Zoning

“ Zoning laws tell the owner of private property to what type of business his property may be devoted, what structures he may erect upon that property, and even whether he may devote his private property to any business purpose whatsoever. ”

“ Governor Cahill summed it up in his 1970 special legislative message, A Blueprint for Housing in New Jersey, supra, at 10-11:
We have reached a point in the State where the zoning criteria in many municipalities is two-fold; dwelling units of all kinds must be curtailed; industrial development must be encouraged. This is a far cry from the original concept of municipal zoning and planning * * *. ”

“ The act empowers the Zoning Commission “to regulate the location, height, bulk, number of stories, and size of buildings and other structures, the percentage of lot which may be occupied, the sizes of yards, courts, and other open spaces, the density of population, and the uses of buildings, structures, and land for trade, industry, residence, recreation, public activities, or other purposes * * *.”
Many people do not understand the importance and necessity of a zoning law in a city; they think it deprives them of private rights. ”

“ Accordingly the time is ripe for this revival to afford an opportunity to our people to look to more homes and better ones, to better, more economical and more uniform building codes, and to universal establishment and application of zoning rules that make for the development of better towns and cities. ”

“ That is why our zoning laws, which attempt to regulate the use of land and provide against unfair competition in obtaining the unearned increment, almost universally leave a loophole through which the property owners, by mutual consent, may transform the character of the neighborhood for more intensive uses and higher ground rents. ”

“ In the second place, the zoning of a city into residence districts and commercial districts is a matter of economy is street paving. Heavy trucks, hauling freight to and from places of business in residence districts, require the city to maintain the same costly pavement in such districts that is required for business districts; whereas, in the residence districts, where business establishments are excluded, a cheaper pavement serves the purpose. ”

“ When a zoning ordinance works to exclude the retarded from all residential districts in a community, these two considerations require that the ordinance be convincingly justified as substantially furthering legitimate and important purposes. ”

“ It avoids the error of trying to apply exactly the same building regulations to every part of a city or town regardless of whether it is a suburban residence section or a factory district, or a business and financial center.
"Zoning gives everyone who lives or does business in a community a chance for the reasonable enjoyment of his rights. ”

“ A cottage may be built for a herdman or shepherd for the keeping of cattle or sheep of the town. A cottage may be built for a poor, lame, sick, aged, or disabled person on waste or common land. More families than one may not be placed in one cottage or dwelling house. (This is a zoning law.)
Any person with land in fee-simple may establish a hospital, abiding place, or house of correction to have continuance forever as a corporation for the sustenance and relief of the maimed, poor, or disabled people as to set the poor to work. The net income shall not exceed 40,000s. ”

“ The direction of growth of residential areas on the one hand and of industrial concentration on the other refuses to be governed by such artificial lines. Changes in methods of transportation as well as in living conditions have served only to accentuate the unreality in dealing with zoning problems on the basis of the territorial limits of a municipality. ”

“ The fundamental objective of (the) constitutional amendment and the implementing Municipal Zoning Enabling Act was local control of zoning and planning for the purpose of effecting the public good * * *. The original concept of local planning and zoning never contemplated prohibition in lieu of regulation nor the welfare of the few in place of the general welfare.
The exclusionary details are fully set forth in Land Use Regulation, The Residential Land Supply, previously referred to. ”

“ Communities, large and small in this country, as they become civic conscious, have devised city plans. New York has made an elaborate report on the zoning of the city into business, industrial, and residential areas. ”

“ Where there are no zoning regulations to give protection, even fifteen feet of side yard will not prevent injury from a tall apartment house or commercial building.
Under no circumstances should the demonstration house, if of the detached type, have less than ten feet of side yard. If no detached house with ten feet or more (preferably fifteen feet or a little more) of side yard can be secured, then seek a house of another type. ”

“ But in a town-planned district an area is set apart for dwelling-houses, another for shops, another for factories. The position of each area is determined by local conditions, by the “lie of the land,” by the prevailing wind, and by the situation of railways and roads. There is a place for everything, and everything is in its place. This branch of town-planning is called “zoning.” Sites are reserved for municipal buildings, for schools, churches, cinemas and all the other requirements of our complex life. Roads are planned wide where heavy traffic is anticipated, narrow elsewhere. ”

“ If they are not satisfying to a majority of the citizens, their recourse is to the ballot-not the courts.' The matter of zoning has received much attention at the hands of commissions and experts, and the results of their investigations have been set forth in comprehensive reports. These reports which bear every evidence of painstaking consideration, concur in the view that the segregation of residential, business and industrial buildings will make it easier to provide fire apparatus suitable for the character and intensity of the development in each section ”

“ Reliable authorities declare that "the New York zoning regulations have prevented vast depreciation in many districts and effected savings in values amounting to millions of dollars in established sections." The highest class residential districts in New York, in which only 30 per cent of the lot area may be used for dwellings, have developed with much greater confidence, due to the knowledge that houses built would be safe from invasion by apartments or industry. ”

“ Besides this plow land, there was a definite area of grazing land, known as the commons. With the coming of enclosures this open field system was abolished. (By the term ‘enclosure’ is meant that all the strips of any one man scattered throughout the holdings of the village were given to him in equivalent in a single, consolidated acreage, which he had to fence, ditch, etc. Or again, the term applies to a large district, as very frequently the commons, that was fenced in for the wealthy landowner’s sheep-pens.) ”

“ The legislature may authorize cities to take more land and property than is needed for actual construction in the laying out, widening, extending, or relocating parks, [Pg 249] public places, highways or streets, provided, however, that the additional land and property so authorised to be taken shall be no more than sufficient to form suitable building sites abutting on such park, public place, highway or street. After so much of the land and property has been appropriated for such park, public place, highway or street as is needed therefor, the remainder may be sold or leased. ”

“ In a region where freshly-built suburbs lie ending
'Mid plots of the glum market-gardener's ground,—
Its bare, tenantless frontages gloomily blending
With grime and neglect that are rampant all round,
Runs the street, so forlorn it could not be forlorner,
Where, looking straight down a "no thoroughfare" road,
With the blaze of a new public-house at the corner,
The sad "One-horse" Householder finds his abode! ”

“ In the business portions of the town, these large lots have been, of course, subdivided; but nearly all the citizens own a full lot for a residence, which enables them to produce an am ple supply of fruit and vegetables for family use, from their own gardehs. Rented property is extremely rare; in no city of the world do so large a proportion of the people own the houses in which they live. The size of the lots causes the city to cover an area probably ten times as great as an ordinary city of the same population. ”

“ These wings are to hold forty or fifty small apartments of two rooms each; one man, one apartment.
"'Divide the property into plots, which may measure anything you like, from forty feet square to an acre. In the first instance I suggest choosing forty unmarried men, human derelicts, but men not more than fifty years old, sound in wind and limb; in other words, men who can work if they want to. I'd give each a plot of land and shelter, with free board for at least a year, furnishing him also with a spade and whatever other horticultural implements the head-gardener considered needful. ”

“ When buildings are erected on the outskirts of a city where the. conversion from agricultural land to building land is taking place, the character of the buildings will at first determine the value of the land. Such districts afford highly competitive sites, where the only difference between lots, barring topography, is in transportation facilities, so that building operators can control values in the new territory by their scale of development, as in South Brooklyn. ”

“ In the space of a year a locality that was in effect nothing more than farm property has been transformed during a period of unprecedented financial and business stagnation into a beautiful and rapidly growing residence suburb, with all the comforts and conveniences and appurtenances of life in the thickly built up part of the city. ”

“ The physical evolution of a large city from a small one results not only from increased population and added industries, but also from continual specialization in business and differentiation in social grades. The first step is the separation between business and dwellings, the original buildings used for business below and dwelling above being replaced by separate business and residence buildings. ”

“ THE PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF LAND The ownership of land by the municipality is essential to the execution of many parts of a city plan. Certain acts of private owners which have a tendency to prevent the realization of a plan, either temporarily or for all time, may be enjoined by municipal regulation. ”

“ Today blocks and blocks of the most interesting property in the city is devoted to dead-alive stores, warehouses and tenements. It would be an easy matter and a profitable one for the city to condemn sufficient property to make a splendid drive along this river and give the city a real air. It would transform it instantly into a kind of wonder world which thousands would travel a long way to see. ”

“ Three single family dwellings not more than 40 feet in height and related outbuildings, facilities and access roads, whether or not occupied by grantor, on lots of not less than one acre, including such grading and removal of trees and shrubbery as may be desirable or necessary in connection therewith. Professional practice of medicine, dentistry, law, real estate or insurance sales, architecture, art or music instruction, engineering or land surveying, by an actual bona-fide resident of such dwelling is permitted. ”

“ The Local Government Board does not seem to recognise that circumstances alter cases, and that the regulations which may be beneficial in the crowded and filthy slums of a great city, may he mischievous in a village or country town. Andover is an exceedingly healthy little town, as the table on p. 99 will show, and in it there must be very few, if any, houses more than 50 feet high, and the great majority of the houses and cottages have large yards or gardens. ”

“ Its streets, eight rods wide with broad foot-walks, cross each other at right angles, and down [Pg 164] each side course clear and rippling streams, fresh from the neighboring mountains. These spacious streets divide the city into squares or blocks of ten acres each, which are in turn subdivided into homestead lots of an acre and a quarter each, except in the heart of the city, where of course it is built up pretty solidly for several blocks. ”

“ Under this clause half the rural districts of England have acquired urban powers which, being exercised by persons having for the most part an interest in urbanizing the district—jobbers in residential land ripe for development, tradesmen, contractors and local builders—have been used as an instrument to prevent the erection of dwellings suitable for agricultural laborers and to tie the hands of landowners willing to provide such dwellings. ”

“ Not so with the land. A few years' development may change farm land right of way into city right of way, surrounded by factories, or it may change desirable residential property adjacent to a road into slums. ”

“ There is no reason why we should not limit the number of houses which may be built to the acre. Just as bye-laws enact that the rooms in a house shall not be less than a certain height, or a certain superficial area, they should limit the number of houses to the acre, since overcrowding per acre may be just as serious as overcrowding per room. ”

“ The outward pressure of one zone upon another involves the slow advance of the banking and office section into the older retail or wholesale districts, the continual following along of the lighter wholesale houses into the buildings vacated by the retail shops, the close pursuit of the best residence sections by the best retail shops, with normally a mixed zone of institutions, etc, acting as a buffer between them, and the steady march of residences into the outlying country, first utilized for gardens or cottages. ”

“ The refuse of the town is utilised on the agricultural portions of the estate, which are held by various individuals in large farms, small holdings, allotments, cow pastures, etc.; the natural competition of these various methods of agriculture, tested by the willingness of occupiers to offer the highest rent to the municipality, tending to bring about the best system of husbandry, or, what is more probable, the best systems adapted for various purposes. ”