Richard F. Babcock: The Zoning Game’s Troubadour

Abstract

Dick Babcock's interest in planning and zoning was first exhibited during his University of Chicago law school years in the early 1940s. The optimism triggered by the Euclid decision had given way to sharp declines in land values, producing a decade of minimal building activity. Local governments' big plans of the 1920s were replaced by a hope that someone would build something somewhere—anywhere.