“Light and air” is a very common excuse that people give for why we must have basic zoning laws, and while nowadays a lot of people mean it simply in an aesthetic sense – another way of saying “I like to be able to look out a window and not see another skyscraper 50 feet away” (though for some reason when said interaction happens on the second or third floor, it’s okay?) – the origins of it are very interesting, and I believe crucial to understanding today’s urban plans. Of course, the ideas that turn-of-the-century planners had about disease and density turned out to be totally incorrect – privacy and being able to look out a window is nice, but the lack thereof is not a great health risk. As Robert Fogelson writes on pages 125-26 of Downtown
Skyscrapers were also a serious menace to public health, advocates of height limits charged. As early as the mid 1880s, they said that tall office buildings were turning the streets below into dark, damp, and gloomy canyons. During the winter they blocked the sun, leaving the cold streets even colder. During the summer, wrote American Architect and Building News, they acted as “storehouses of heat,” driving up the temperature after sunset, making the once cool and refreshing nights unbearable. The skyscrapers also shrouded the nearby buildings in darkness, forcing the office workers to rely on artificial light – which, it was believed, put a strain on the eyes. Worst of all, the skyscrapers deprived both the streets below and the adjacent buildings of fresh air and sunlight. To Americans who still held that disease was a product of the “miasma,” the noxious vapors that permeated the cities, the lack of fresh air was bad enough. To Americans who believed in the new germ theory of disease, the lack of sunlight was even worse. For it was sunlight, described by doctors as “the best disinfectant,” “the best bacteriacide,” and “our greatest sterilizer,” that killed the microbes that caused disease. Sunlight and wind were as vital to public health as pure water, argued a representative of the Chicago Medical Society in 1891; without them “life would be almost impossible in crowded communities.”
From a sanitary viewpoint, skyscrapers were “an outrage,” declared George B. Post, a prominent New York architect. By creating the conditions “in which bacteria and microbes flourish best,” skyscrapers turned the streets into what a Chicago doctor called “the breeding ground for germs.” “To shut off the sunbeams from the earth,” a Chicago businessman added, “Is to encourage the bacteria, to breed fevers, to sap vitality, to make men and women pale cellar plants.” A few skyscrapers here and there would not pose much of a problem, critics conceded. But “if the down-town area were covered with twenty-story buildings,” the Chicago doctor claimed,” There would hardly be enough sunlight and air to support life.” There would be a sharp rise in the incidence of bronchitis, pneumonia, and consumption (or tuberculosis), the so-called white plague. The business district would become as unhealthy as the tenement districts, a grim prospect indeed. Writing at the turn of the century, another opponent of the skyscraper pointed out that some New Yorkers were planning to build a hospital for consumptives at the same time that others were planning to build a thirty-story skyscraper. This made no sense, he declared. “We build hospitals for the poor consumptive, and then we turn around and erect skyscraping structures where consumption may breed.” “We shall not lack for patients,” he said.
This isn’t just a quirky factoid – it’s an integral part of the modern antipathy towards density, as much as the consequences of the intellectually bankrupt racial eugenics of the era still reverberate today. Now, of course today’s planners don’t oppose forests of skyscrapers because they believe in the miasma theory of disease, but it is striking that the profession still accepts its turn-of-the-century health-based reforms as dogma. Nowadays we have a slightly different justifications for why the laws were a good idea, but the planning outcomes remain stubbornly similar. Then again, given that planners have never really faced up to their pre-war history (the rot only started after the war, they always say), I guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
A. There was nothing in there about eugenics.
B. While ideas about miasmas were off, the general notion that density increases disease is spot on. Disease is transmitted by human interaction. City dwellers get sick more frequently that suburbanites who get sick more often than farmers. People who take public transit get sick way more than people who drive. Do these facts make me support anti-density zoning? No. I’d go back to pre-1916 if I could. But it doesn’t mean the argument is false.
People who take public transit get sick way more than people who drive.
Wait, is this true? What’s your evidence?
Thanks for the history here. I don’t think this was just a turn of the century thing — I’ve been reading city planning documents from the late 1940s and planners then were very concerned about high tuberculosis rates in neighborhoods and treated it as an indication that the neighborhood needed to be demolished and rebuilt to save its residents from the disease. I’d like to know why it is that we can now live densely without spreading tuberculosis when perhaps it really wasn’t possible 60 years ago. Was it the development of streptomycin alone that did it?
There was a study in Britain about it, linked on SAS a few months ago. It found a significant relationship with some set of controls, but it wasn’t very robust, and its conclusion was “More research is needed.”
Thanks for the interesting article, but I don’t agree with your statement “the profession still accepts its turn-of-the-century health-based reforms as dogma.” I think it’s something that was a problem and no longer is and it is rarely referred to by planners. I’ve never heard a planner mention or refer to the wording, but I know it’s there. It’s time consuming and can be a chunk of change to modify a simple code. It’s nothing I’ve felt was worth the time and money of changing even though I don’t believe it belongs in zoning; except perhaps in dense cities where it could be used to alter architecture plans to allow more sun to reach the street.
Stephen Smith wrote [added numbering is mine — BH]:
“Light and air” is a very common excuse that people give for why we must have basic zoning laws, and while nowadays a lot of people mean it simply in an aesthetic sense – [1] another way of saying “I like to be able to look out a window and not see another skyscraper 50 feet away” (though for some reason when said interaction happens on the second or third floor, it’s okay?) – [2] the origins of it are very interesting, and I believe crucial to understanding today’s urban plans. [3] Of course, the ideas that turn-of-the-century planners had about disease and density turned out to be totally incorrect – [4] privacy and being able to look out a window is nice, but the lack thereof is not a great health risk.
Benjamin Hemric writes:
Regarding [1], while I think it’s true that when most people talk about “light and air” they mean it simply in an aesthetic sense (and not a medical one), I don’t think that most people are referring to what you can see from a window, but rather the perception of light and air to the man/woman on the street.
Don’t know if Fogelson mentions this, but the conventional wisdom (which doesn’t, of course, mean it’s true) behind the establishment of zoning in New York City is that it was the construction of a number of skyscrapers in the Wall St. area (e.g., the Equitable Life Building, etc.) that so aesthetically horrified New Yorkers that they felt it was necessary to develop height and setback regulations to protect the light and air reaching the man and woman on the street. It had little, or nothing, to do (at least according to the conventional wisdom) with views from within the Wall St. office buildings. Rather it was to prevent the construction of what was perceived to be an ugly city.
Regarding [2], (that the original health claims for height and set back regulations are crucial to understanding height and set back regulations today), I don’t see how the original health claims are crucial to understanding the height and set back regulations of today.
Regarding [3], (that turn-of-the-century ideas about disease and density turned out to be totally incorrect), first of all it’s important to remember that height and setback regulations, unlike today’s Floor Area Ratio (FAR) regulations, are NOT really meant to regulate “density” but rather to protect the amount of “sunlight” reaching the street — which is not the same thing. (Of course, height and setback regulations can indirectly affect density — but that’s not what they were intended to regulate.) And while I don’t know how significant this is in real life, the tuberculosis bacterium is supposedly significantly less hardy in sunlight — so, if this is true, I’m not sure if the turn-of the century ideas were “totally” incorrect.
Regarding [4] (the idea that privacy and nice views from within a building are what underly height and setback regulations), as mentioned above, I don’t think these ideas are behind height and setback regulations — especially since the buildings most often discussed are commercial buildings in a “rougher” era.
– – – – – – – – – –
Stephen Smith wrote:
“Nowadays we have a slightly different justifications for why the laws were a good idea, but the planning outcomes remain stubbornly similar.”
Benjamin Hemric writes:
Don’t know to what extent medical concerns actually influenced early height and setback regulations, but it seems to me that they have little (or no?) influence on today’s height and setback regulations. So, if they had any influence in 1916 (which seems plausible), there would seem to me, then, to be more than “slightly different” justifications for the two laws.
Also, don’t see how the planning outcomes remain stubbornly similar, since the 1916 zoning code contained simple height and setback regulations (to protect sunlight reaching the street) — and, thus, did not regulate density directly — and the current NYC zoning code contains both height and setback regulations (to protect sunlight reaching the street) and explicit density regulations as well.
By the way, I believe the original 1916 NYC height and setback regulations allowed for a tower of unlimited height over a certain portion of a building lot. Thus, if your lot was large enough, you could build an unlmited amount of density (depending, of course, upon technological limitations and marketability of the resulting space) — that’s how you could build an Empire State Building under the 1916 regulations.
– – – – – – – –
Stephen Smith wrote:
“Then again, given that planners have never really faced up to their pre-war history (the rot only started after the war, they always say), I guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise.”
Benjamin Hemric writes:
Thanks Stephen for the very interesing link to the Thomas Campanella essay, “Jane Jacobs and the Death and Life of American Planning,” which also refers to a recent new publication (which contains, apparently, an extended version of the essay), “Reconsidering Jane Jacobs”! I haven’t had a chance yet to exam either in detail yet, but I hope to take a closer look in the near future. I hadn’t been aware of either of them.
– – – – – –
Benjamin Hemric
Wed., April 27, 2011, 11:05 p.m.
P.S. As usual, I hope people won’t mind if any future posts of mine in this thread, if there are any, are done as independent comments (i.e., outside the nesting feature).
Haha, I knew that bashing the 1916 code would get a rise out of you!
Kidding aside, though I’m not a “supporter” of the 1916 code, if that was the worst that developers had to contend with, I definitely would not make a career (even a temporary one) out of trying to repeal it.
The relationship was robust — it found mass transit users six times more likely to get upper respiratory problems — but the sample was small and the methodology was just sampling people who were already sick.
Beyond that, I have a friend doctor friend who says there was a fair amount of work done on this about a century ago in London and Germany and he recalls it, from med school, to be incredibly strong, so strong that it helped us figure out exactly how some diseases spread.
He doubts much more work will be done on this because the relationship is “blindingly obvious.” “You’re also unlikely to see many studies on whether people who jump in front of cars suffer more broken bones than people who stay on the sidewalk. But it’s a pretty good bet that they do.” He’s a bit acerbic, though he did admit that the relationship would be somewhat muted by the fact that people who take a ton of mass transit would eventually get better immune systems — but that the improvement would never fully offset the increase in germs.
The actual study is weaker than the news story about it. Not only is the sample tiny, but also the authors admitted to such drawbacks as looking at a city where transit users are predominantly poor (Nottingham), and not controlling for work environment or for whether people rode transit in the peak or off-peak. The lit review includes some studies that show no significant relationship. The section on the strengths and limitations of the results is therefore much heavier on limitations and ends with the sentence, “Although small and limited in scope, this study nevertheless suggests that a larger more detailed investigation would be appropriate” – in order words: “conclusion: more research is needed.”
Stephen Smith wrote (in part):
” . . . though I’m not a “supporter” of the 1916 code, if that was the worst that developers had to contend with, I definitely would not make a career (even a temporary one) out of trying to repeal it.”
Benjamin Hemric writes:
I’m having trouble making sense of this statement, as various words within it seem to me to be working at cross purposes and contradicting one another. Perhaps we are using words somewhat differently? Therefore I will reword the statement along the lines of what I think might have been meant, in order to address what I see as some possible lingering misperceptions about zoning in general and the NYC’s 1916 and 1961 zoning codes in particular:
” . . . though I’m not much of a “supporter” of the 1916 NYC zoning code in the first place, if preventing the construction of streets that New Yorkers felt were dark and oppressive (in their eyes) was the most that this 1916 zoning code accomplished, I would certainly not put too much time into praising it. From what I can see, it’s only real justification seems to have been protecting “light and air,” and that is not much of an accomplishment in my eyes.”
1) Since, in conventional histories of NYC’s zoning, the protection of “light and air” is usually given as one of the main reasons for the creation of the 1916 zoning code, it seems to me that some people may mistakenly have the impression that the 1916 zoning code protects “light and air” but that other, later zoning codes, like the 1961 zoning code, don’t. This is certainly not true about the 1961 NYC zoning code — one of its major goals was/is also to protect “light and air.”
However, from a free market (“market urbanism”) standpoint, I think the 1961 is far, far worse in this regard because, among other things, a) its regulations regarding “light and air” are, overall, just as restrictive (especially since they are invariably tied into other regulations like those governing floor area ratios — see more below); b) they are less rational, consistent and predictable; c) they are more manipulative on the part of government (with bonuses/incentives, including for things that have nothing to do with “light and air”); d) they are much more complex and hard to “understand” for rational debate and discussion; e) they are more vulnerable to outside political manipulation.
2) While the 1916 zoning code protects “light and air” and, also, regulates land uses (in a relatively loose and unrestrictive fashion), the 1961 code not only regulates “light and air” (just as restrictively, basically, if not more so); but it also regulates land use in a very restrictive way (one of the main reasons for writing this new code); and it ALSO regulates density in addition to “light and air” (which the 1916 zoning code did not do); PLUS it also has such things as parking minimums (which the 1916 zoning code didn’t have); etc.
So, from a market urbanism point of view, the 1916 zoning code is far less restrictive than modern day codes, like the 1961 zoning code. One can think of the 1916 code as being basic, “bare bones,” minimal zoning. On the other hand, most modern day zoning codes (like the 1961 zoning code) seem to be highly manipulative, modern day “tools” for highly intrusive modern day “planning” bureaucracies — a cornucopia of “toys” for modern day “planners.”
3) I would think that most market urbanists would likely be in favor of minimal zoning, if any. (And it would seem to me to be inconsistent for those market urbanists who are opposed to even minimal zoning, to then favor more highly intrusive zoning instead!)
4) I think one of the problems that market urbanists have in getting people to support minimal zoning (or no zoning at all) is the fear that many people have of what would happen to modern day cities without the “crutch” of highly intrusive zoning. One of the “neat” things about the 1916 zoning code, however, is that it was in existance between 1916 and 1961 when vast sections of modern day NYC were built — and not only did NYC turn out pretty well, but most people seem to love those portions of NYC most that were built-up with no zoning or under the 1916 code — and are more cool to the products of the 1961 code.
As far as I know, there were no major problems with the 1916 NYC zoning code (although, of course, like anything there are areas where it could have been tweaked here and there). It seems to me that the 1961 code was created not to fix any significant problem but, rather, to facilitate modern day “enlightened” central planning (which the 1916 code was too “timid” and “weak” to do: a) regulate density (which the the 1916 code didn’t do); b) favor tower-in-the-park skyscrapers (while the 1916 was more “neutral”); c) more rigorously separate out various land uses from one another (the 1916 code seems to have had looser regulations); d) create modern day parking minimums (I don’t think the 1916 code had them); e) etc.
Benamin Hemric
Thurs., April 28, 2011, 10:15 p.m.
P.S. — Let me mention here that my research on 1916 vs.1961 zoning has just begun, so these are my tentative thoughts on what I’ve seen so far.
You may not want to acknowledge it, but making buildings taller, and packing them more closely together, does block more light. And packing people and machinery more closely together does increase pollution. And does increase ambient noise. And does reduce privacy. People care about these things. That’s one reason why they support laws that limit density and building height. Dismissing these grievances as “excuses” isn’t likely to make people stop caring about them.
I think I meant the exact opposite of your interpretation: What I meant was that while the ’16 code isn’t my first choice in land use policy, I see it as a vast improvement over the ’61 one and what we have now, and if it were still in place, I would not think that land use is massively overregulated.
if that’s what people want, then why would they spend godly sums of capital to build tall buildings on their own free will?