SmartCode Justice [The Transect]

SmartCode Justice Emily Talen Over the past century, one of the greatest disappointments of American city planning has been its complicit role in fostering the physical separation of people according to social criteria. This has been the unfortunate consequence of planning’s various regulatory tools, notably zoning. As Michael Sorkin has written, city planning has largely been devoted to creating an “armature” of “conflict avoidance.” 1 City planning did not start out this way. Paradoxi- cally, the twentieth century began with demands by urban reformers that something be done about the “monotony” of the slums. Thus, while early planning proposals—such as the Garden Cities of Ebenezer Howard—were designed to provide relief from the ills of the city, they continued to emphasize the interconnectedness of urban life. Even zoning was at first a mechanism of diversity, as planners like Josef Stubben proposed classifications that would integrate multiple uses in a coherent way. 2 Some time during the 1920s, egged on by a public eager to protect property values, however, planners made a wrong turn. As they struggled for recognition and legiti- macy, they began to think of their fledging profession in terms of single components—parks, streets, highways. Being scientific and efficient meant simplifying, and simplifying meant differentiating. One early practitio- ner, Harland Bartholomew, even described planning as “a divide and conquer system,” whereby the city could be separated into components for easier analysis, plan- making, and hopefully, manipulation. 3 Unfortunately, this meant separation by race and class, too. By the time of the landmark 1926 U.S. Supreme Court zoning case, Village of Euclid vs. Ambler Realty Co., the segregationist orientation of leading planners was firmly established. The court merely legalized it. Writing for the majority, Justice Sutherland stated: “the apart- ment house is a mere parasite, constructed in order to take advantage of the open spaces and attractive surroundings created by the residential character of the district. More- over, the coming of one apartment house [brings] disturb- ing noises…depriving children of the privilege of quiet and open spaces for play, enjoyed by those in more favored localities.” The Euclid decision was lauded by planners because it allowed them to discriminate between housing types in the design of new residential areas. By 1935, Thomas Adams, a leading planner, was proposing four classes of residential zones in the hope of reducing the “injury” that one housing type could cause another. 4 The upshot of such ideas was a system of zoning that protected property values but effectuated profound social inequities. Today many planners interested in a more socially just development pattern believe it is necessary to reverse this history in any way possible. But will alternative systems of land use regulation bring a better outcome? As new regu- latory approaches gain prominence, how can planners be sure they will reverse past forms of segregation? Of the present alternative frameworks, the SmartCode represents a particularly strong departure from conven- tional land use regulation schemes. Based on the notion of a rural-urban transect, it proposes a series of six increas- ingly dense zones of settlement (labeled T1 to T6), from natural areas to the central city. Within each zone, build- ing is regulated less by restrictions on use than desired attributes of form and type. Can the SmartCode be evaluated in terms of its ability to foster social diversity? Can its intent to regulate accord- ing to a “collection of qualities appropriate to a zone” really protect against the further breeding of social homo- geneity? As the history of American land-use zoning indi- cates, it is unlikely its effects will be neutral. Planning for Diversity To begin to address these questions it is important to define social diversity broadly—in terms of race/ethnic- ity, income, and stage in the life cycle. But what planning characteristics would be most likely to support such diver- sity? Surely, the relationship is complex: just as social and economic divisions may be both fortified by spatial condi- tions, so too might spatial conditions encourage social and economic diversity. 5 I propose four specific measures by which the design of the physical environment is likely to better support social diversity. An area (such as a neigh- borhood) might be considered diverse if it contains a mix of people according to these criteria. Housing Mix. Creating a mix of housing units is the most basic approach to building diversity. Such a mix was an explicit goal of nineteenth-century social reformers. Early Garden City plans also integrated different types of housing within the same block as a way of encourag- ing a mix of people of various backgrounds. In those early designs, strategies often focused on disguising differences between housing types—for example, by making apart- ment buildings look like large single-family homes. Today, mixing housing types may be a matter of reversing the rules by which social segregation has been achieved—allowing multifamily units where they have been excluded, and eliminating codes that have had the effect of putting a cap on density and infill (for example, minimum lot size and setback requirements). Putting Talen / SmartCode Justice