Urban planning and NYC in 1931 Pt 1.
In this series I'm going to be reading through Volume VI of Regional Survey of New York and Its Environs to better understand what Urban Planning & NYC were like a century ago.
(attention span notice: 1638 words total)
Table of Contents:
Background (328 words)
The Foreword (507 words)
Contents (350 words)
“Outstanding Facts and Findings“ (400 words)
Conclusion (53 words)
Background:
Even if you haven’t heard of the Regional Plan of New York and its Environs if you’ve been to New York you’ve seen its effects. Published in two volumes in 1929 and 1931, it was inspired by an earlier plan of Chicago and meant to guide the future development of NYC. You can learn more about the history of the plan at the Regional Plan Association's website as well as Robert Caro’s The Power Broker given that the association & their plans butted heads and/or collaborated with Moses multiple times.
This plan was not just a random government survey with no impact outside of NYC. Rather, it was the foundation of a lot of modern urban planning. FDR looked to it when looking for public works projects to fund and inspired similar region-wide plans for many other cities throughout the United States as well as the 1944 Abercrombie plan for London!
Along with the two main volumes of the plan, eight more technical volumes were published beforehand and alongside them. The sixth of those volumes, subtitled Buildings: Their Uses and the Spaces About Them, is the one this series is going to be focused on, Mostly because it’s more focused & precise but also partially because it was the first one I found in the library.
This entire survey was spearheaded and primarily written by Thomas Adams, a leading architect and urban planner of the early 20th century. That’s actually the primary appeal of going through this book! I want to see not just what NYC was like back then but also what the field of urban planning looked like before Robert Moses’ full rise to power, the total domination of our cities by private automobiles, the stasis of late 20th century CA, etc.
Jane Jacobs touches on Corbusier and “garden cities“(which Thomas Adams did work on in England) but this volume is an opportunity to really dive into the actual practices of a currently ailing field.
The Foreword
Adams opens the foreword to the volume with the statement that:
In important senses a city or an urban region consists of buildings, and all else in its physical structure relates to the use, arrangement, and design of buildings.
Another reason why this volume is the most interesting one to look at is because, well, yeah. It’s all buildings. The next few paragraphs of the foreword are about the various ways in which this is the case, whether you’re talking about recreation facilities, neighborhoods, rail lines, even sunlight ultimately relate to how which buildings are put where.
After that Adams briefly summarizes the foci of the volume, which we’ll get into, but what is most immediately interesting comes at the end.
buildings, as much as any other element in the structure of cities, are subject to those laws of change that are incidental to growth. New York is constantly rebuilding itself in the central areas, and changes of character, bulk and use are taking place with equal constancy in the inner and outer environs.[emphasis mine]
Imagine telling an American(though especially Californian) planner anytime from, say, 1970 to now that change of character due to growth is just a fundamental aspect of urban environments. While this is an interesting divergences from contemporary urban planning wisdom(among many residents and planners), that sentence will be the high point of the next few chapters when it comes to good theory-of-how-cities-work.
The purpose of zoning as put forth by Adams are less alien to present notions.
Zoning…is essential to prevent these changes from increasing congestion and from adding to the degree of unhealthful overcrowding where rebuilding is taking place…it is equally…essential…in preventing the inception of [overcrowding] where land is unbuilt upon.
However, there is a significant historical caveat to this description! The current population of Manhattan is roughly 1.6 million, but in 1930 it was even larger at 1.8 million! At the same time, the average building height in 1933 was a mere 6 stories.
In fact, this volume contains this amazing map of the heights of buildings in Manhattan south of 59th street. Almost every one is less than eleven stories, and picking out the ones above forty is a real challenge.
Meanwhile New York as a whole currently has at least 7,248 buildings that are twelve or more stories(This website is SUPER cool. Incredible amount of data about buildings in big cities throughout the world. Check it out).
The twenties were also towards the end of the tenement era where hundreds of poor, often immigrant, New Yorkers were squashed together in incredibly dangerous and poor living conditions.
Suffice it to say, overcrowding and poor sanitation were real and serious problems that NYC faced when Adams was writing this. The current fear of overcrowding that paralyzes contemporary cities is possibly a mutant offshoot of the progressive era(similar to how many environmental groups have abused their stated goals in recent years).
What will be really interesting is seeing the types of zoning solutions Adams proposes to deal with those issues.
Contents
(I want to emphasize the extent to which reading this volume is a historical endeavor, not one focused on improving your or my urban planning capabilities. I’m excited to read some chapters with suspicious titles because of their probable absurdity, not in spite of it!)
The volume is composed of three monographs. The first, written by Adams himself, focuses on the distinctions between public and private buildings and the “principles which have to be considered in relation to the…proportions, densities and uses of buildings.“
Chapters in this monograph I expect to be particularly interesting, based solely off their titles, are:
Collective Interest in Neighborhoods
Public Markets and Street Obstructions
Use and Design of Public Open Areas
Relation of Types of Building to Horizontal and Vertical Growth
Building Densities and Transit [very excited about this one]
Transit and Distribution of Buildings in European Cities
Sidewalk Capacity
Recreational Uses of Streets
An interpretation of Police Power
Economic Capacity of the Skyscraper Defeated by Overcrowding
The second monograph was written by both Adams and one Wayne D. Heydecker and is concerned with the extent of overcrowding in homes. The chapters in this section I’m excited to read are:
Crime and Delinquency in Relation to Housing
Effects of Immigration on Housing
A Minimum Standard of Density for Health
Tenements and Their Problems
Trends in Vacancies of Apartments
Trends in Rents
Housing Remedies
Rent Restriction
Forms of State and Municipal Aid
Housing Policies in Europe
Demolition and Reconstruction
Suburban Housing and Model Communities
Education of Public Opinion
The Meaning of Liberty
The third and final monograph was written by Edward M. Bassett and is about the legal problems of zoning. Bassett is known as “the father of American zoning“ and for developing the terms “freeway“ and “parkway.“ I’m curious and a bit trepidatious(TIL you can just add “ious“ to anything) to see what he has to say. particularly about:
Zoning Looks to the Future and Protects Property
What a Zoning Ordinance Should Not Include
Height Restrictions
Existing Non-conforming Uses
Ok you’ve all been patient with me so far, now let’s learn some neat facts!
“Outstanding Facts and Findings“
Right before the actual monographs begin, there’s a few pages of tightly packed lists of the primary findings of this study, of which I will select a few particularly striking ones.
New York City suffers less from height of building than from excessive coverage of land with buildings.
There is need of one well organized art center in New York City.
Tabulation of all the number of the various types of buildings in Greater New York in 1929 reveals that there are in all 637,527 buildings, whose assessed valuation is $10,096,733,614.
It is concluded that excessive building bulk exists in any area where buildings actually cover 40 per cent of the gross area and average more than 10 stories in height.
There have been no conclusive studies of the relation between building bulk and traffic.
Land values will adjust themselves to any density of building permitted by the city, and should not be allowed to force high building.
Public opinion is awakening to the importance of preserving natural beauty and obtaining sufficient spaciousness about buildings to permit some preservation of nature.
An average of twelve houses (50 persons) per acre would permit 9,536,000 persons to live in New York City alone. The present average in New York City is 36 persons per acre. [it was 41.3 per acre in 2000]
The average cost per room in Manhattan exactly doubled between 1913 and 1925.
Colored people always have to pay exceptionally high rents. [emphasis mine]
Old houses represent the largest proportion of dwellings in a city, and a very large number of the population must always live in old houses.
The ownership of vacant land by European municipalities has proved to be an effective method of preventing injurious land speculation, and consequently making possible the provision of low priced land for housing purposes. A constructive housing policy should include such public acquisition and development of land, so long as it does not include actual buildings of houses. [emphasis mine]
In great cities where tenancy instead of ownership of homes prevails, it is most difficult to arouse public interest in housing improvement.
Dumping, that is, the total exclusion of necessary but undesirable uses so that they are obliged to go elsewhere, should not be practised[sic] under zoning.
A [FUNDAMENTAL] purpose of zoning is the protection of residence from invasion by business and industry, and of business by industry.
Conclusion
Ok that’s all for now! Thanks for sticking around this long(or just scrolling all the way to the bottom). Let me know if continuing this sounds interesting and/or if there’s anything specific you’d like me to focus on. I’ll try write more than one of these a month but I’m very lazy.