehicular circulation system. The primary technique for separating pedestrian and autos was known as the superblock; a large block of land surrounded by main roads. Houses are grouped around small cul-de-sacs, each connected to a main collector road, introducing the cul-de-sac concept to suburbia.

Suburbia HO!; 1945

After World War II, there was a dramatic, national housing shortage. The lack of housing construction during the war coupled with the return of millions of young men, many who were starting families, created a critical shortage of housing. Between 1950 and 1960, new suburban developments on the outskirts of America's cities drew 20 million inhabitants. One response to the suburban housing demand was to develop new communities of primarily single family homes. The development pattern of these new subdivisions borrowed from the historical suburban antecedents; unfortunately, most of these suburban design ideals were lost in translation while preserving only the design techniques.

The war effort had caused industry to be more efficient (production lines) and produce much more cost efficient products; particularly true for automobiles and housing. While the suburbs had historically been the exclusive domain of the wealthy, they were now open to the working class. Thus, cars and the freedom they provide opened up the now suddenly affordable new suburbs to middle America.

Levittown

Abe Levitt built mass produced housing for the war effort. He translated this affordable product to a potato farm on Long Island with Levittown. It became a 14,000 home community loosely based upon the historic suburban model; however, lost in the translation were the open spaces, preservation of natural systems, pedestrian orientation and emphasized views. All that really remained were the curvy streets.

The houses were small two bedroom, one bath homes with the kitchen on the street side, no garage or carport, on a quarter acre lot. The price was affordable, breaking from the elitist past of earlier communities. It became a sign of status for the working man to be "admitted" to the heretofore unaffordable suburbs. To conjure up the vision of the exclusive, high priced suburbs of the past, streets were laid out in the English Landscape School's curvilinear pattern. However, because it had been flat farm land, there were few natural features to provide a basis for site plan organization. The curvilinear pattern of subdivision design was for mere effect without the design purpose of Riverside or Radburn.

The Ranch House; 1954

Levittown also introduced the ranch house (wide not deep) illustrating the suburban mantra of cheap, abundant land. The rearranged floor plan moved the kitchen to the rear for a backyard view while adding a carport to the front. This built upon the Radburn model of making the backyard the family's private retreat while the front yard was the domain of the auto (the primary transportation option) which was proudly displayed in front of the home.

Resulting Suburban Form

By coupling the lack of a strong pedestrian orientation with mandatory carports or garages, the Leavitt's refitted suburbia for the auto. Curvy streets were for autos. The front yard had no purpose other than parking the car and ceremonial aesthetics while the family retreated to the private sanctity of the backyard. The new and prevailing suburban model had emerged. Vast stretches of mono land use (which are thus compatible with each other) all connected by a dendritic system of roadways (arterial, collectors, locals) which are incompatible with residential use. This leads to a linear configuration of commercial uses along major roadways and then leads to the scale of the car being the dominant development theme for the highway commercial strips.

Results from Colors on a Map

Land use compatibility requires different land uses to be physically separated as a mitigation measure. This in turn causes similar land uses to cluster together thereby separating housing from jobs from retail from civic uses. The only means to get between land uses requires travel; usually by car. This exhibit is an example of "compatibility" from a land use/zoning perspective. In the adjacent aerial photo, single family homes in the background are "buffered' from the commercial use by a wall and physical separation. However, the only way to go buy a quart of milk at the nearby store is to drive your car out onto the collector streets to circle around to the arterial street and reach the commercial uses which are actually proximate to the housing. Because similar land uses are considered compatible, vast areas of a community end up with the same land use. With little diversity of use, basic needs are excluded from residential areas. The classic example of this homogenous land use pattern is single family sprawl stretching across the landscape. Adjacent land uses all being similar causes far greater problems than the mixing incompatible uses; poor and expensive public services, expanding carbon footprint, increased fossil fuel consumption and wasted time in traffic all result from this development pattern.