In order to secure the constructive coöperation of the six Cities, thirty-seven Townships and twenty-two incorporated Villages located in the Region, the Board is authorized by law to designate such agencies as it may elect to assist in its work. Exercising this authority, the Board has designated as its agent, the Niagara Frontier Planning Association, which is composed of representatives of the various Cities, Towns and Villages and of Business Men's Clubs, Industrial and Manufacturing organizations, etc., which Association is working in close coöperation with the Board in the furtherance of its plans and in the development of public sentiment, looking to their ultimate consummation.

The Association is meeting with most flattering success in its attempts to affiliate the representatives of such bodies. At the time of the writing of this article, 90% of the total population of the Region, are connected with the Association through formal membership appropriations, passed by the various City Councils and Town and Village Boards.

In view of the remarkable progress which has been accomplished since the organization of the Board, July 1st, 1925, it appears that it is not beyond the bounds of reasonable expectation that before any considerable length of time has elapsed practically all of the Towns and Villages in the Region which have not yet affiliated with the Association will do so, developing what bids fair to be a most unique coöperative effort on the part of an unprecedented number of citizens, looking to the improvement of industrial, economic and living conditions in the Region wherein they have elected to reside.

HOWARD E. LONG,

Executive Secretary,

Niagara Frontier Planning Board, and Association.

PROGRESS IN WICHITA, KANSAS

All statements as to the progress of city planning development in this city must be qualified by the observation that it is a little difficult for me to see where City Planning begins and City Engineering leaves off, or vice versa; because I am City Engineer and an active member and Secretary of the City Planning Commission.

The Zoning Ordinance adopted four years ago is being actively enforced by the Building Inspection Department. It has not been amended for two years, but certain amendments are now pending. Most of these are minor changes in the boundary of existing Use Districts. A few have to do with set-back modifications in districts which are at the edge of the boundaries of the Use Districts.

Our people generally are quite well satisfied with the results obtained under the ordinance. The most noticeable result, perhaps, is the radical change in the character of buildings used for commercial purposes in residence districts. In fact it is now proposed to require all buildings in Commercial or Industrial Use Districts to be made of fireproof construction.

Another outstanding accomplishemnt toward the full application of the City Plan lies in the fact that a very large per cent of major streets have been paved into new territory within the last two years. There is no law governing such

improvements, but it has been accomplished by working with and through interested property owners. No major street openings have been completed, although a number of short sections have been opened and widened in establishing the major street system. One street widening on a major traffic street is tied up by appeals to the District Court.

A mile and a quarter of the river, including both banks, was acquired by the city in accordance with the plan to extend the Park System, and preliminary clearing is now under way. A neighborhood park containing approximately twenty-four acres has been acquired in territory which formerly had no neighborhood park facilities. Two entirely new neighborhood parks have been acquired and fitted with swimming pools, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and two other parks have been equipped with similar facilities.

The City Planning Commission has recommended the condemnation of an important connection in a major street which is now being undertaken by the City Commission. The City Planning Commission is also entering an active campaign to open a long radial street, opening out territory which is now held back because of lack of street and transportation facilities.

P. L. BROCKWAY,
City Engineer, Wichita, Kansas.

EUROPEAN TOUR

The Secretary of the Federated Societies on Planning and Parks has arranged a tentative route for the members of the National Conference on City Planning and the American Civic Association, who expect to join a party to attend the Conference of the International Federation for Town and Country Planning and Garden Cities to be held in Vienna, September 14th-19th. The tour will include inspection. of Planning, Housing and Park Developments in England, Scotland, Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Czecho-Slovakia and Austria.

The party will leave New York on the S. S. Andania July 31 and upon arrival in England will travel by motor northward on a long trip including Liverpool, Manchester, Lake Country, Glasgow, and Edinborough and return to London via the east coast cathedrals. The program includes motor trips about The Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris.

There will also be days spent in Mayence, Jena, Dresden, and Prague. It is planned to return home by the S. S. Suffren, arriving in New York on October 7.

Persons interested in joining this tour should communicate with Miss Harlean James, 905 Union Trust Building, Washington, D. C.

ZONING ROUNDTABLE

Conducted by EDWARD M. BASSETT

ZONING TRIP

Here is the zoning story of my trip to the National Conference on City Planning held at St. Petersburg, Florida, March 29th. On March 19th my party of four started through New Jersey, where the city attorneys are quite discouraged about enforcing zoning ordinances, and a constitutional amendment for zoning is brewing. About four out of five decisions handed down by the courts are against zoning. Boards of appeals never had a chance in this state because the early medley of zoning enabling acts was utterly confusing and nondescript in this particular. The boiler had to function without a safety valve and sooner or later it was sure to blow up. The Nutley case held that it was unconstitutional to prevent a store in a residence district. Some of us think that a functioning board of appeals could have prevented this. Maybe not. Anyway the courts have cited the Nutley case to throw out all sorts of zoning considered proper in other states. A new zoning enabling act, one of the best in the country, did not stop the onslaught. Recently the court went to the limit and said that no applicant need go to the board of appeals before getting direct action through the courts. This was the last straw that broke the camel's back. First, the courts said that zoning was unconstitutional because it was unreasonable, and then they scrapped the only method thus far devised to make zoning reasonable wherever its incidence was unreasonable.

And so to Pennsylvania where Philadelphia still has no zoning ordinance, nor for that matter any state enabling act. Skyscrapers were the rock on which the ship met disaster although probably 90% of the people want the zoning plan. All the other kinds of municipalities in the state have procured good zoning enabling acts and are zoned or are proceeding to zone. Meeting with good success too. Delaware was next. Agood enabling act and an excellent ordinance in Wilmington. However, a dangerous looking slant in the only important zoning decision has caused a feeling of suspense in this state.

Maryland has no general zoning enabling act. Baltimore zoned under supposed home rule powers. The highest court of the state declared that it had these powers, but that the exclusion of a store from a residence district was unconstitutional. At present the use map is being enforced according to the discretion of the building inspector who passes judgment on each application as it comes up, deciding whether its allowance would affect the community health, safety, morals and general welfare. This, of course, is not zoning. A zoning plan tells each land-owner what he can build as a matter of right. The rest of Maryland hardly knows what to do. Cumberland is waiting.

In the District of Columbia the successful Steerman case, in which the District Court said that a store could properly be excluded in a residence district, is on its way to the United States Supreme Court. But the attorneys for Steerman obtained the consent of that court to postpone argument until after the Euclid Village (Ohio) case is decided. Unexpectedly the Euclid Village case was reopened so that a further brief could be submitted, thus postponing the final decision in that case until next fall or winter. Zoning is operating as smoothly in Washington as it can in any place where the law does not establish a board of appeals. No one knows where or when the lightning will strike.

Virginia has up to now been limping so far as zoning is concerned. Norfolk has a good ordinance and Richmond a medium. The trouble has been a defective state law. But in March of this year a standard enabling act became law.

North Carolina has a good enabling act under which Raleigh and Greensboro have passed ordinances. Asheville is getting started. Mayor Cathey, who attended the Conference, hopes to see the zoning of the city accomplished before he goes out of office. This city, heretofore somewhat inaccessible, is now the important point on a great new automobile highway extending from Johnson City to Atlanta through the heart of the Alleghanies. This route is bound to attract automobilists away from the flat country and into the mountains as they travel between Atlanta and Harrisburg. The cities of this state are enterprising and up to date. All are looking into the subject of zoning. The cotton weaving industry is bringing a great deal of money into the state. South Carolina has a good enabling act, but its cities have been slow in taking advantage of it. Columbia is fairly well zoned.

Then we come to Georgia where we all thought that zoning was going swimmingly. Atlanta has an excellent special enabling act and one of the best ordinances in the country. It has a board of appeals and all the requisite outworks. But the lightning struck where it was least expected. A lot owner in a residence district and on the borderline of a business district applied for a permit for a storebuilding. In all other well zoned cities, the applicant after being refused a permit by the building inspector would be compelled to go to the board of appeals. In New York the board of appeals is weekly making adjustments that solve these borderline cases or at least turn them into court review. Not so in Atlanta. The board of appeals refused to take jurisdiction when the applicant appealed to it. This opened the door wide for the applicant to bring an injunction suit on the grounds of unconstitutionality which he won all the way up to the highest court. The court was forced into a corner. After it was evidently convinced that the situation of the applicant under the strict letter of the law was arbitrary and unreasonable, it could not command the board of appeals to issue a variance. It could do nothing but declare the instance unconstitutional, and while it was about it the court wrote an opinion which looked for all the world like the Nutley decision. Georgia in four short months passed from the light into darkness so far as zoning is concerned, all unnecessarily.

And now at last we have arrived in Florida. Legislation like everything else in this state is done rapidly. The result has been a large number of half-baked special enabling acts for zoning. Four of them are good. The rest vary from about

30% to 60%. The ordinance of St. Petersburg based on a good special enabling act was defeated on referendum. Two out of three of all these special acts are only a little better than nothing at all. West Palm Beach, St. Augustine and Miami Beach are good. Jacksonville and Orlando are from fair to middling. Several progressive cities tried to induce the state legislature at its last session to pass a zoning enabling act applicable to all cities. If the legislature had wanted to save time, it should have done this. Instead it wasted a lot of its time on poor enabling acts and brought about no end of confusion. The best landscape work and the most skilfully drawn private restrictions will not take the place of good fundamental laws.

The states where zoning is having the worst luck just at present seem to be along the coast from the Hudson River to the Mississippi River, omitting western Pennsylvania, District of Columbia, North Carolina and South Carolina which up to the present are bright spots, and speaking softly about Delaware, Alabama and Louisiana.

E. M. B.

HOTELS

The discussion of Hotels in relation to zoning in the October 1925 issue of CITY PLANNING raises certain questions which should at least receive consideration. Mr. Bassett says that a hotel "rightly seeks to be in a quiet and attractive location." He has in mind the family or tourist hotel in a high grade residential development. The question is, is this done "rightly"? Such a hotel is a business. Its business chances are advanced by allowing it to go into a residential area, but this is also true of apartments, stores, garages and many other kinds of business. Good living conditions are the main justification for zoning. If we admit the hotel we will have to admit the apartment house and many other businesses that are "just as good". The courts hold that the better possibilities for a business where it is excluded are no justification for admitting it. Therefore a hotel "rightly" seeks a residential area no more than does an apartment house, a store, or a garage.

By all of our zoning we must, if it is to be justified, use methods which will get us somewhere, somehow, sometime. If home areas are to be made right by protection the only way to secure them will be to protect them. If the conditions of admitting a hotel are such that it can not by any possibility injure the home area the theory of admission may be admitted, but in the main we will have to take it for granted that requiring 1,000 square feet of land for each room in a hotel, while it at first sight seems prohibitive, will in reality give very little protection to a high grade residential district. A hotel with forty-three rooms on one acre of land would be avoided by all high grade developments and it would therefore have to be deemed an injury.

E. T. HARTMAN, Massachusetts State Consultant on Housing and Planning.