Zoning is widely regarded as a necessary component of modern American communities. Few question its existence, but instead complain only when zoning interferes with their desired land use. Zoning is an effect. The cause is the view that the individual is subordinate to the community. Unfortunately, few, even the victims of zoning, challenge this premise.
Land-use regulations were first used in the United States in the late nineteenth century in San Francisco. The city restricted the location of public laundries, ostensibly as an issue of public safety. In truth, the measure was an attempt to segregate the city’s unpopular Chinese population, which owned most of the laundries. In the early twentieth century, Los Angeles established residential and industrial zones, but the ordinance applied only to specific areas of the city.
During the 1910s, many Southern cities, such as Baltimore, Atlanta, St. Louis, Louisville, and New Orleans passed segregation laws that prohibited blacks from living in specific areas. Though most of these laws were eventually ruled unconstitutional by the courts, they were a harbinger of how zoning would later be used.
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