Andrew H. Whittemore

Finding Sustainability in Conservative Contexts: Topics for Conversation between American Conservative Élites, Planners and the Conservative Base

Sustainability’s reception is dependent upon its presentation. While academics may be reaching the consensus that pursuing sustainability requires at least a triple-bottom-line approach, in practice, planners, legislators and other leaders often choose an approach that best suits their needs. In north central Texas, this has in recent years meant an approach with a focus on fiscal matters. Whatever the pro-market flavour of sustainability practice in north central Texas, elements of the conservative base have resented its pursuit. Because planners and legislators in north central Texas have muddled their concept of sustainability with jargon, conflated it with other causes and failed clearly to justify its pursuit, elements of the conservative base have interpreted sustainability as an externally motivated, threatening agenda. This paper presents eight points for planners and other leaders to consider when framing sustainability in conservative contexts for the purpose of finding for positive dialogue and outcomes.

Practitioners Theorize, Too Reaffirming Planning Theory in a Survey of Practitioners’ Theories

Many scholars have voiced frustration with planning theory’s marginalization. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate the relevance of theory to practice by exploring what practitioners have theorized. It reviews the development of procedural theories of city planning from 1959 until 1983, and juxtaposes this review with a survey of theory-articulating literature in U.S. trade journals. The article concludes that practitioners value theorizing, that practitioners’ theories mirror academics’ theories, and that practitioners maintained diverse theories of planning rather than pursuing a single theory of planning. These findings can remind the reader of how planning theory speaks to professional experience.

Zoning Los Angeles: a brief history of four regimes

This article explains how, through tools of land-use regulation, several groups of actors became particularly adept at shaping the form of Los Angeles and to what ends. Land-use regulation in Los Angeles, this article argues, represents the outcomes of battles pitting one political group against another, quite in disregard of the common purpose this regulation is intended to serve, with the most powerful usually winning at the expense of others. In Los Angeles, there have been distinct winners and losers, and these winners and losers have varied over time. In Los Angeles, there seem to be four distinct regimes characterizing the historical politics of land use. Rampant speculation defined the first, lasting from the advent of zoning in Los Angeles in 1921 into the Depression, government-sponsored big real estate the second, lasting from the Depression until the 1960s, and anti-growth advocates the third, lasting from the 1960s until 2000, with the fourth forming over the last decade and characterized by a balance between allied housing and development interests and anti-growth advocates. This article documents the rise and fall of these regimes and summarizes their varying impacts on the city.

How the federal government zoned America: The federal housing administration and zoning

Zoning has had an unmistakable impact on the American built environment. It is very significant then that federal policy has had an impact on zoning. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has been a significant instrument for this policy. It has biased zoning toward the production of suburban development, an urban form marked by sprawling forms and the strict segregation of uses. While the FHA’s impact on racial segregation and the marketplace have been well researched, the FHA’s impact on zoning, and therefore on the vital components of urban form including the arrangement of uses and densities, has not been. Using a case study of the Los Angeles experience, this paper argues that the FHA, by offering a financing option for products much in demand, persuaded cities to adjust their zoning according to federal standards. The FHA provided a convincing case that zoning for lower-density residential uses and preserving them was the best way to accommodate the huge market of hopeful homeowners eager to acquire FHA-backed mortgages.

Phenomenology and City Planning

Finding an ideal procedure for planning has always preoccupied theorists. The urgency of this task arguably has increased as imperatives and participants have diversified over the last half-century. Theorists have often advocated the communicative model of Jürgen Habermas in this period. This article investigates the theoretical shortcomings of communicative theory in planning and postulates the possible contributions of a phenomenological approach in especially complex planning situations. It also reviews past instances in which a phenomenological approach has been useful and suggests some contemporary episodes in which it could prove useful again.

Mapping gay and lesbian neighborhoods using home advertisements: Change and continuity in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Statistical Area over three decades

Determining the spatial distribution of gay and lesbian households is relevant to understanding gay and lesbian identity and empowerment, and it has been a goal for geographers over the past half century. Our paper answers to calls for investigations of gay and lesbian geography beyond traditional enclaves. We use 9210 street addresses of advertised rental and for-sale properties posted between 1986 and 2012 in the gay and lesbian-oriented Dallas Voice to map historical changes in the spatial distribution of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Statistical Area’s gay and lesbian population. We show how gay and lesbian markets contrast with those of all Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Statistical Area renters and homeowners, and consider our data in light of Dallas Voice coverage of how the location of the gay and lesbian population has shifted. Among other things, we find that advertisements have come to feature properties further from gay bars, and in census tracts of higher income, education levels, and rents, but that these advertisements also have consistently featured properties in census tracts with older construction and a higher proportion of same-sex coupled households. Our findings provide evidence of dispersion from old enclaves and reclustering in new areas, suggesting both lesser attachment to traditional enclaves, and the continuing importance of proximity to each other for gay and lesbian households.

There goes the gaybourhood? Dispersion and clustering in a gay and lesbian real estate market in Dallas TX, 1986–2012

Gay and lesbian neighbourhoods play a pivotal role as places of safety, empowerment and visibility for gay and lesbian individuals. Using over 9000 real estate listings from the gay- and lesbian-oriented Dallas Voice newspaper, our paper uses spatial statistical methods to explore the location of gay and lesbian neighbourhoods in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). With data spanning the years 1986 to 2012, we examine how gay and lesbian real estate hot spots have changed over time. Advertisers consistently listed rental properties in the primary gay neighbourhood of Oak Lawn in central Dallas. However, for-sale property listings tell another story; hot spots expanded considerably from the traditional gay neighbourhoods of Oak Lawn and Oak Cliff to include a number of adjacent neighbourhoods through the mid-2000s, then contracted during the late 2000s. We conclude that while adjacent neighbourhoods have become hot spots in recent years, the gay- and lesbian-oriented real estate market continues to focus on traditional gay and lesbian enclaves in central Dallas.

Requiem for a Growth Machine Homeowner Preeminence in 1980s Los Angeles

In the last quarter century, the city of Los Angeles has suffered a chronic housing shortage due to exclusive zoning policies tied to the rise of antigrowth advocates over developers as the prime determinants of land use policy. This article considers the history of two major land use reforms affecting the city of Los Angeles in the 1980s: the General Plan Zoning Code Consistency Program (GPZCP) and Proposition U. These reforms represented the decline of the growth machine in 1980s Los Angeles and demonstrate the viability of an antigrowth regime in a large, non-suburban jurisdiction. This shift has not necessarily led to more democratic planning in Los Angeles. The GPZCP and Proposition U instead represented the empowerment of new antigrowth elites at the expense of old capital-driven elites. This has been to the detriment of hopeful homeowners and renters seeking economic and social opportunities in the city of Los Angeles.

Racial and Class Bias in Zoning: Rezonings Involving Heavy Commercial and Industrial Land Use in Durham (NC), 1945–2014

Problem, research strategy, and findings: In this study I investigate whether zoning has traditionally protected communities of color from the dangers of heavy commercial and industrial use to the extent that it has protected White communities. I evaluate whether upzonings—changes from less intensive uses to more intensive heavy commercial and industrial uses—disproportionately occurred in African-American and low-income neighborhoods in Durham (NC) from 1945 to 2014, and I evaluate the comparative impact of downzonings. I use the contemporary demographics of the census tracts where these rezonings occurred and qualitative evidence from public hearings, plans, and other relevant primary materials. I find that before 1985, the pattern of rezonings in Durham had negative implications for African-American areas in particular. Environmental justice efforts in the 1980s, followed by gentrification, caused the city’s planners and local elected officials to change course. Takeaway for practice: Planners have an ethical obligation to promote equity, and their ability to do so depends on understanding sources of social injustice. In Durham, race historically played a role in upzonings and downzonings involving heavy commercial and industrial uses. The city also demonstrates that planners and local elected officials can successfully intervene to end disparities in zoning practice across communities of different racial characteristics. Assessing past zoning practices in other cities may reveal similar records of bias and help planners to present cases for corrective action.

The Experience of Racial and Ethnic Minorities with Zoning in the United States

To date, scholars have examined two common effects of zoning that disproportionately impact racial and ethnic minorities in the United States: (1) exclusionary effects, resulting from zoning’s erection of direct, discriminatory barriers or indirect, economic barriers to geographic mobility; and (2) intensive and expulsive effects, resulting from zoning’s disproportionate targeting of minority residential neighborhoods for commercial and industrial development. In light of recent legal and federal policy developments, continued research is needed to better understand the scale of the gap between the treatment of white and minority communities and to better understand how zoning can reverse past injustices.