ZONING ROUNDTABLE Conducted by EDWARD M. BASSETT HOTELS How about hotels? Should any kind of zoning district be protected against them? Some cities would answer yes emphatically. They would say that hotels are for commercial men and tourists, they attract crowds, they require deliveries of food supplies and the removal of waste. These cities that look on zoning mainly as an invention to insure high-class one-family house districts usually reflect the wish of the well-to-do citizens who want schools, provided they are several blocks away, who admit hospitals are necessary but want to exclude them from the best districts. Some cities have even excluded churches from these ultra districts. Of course, the best citizens want churches but they sometimes want them outside of the exclusive domains. However, schools, hospitals and churches need quiet. They should not be pushed off into the less attractive or noisy districts. Every kind of community needs them. Restrictions in deeds may properly be employed to prohibit such structures. But it is a far cry to ordain that the health, safety and morals of a community justify their exclusion. Again how about hotels? When one stops to think about it, they are a little nearer the borderline. There is a business element about a hotel that a school, hospital or church does not have. On the other hand, a family or tourist hotel rightly seeks to be in a quiet and attractive location. The best residence district is none too good. When prosperous parents have brought up their families and decide to quit housekeeping, they often seek a family hotel where the management will free them from the cares of keeping servants, cooking the food, repairing the home. Why should they be compelled to go to a noisy business district or the least attractive part of their city? May not a city hurt itself if it bars out quiet and attractive family hotels? A city having a remarkable lake-front bluff has zoned the entire bluff for residences and excluded hotels. Some day it may regret that it has hurt its own future. If our police power zoning had been employed to force hotels into inferior locations, the whole world would have a poor opinion of Lugano, Stresa, Lucerne, Geneva, Eastbourne and Torquay. Some one will say that the situation can be adequately provided for by the board of appeals allowing an occasional hotel in the best residence districts. But the board could not grant a variance for a hotel under the head of unnecessary hardship because the applicant could not show that his plot was unsuitable for a private residence. Moreover what the board allowed for one, it should allow to all who are similarly situated. Cities that insist on excluding hotels from the most attractive residence districts will do well to give a specific power in the ordinance to the board of appeals to permit family hotels in all residence districts. 8 Greater New York has only one kind of residence district. Further segregation is accomplished by the requirements of the area map. Accordingly hotels and apartment houses can be built in any residence district provided they have the required open space around them. This automatic requirement tends to prevent hotels and apartment houses in E and F districts on the area map. Westerly, Rhode Island, allows hotels in every residence district but requires 1,000 feet of lot space for each sleeping room. The private home owner is everywhere inclined to expect too much from zoning. He pushes the officials too far. Sometimes this tendency appears in excluding hotels, hospitals and schools, sometimes in excluding industry from proper locations. The home owners probably cannot be blamed, but officials are blameworthy in not standing for the welfare of the city as a whole. E. M. B. WHAT IS CITY PLANNING? Although city planning consists in the setting aside of land areas for different purposes by the community, that is, the determination of suitable legal qualities of land areas, the city planner should be much more than a map maker. How shall he lay out streets unless he has the ability of the traffic engineer? How shall he advise the right places for parks and boulevards unless he has the ability of the landscape architect? How shall he locate railroads and rapid transit routes unless he knows railroading and the scientific distribution of population? How shall he prepare systems of water supply and sewerage unless he has the ability of the civil engineer? How shall he shape open places, block sizes, street foci and sites for public structures unless he has the ability of the architect? How shall he determine the zoning of buildable land unless he has the ability of these creative professions? The city planner is not necessarily an architect. Nor a civil engineer. Nor a landscape architect. Nor a composite of all of them. The city planner is the maker of the dynamic city map. It is city planning to impress the park quality on a definite land area; it is landscape architecture to design its treatment. It is city planning to impress the street quality on a strip of land; it is municipal engineering to design the sidewalks, roadways and paving. It is city planning to lay out a civic center; it is architecture to design the public buildings. City planning is not new. It is as old as farming. We seek better methods of farming and also of city planning. As city planning is the determination of different legal qualities of land areas, all city planning is futile which is not adopted by a legislative body. E. M. B. INSTITUTE NEWS Conducted by FLAVEL SHURTLEFF, Secretary INSTITUTE MEETING AT DETROIT ON SUBDIVISION The Detroit meeting, June 23 and 24, was thoroughly worth while if for no other reason than to get the ideas of city planners more accurately before the leading subdividers of the country, and to get the practical difficulties of the realtors before the city planners. This was accomplished in a general way by the address of George B. Ford before the Subdividers' Section of the National Association of Real Estate Boards, where about one thousand subdividers of the country heard good city planning doctrine, and in more detail at the dinner, where about fifty real estate subdividers sat down with the members of the City Planning Institute and talked subdivision and zoning. At the technical or membership session of the Institute, to which the subdividers were invited, the subject "Subdivision Regulation" was considered under three heads: (1) A State Enabling Act; (2) A Master Plan and Its Relation to Unbuilt Areas; and (3) Canons of Practice. MR. BETTMAN, in speaking to the first subject, said that he would make a "somewhat loose, casual and tentative presentation of the sort of things that had better be in the State law". The regulating authority, in his opinion, should be in the first instance the city plan commission, which should have jurisdiction in the city and for at least three miles outside. In cases of conflict of jurisdiction in the three-mile territory, the nearest city should have control. As soon as possible a regional plan commission should be established under state law, with jurisdiction over all territory both within and without the municipalities making up the region. Definite procedure should be set out in the Act. The regulating authority should adopt, after public hearing, specific regulations, and every rejection of plat should be because of a violation of one or more of these regulations. This procedure is essential to avoid the charge of arbitrariness. Action on all plats should be prompt and non-action within a period of say thirty or forty days should be tantamount to approval. The scope of the regulating board should include at least: (a) The adjustment of the street system of the plat to the street system of the region; (b) The adequacy of the street system for the needs of the subdivision; (c) The size of lots and blocks; (d) Open space for local parks and playgrounds. This last feature should be most carefully guarded. Mr. Bettman believed that it was well within the police power to require a certain percentage of open space in residential subdivisions of a certain size for the benefit of the residents of the subdivision, but in no case should there be an insistence on the dedication of such space to the general public. Any space for general public enjoyment should be paid for out of public funds. Just what the size of the subdivision should be, or what percentage should be reserved would vary with specific cases, and would depend largely upon the character of the topography and the specific needs of the subdivision. If the subdivision is within a zoned territory and the subdivider desires a mcdification of the zoning regulation, the plan commission should recommend any changes, but final action on this should be by the legislative body which adopted the zoning ordinance in the first instance. It would be well to have the regulations adopted by the plan commission recorded in the County records, and there should be no right to record any plat and no sales from that plat until it is officially approved. No public utility should be provided in an unaccepted plat and no connection with public utilities should be permitted. As to review of plan commission acts, there is always allowed an appeal to the courts, and consequently there appears to be no need of inserting a provision in the Act, but any review by the courts should be merely of the question of legality of the commission's acts. The courts should give answer to such questions as: "Did the plan commission exceed its jurisdiction?", or "Did it proceed in accordance with law?" Specific questions of physical layout should not be decided by the court since it has neither the knowledge nor special fitness for such decision. MR. HALDEMAN, in discussion, suggested the advisability of having the major thoroughfares and the park system planned by a state authority such as a state highway commission or a state park commission, in order to have the power of the state behind the plan and to avoid conflicts between municipalities. MR. NOLEN proposed the inclusion of a railroad and transit plan and a plan for local centers in the master plan for the region, but Mr. Bettman thought that the local center would be taken care of by the zoning and thoroughfare plan and that to add even such an important matter as railroad locations to the master plan was not as essential as to get a competent agency at work promptly on the regulation of subdivisions. MR. WHITTEN, in presenting the question of unbuilt areas, the second topic for discussion, said that in general he believed that the city plan commission or the regional plan commission should go much further in its guidance of development in unbuilt areas; that the important matter was the setting out in the master plan of the best use of given areas, as determined by many things, especially by topography, by accessibility to rail or water carriers, by the use of surrounding areas. With the adoption of a master plan, subdivision regulation should not wait upon the presentation of a plat for approval, but all subdividing into building lots should be in accordance with the master plan and sales of land which violated it should be forbidden. He saw no reason for differentiating between zoning and planning. It was all comprehensive planning and the more comprehensive a plan was, and the more specific it was, the fairer it was to the subdivider and consequently the easier it would be to enforce. Mr. Whitten was opposed to fixing the percentage of any subdivision which should be reserved for open space, for park and playgrounds or for determining |