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by Cryptid 2064 days ago
>The Le Corbusier spirit of zoning

It's not Le Corbusier. Zoning in the USA started in the late 1800s, an effort to regulate light and air in cities, and turned by the early 1900s into an effort to keep certain industries and ethnicities out of "good" neighborhoods.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/6/28/a-history-of-z...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-06-19/the-birth...

https://fee.org/articles/the-racist-history-of-zoning-laws/

https://www.kqed.org/news/11840548/the-racist-history-of-sin...

https://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2016/02/american-zoning-as-...

1 comments

As your links point out, much as it was about "light and air" it was also about keeping out poor people and undesired races.

The first zoning laws in SF were used to selectively drive out Chinese people.

Just want to make sure that this often hidden part of zoning is above the fold.

It's also largely why racial segregation and housing wealth has not changed at all over the past 50 years. The laws are used to prevent integrations if communities, ensure that infrastructure like schools are unevenly distributed, and enforce our current racial divisions.

you read the links, thank you!