The Heavy Hand of Early-20th Century Zoning Codes

You think cities have problems today? Look back to late 19th century America, when rapid industrialization and mass immigration brought explosive population growth and squalid living conditions for the poor. Families lived cheek-to-jowl in tenement districts near polluting factories, and they walked on streets filled with fetid, uncollected human and animal waste. Noxious fumes frequently seeped over to higher-end homes and businesses, too. Without proper sewers or drinking water systems, infectious disease proliferated.

This was the world in which zoning codes were born. With a very 20 century spirit of orderly progress, zoning attempted to separate different kinds of land uses, in order to protect public health, economic enterprise, and, of course, property values. In Chicago, for example, factories were clustered near other factories, far away from neighborhoods of single-family homes. Higher-density apartment housing was set apart, too, but could be set closer to commercial and industrial uses.