Fiscal and classist motivations in early American zoning practice: the cases of two Boston suburbs, 1924–1945

Theorists and historians of American zoning explain that place-to-place variation in zoning practices in the United States (US) reflects the disparate concerns of owners of different types of property; in places dominated by homeowners, zoning has been restrictive, while in places where property is primarily used for income generation, zoning has necessarily been less restrictive. The evidence on early zoning is, however, incomplete. While there are many studies of early zoning in mid- to large-sized cities, showing that zoning in these places was permissive, early zoning in smaller places is understudied. To fill this gap, this paper examines zoning in the two Boston suburbs of Arlington and Lexington from 1924 through 1945. Using town officers’ annual reports, local newspapers, and planning and zoning documents, the paper shows that fiscal and classist convictions in these two relatively homeowner-dominated towns inspired zoning that was designed to be restrictive from the start. Taken alongside evidence from larger places, this study supports arguments that place-to-place variation in zoning in the US has always reflected the disparate concerns of owners of different types of property, with fiscal and classist motivations having been particularly salient in middle- to upper-income homeowner-dominated suburbs from the advent of zoning.