Before Zoning

Or, more accurately, this post is about what happened before zoning began to shape Hyde Park's urban landscape.  I refer you to p. 13 in Politics of Urban Renewal by Peter H. Rossi and Robert A. Dentler, written in 1961:

Retail shops strung themselves out in ribbon fashion along 47th, 53rd, and 55th Streets, slicing the grid plan into residential sectors rectangular in shape and bounded by shops on the north and the south sides. Businesses and shops further encircled the natural boundaries of the entire community by hugging the transportation routes -- the streetcar lines along Cottage Grove on the West and the railroad tracks to the east. By 1925 business and commercial developments had settled into the positions they would occupy until redevelopment would alter radically their locations in the area.

By "redevelopment", Rossi meant "urban renewal", when the commercial heart of Hyde Park was suddenly ripped out.  Planning in the late 1950s was primarily about separating residential, commercial and industrial districts.  A couple generations later, most planners believe that residential and commercial uses can be combined along one block.  That's a lesson in itself.  Half of today's planning notions will look terribly wrong 50 years from today; we just don't know which half.

The commercial building patterns that Rossi describes occurred before zoning became mildly effective in the late 1920s.  Those patterns can be seen as natural, in the sense that they were a response to the marketplace rather than the result of government fiat.

My reading about urban renewal has led to me to this primary conclusion: make changes gradually.  Sure, if you're not improving-- a process of death and life for buildings-- then you're really going backwards.  But sudden wholesale changes will probably be regretted later.

(The photo is from the website for the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference and is of 55th Street near Ellis, where the berm is now.)

Comments

[Zig&Lou]

I find this post interesting as we are working on opening a MarketCafe on 47th (and not in a strip center) and the City has had a hard time digesting us returning an 80 year old retail storefront back to its original purpose (the last occupant before us was a political office, and it had been vacant for a long time after that use). Although there has been a drastic change in the location of much of our retail, the beautiful nature of the layout of our City allows us to recapture the retail traffic patterns (car, foot, and bike) of a time when people could (and would) shop and live in the neighborhood where their residence is located.