Order before zoning: land use regulation in Los Angeles, 1880-1915

UnrestrictedIn this dissertation I examine how civic actors defined public welfare and police powers by developing a specific land use regulatory regime at a particular place and time Los Angeles from 1880 to 1915. It is a story about conflicts over land uses and long-established regulatory responses such as fire limits, building codes and single-purpose districting. It goes beyond familiar accounts however to uncover the particularity of local response, how individuals and civic organizations instigated a process of increasingly precise ordinance-writing directed towards particular ethnic groups and industries. The result was a series of regulations that by 1909 divided the entire city into residence and industrial districts, and by 1913 had survived court challenge. The city council used this legal imprimatur both to address continuing land use conflicts surrounding existing development and to attract and direct future growth.; Regulations to control land uses were created as part of a fundamental purpose of local government to maintain and enhance public welfare through state-granted municipal police powers for the general benefit of the entire community. I contend that the roots of United States municipal land use regulation lie deep within the country's urban and legal histories, within ideas about order and disorder, law, property and the balance of individual and community rights. In the United States these are manifested in a legal code, with court oversight when regulations are challenged as going too far. The regulation of land use represents a contested meeting point in the negotiation between private property interests and individual rights on the one hand, and community interests and shared public welfare responsibilities on the other