mission should be unhampered in making suggestions and it has much greater freedom if its makeup is not so largely official that its doings are taken to represent the intention of the administration. A zoning commission has enough to think about without being compelled to consider whether its composition will reflect on the administration or not. If the work goes on wisely with frequent conferences with property owners of all classes and with frequent hearings, there is no danger but that the excrescences and theoretical trimmings will be rubbed off. After the plan is worked out after many hearings and conferences it should be reported to the council who should have the power to hold further hearings, refer it back to the commission if desired and ultimately to enact it. The adoption and amendment of a zoning plan belong to the council as much as the street layout. Moreover the natural growth and changes in the city will require intelligent amendment of the zoning plan year by year and it is probably impossible to expect that citizens serving without pay can keep in touch with the needs of the city so well as officials assisted by the constant advice of the city departments. It is of doubtful wisdom to put actual legislative power in a city planning or zoning commission.

In most cases it is best for a zoning commission to prepare the plan. There is a difference between the planning of public streets and places and the working out of a zoning plan. The former has to do with land and buildings owned or to be owned by the city. Zoning has to do with the regulation of private property. The two fields are therefore quite distinct. More rapid progress is made by creating a zoning commission to perform a specific piece of work. If the zoning commission can perform its work well

and secure the adoption of the plan, it has aided the work of laying out public streets and places and the locating of public buildings. Its work is fundamental. It should be carried on intensively and not as an incident in general city planning.

A farsighted zoning commission will early enlist the favor of the owners of small homes and stores. They can be shown in the beginning how they can be protected against flats, garages, junk yards and factories. To feature Fifth Avenue, Euclid Avenue or Michigan Avenue is the wrong way to begin. Then, too, throughout the preparation of the plan property owners of all sorts should be taken into the confidence of the commission. the commission. Taxpayers' associations, boards of trade, manufacturers' associations, fire insurance men, savings banks and title companies, and owners of high buildings, low buildings and vacant land should all have a part in advising what will stabilize property and prevent confiscation.

Zoning looks mainly to the future. The zoning of built-up localities must recognize actual conditions and make the best of mistakes of the past. But the zoning of open areas, while following desirable natural tendencies, must check the undesirable tendencies. Zoning should follow nature and it should not be forgotten that the city has a history. There will be a temptation for radical individuals and officials to use zoning as a field for experimentation. This is a mistake. The scope of the police power is measured by the universality of its recognition as well as the universality of its need. Some of the features of modern zoning have not yet been so widely approved by the courts that cities newly preparing plans can afford to go very far in advance of the procession.

Such a city will be tempted to try piecemeal zoning. On the appointment

of a zoning commission home owners in localities subjected to some immediate danger will go to the commission and show how they must have an immediate remedy because private restrictions are about to expire or a factory is about to be built or plans for a public garage are being filed. If the zoning commission refuses to act, they go to the council. Sometimes more time is lost in debating the items of proposed piecemeal zoning than would suffice to zone the entire city. Such piecemeal zoning should not be done. In the long run it delays. Precarious localities should get behind comprehensive zoning and hurry it up. Comprehensive zoning of an entire city is strong because localities substantially similarly situated are treated alike. Piecemeal zoning is weak because it is discriminatory. Piecemeal zoning is apt to produce test cases full of danger because, for instance, an owner of a vacant lot is prevented from building a garage in one residential locality when a similar owner in a similar locality ten blocks away is allowed to build a garage. This is discriminatory on its face and is likely to incur the criticism of the courts. Then if some adverse decision is handed down in such a test case, critics of zoning and sometimes newspapers will assert that the courts have declared zoning to be unconstitutional. More time is taken to explain how the mistake was made and comprehensive zoning is still more delayed. The favor of precarious districts is needed in advancing a general plan. To zone all such districts first is to throw away part of the help which a zoning campaign needs. In New York, St. Louis and Newark the temptation to allow piecemeal zoning was successfully resisted. The actual damage that occurred was almost infinitesimal. If, however, the piecemeal plan had been started the cities might not

be zoned today. Another argument against piecemeal zoning is that one cannot know how to zone any spot in a city until he knows how to zone the entire city because the use of any one locality has some relation to all others.

The zoning of the entire city should be preceded by an accurate mapping of existing buildings and uses. Present and future transportation lines must be taken into account. In New York a chart was made showing height of buildings, another showing frame buildings, another showing use, whether industrial, business or residence, another showing density of population and another showing by different colors the distances of every part of the city from City Hall measured by travelling time on rapid transit railroads. These fundamental data assist in preparing a foundation of facts instead of a foundation of guesswork.

It is apparent that the members of a zoning commission cannot personally attend to the collection of data, preparation of maps and the working out of innumerable detail problems. The city must furnish the zoning commission with a staff headed by a competent expert. The chief of staff should be more than an ordinary engineer or architect or lawyer. He should be a broad-gauge expert in the distribution of urban population, in the layout of streets and public places, in forms and materials of buildings and in the limitations imposed by law on the exercise of the police power. No city should be too proud to retain an outside man. New York city took five years and did not do the job as well as she could do it today in two years. The reason was that she was plowing new ground and there were almost no precedents to help. But some one may say "Why not get the ordinances and maps from zoned cities and pick out what seems to be the best?" The reason is that

imitation is likely to be disastrous. No two cities are alike. Each deserves an accurate study of its own growth, tendencies and needs. The heights of buildings allowed in New York are far too great for imitation. It was the case of the horse being stolen before the barn door was locked. Lower heights in the skyscraper districts could not be imposed with fairness to owners of partially improved land. Too great congestion in tenement house districts is allowed. This was due to some extent to existing conditions and to some extent to the novelty of the enterprise which properly induced caution. The chief of staff should know the reasons that have prompted different methods in different cities. He will, of course, have before him the ordinances and maps of all other cities, but he will be more than an imitator.

We are now ready to listen to the question of the intelligent reader which at this point is quite sure to be "How can you run a city into a zoning plan mould and expect it to stay there; do not cities have to grow and change?" The answer is that zoning encourages growth while at the same time it prevents too rapid changes. Every vital growing city must change and the zoning plan must be capable of change. The same authority that has adopted the ordinance and maps must have the power to amend them. On the other hand a high degree of permanency or stiffness must be insisted upon, otherwise the property owner who puts up a fourteen-story building in compliance with the zoning law might be disappointed to find that the council had altered the law so that a twenty-story building might go up on each side of his building. He would then be penalized because he obeyed the law. Or a man might put up a fine residence in an outlying residence district depending upon its permanence and find that the council had changed it to

business and he was likely to have a butcher store on one side and a grocery store on the other. It is apparent that any provisions inserted in the ordinance itself are not a sufficient protection to owners to build in conformity with the zoning ordinance because one council may undo the work of its predecessor. The only safeguard is in a provision of the legislature which will prevent the city council from freely changing the maps and ordinance. New York obtained an amendment to its charter from the legislature to the effect that the city authorities could not change the ordinance or maps without fixing and advertising a public hearing, and this further provision was added that, if 20 per cent of the frontage affected by the change, or 20 per cent of the frontage opposite, or 20 per cent of the frontage in the rear protested in writing against the change, then the unanimous vote of the board of estimate was required to make the change valid. Under a legislative requirement of this sort there is little danger of hasty action, and if a protest of 20 per cent of the frontage is filed it is practically impossible for the applicant to obtain the unanimous vote of the council unless his case is sound and imperative. Cities which have large powers under the home rule act should ask their state legislatures to impose this check or some similar check upon the city council.

Another provision that should be supplied by the state legislature is to empower the city to create a board of appeals. The city cannot endow a board of appeals with power to decide certain border-line cases of buildings which will be enumerated in the ordinance itself, or to make exceptions in the provisions of the law to carry out the spirit of the law and prevent unnecessary hardship. It is a safeguard in the administration of the law to have a board of appeals. The letter

of the ordinance and maps may be the extreme of hardship. No words can be used in the ordinance that will provide for the multitudinous contingencies of new buildings. If there is no board of appeals to apply the spirit of the law and vary its letter, the exercise of the police power may in certain cases be arbitrary and incur the criticism of the courts. Moreover it is a great safeguard to preserve that elasticity which a board of appeals can give to a zoning plan in order to minimize the danger of a pronouncement of unconstitutionality by the courts. It is a well-recognized rule of the law that before an aggrieved owner can obtain a writ of mandamus from the court against a building superintendent to compel him to file his plans and issue a permit, he must exhaust all of the remedies afforded him by the city. This means that before he can bring up the question of unconstitutionality he must bring his plans before the board of appeals. Experience has shown that a wise board of appeals can practically always mitigate the unfairness involved in the letter of the law if the applicant has a sound and deserving case. If, however, the board of appeals will not adjust his case to suit him, he goes before the courts with all of the chances against him, for the courts will say that his plans run counter to an impartial plan covering the entire city and that in addition a fair board of appeals having the power of adjustment in cases of unnecessary hardship decided against the applicant. Every decision of the board of appeals should be reviewable by the courts on writ of certiorari. Such review, however, involves no danger of overthrow of the law itself by the courts but only a possible limitation of the functions of the board. Some will say that there should be no board of appeals because such a board will be too easy and break

down the law by granting favors. A corrupt or incompetent board of appeals could do a vast amount of injury but it is the business of the mayor or appointing power to see that the board is made up of impartial and experienced men.

The council should have power to amend the maps and ordinance and the board of appeals should not. The board of appeals should have the power to vary the ordinance and maps in cases of specific buildings and the council should not. In other words the council should have charge of the maps for the law-making power should control the fundamental restrictions. The board of appeals should have charge of the application of the ordinance and maps to specific buildings because the council does not have the time or preparation to go into the details of exceptional circumstances as to specific buildings. There should be no confusion of the powers of the council and the board of appeals. The field of each is entirely separate and distinct.

In New York the board of appeals is authorized by the ordinance to grant a permit for a public garage in a business street if there is already one public garage or public stable in that street between two intersecting streets; to allow the projection of a business building into a residence district or a factory building into a business district in certain specified cases at the borderline between two districts, and to permit a temporary non-conforming use in outlying undeveloped areas. powers similar to these are enumerated. Their power to vary the ordinance and maps in cases of unnecessary hardship is an entirely separate power and is given directly by the state legislature.

Other

V. WHERE TO GET INFORMATION

The reader can hardly hope to obtain from this article more than a brief

outline of the subjects of zoning. The councilman, city engineer or legal adviser of a city contemplating zoning will desire to know where he can obtain more complete information on what has been done or attempted. Probably the most exhaustive books that have been published, collecting data from all cities, giving full tabulation and maps, and with discussions of legal problems involved, are the report of the heights of buildings commission of the board of estimate and apportionment of the city of New York, December 23, 1913, and the report of the commission on building districts and restrictions of the board of estimate and apportionment of the city of New York, June 2, 1916. These reports were made during the preparation of the zoning ordinance and maps for New York. These volumes will be found in many public and municipal libraries. The following

cities have to a greater or less extent adopted the zoning plan:

Alameda, Cal.

Berkeley, Cal.

Boston, Mass.
Los Angeles, Cal.
Minneapolis, Minn.
Newark, N. J.
New York, N. Y.
Oakland, Cal.
Palo Alto, Cal.
Sacramento, Cal.
St. Louis, Mo.
Washington, D. C.

By addressing the chief engineer, information can usually be obtained from any of the above mentioned cities. The National City Planning Conference has for the last eight years carried on an unremitting and intensive study of this subject. It has undoubtedly been not only the principal advocate and supporter of zoning but also the most active disseminator of information about zoning. The American City Planning Institute, affiliated with the

National Conference, has devoted a series of meetings to discussing the principles of zoning from every angle, receiving suggestions from every part of the country in the hope that it might promulgate an authoritative statement of such principles. The annual reports of the National Conference contain a great deal of helpful material on zoning. Nelson P. Lewis, chief engineer of the board of estimate and apportionment, Municipal Building, New York city, is president of both organizations, and Flavel Shurtleff, 60 State Street, Boston, Massachusetts, is the secretary.

(4) Zoning by the exercise of the police power of the state must relate to the health, safety, morals, order and general welfare of the community. It follows therefore that police power zoning must be confined to police power reasons such as fire risk, lack of light and air, congested living quarters and other conditions inimical to the general welfare. The preventive regulations based on these reasons, which necessarily must be applied differently and in different measure in

into zoning according to use of structures and land, according to height of buildings and according to portion of lot covered by buildings. Zoning might go further and embrace the subjects of fire limits, setbacks, and doubtless other classes of regulations. Enhancement of value alone, or

different districts, naturally group themselves