Zoning and Land Use: A Tale of Incompatibility and Environmental Injustice in Early Phoenix

ABSTRACT:

Little attention has been paid to the role of early land use institutions in development patterns, the creation of disamenity zones of environmental injustice, and the promotion of space-consuming suburban development. This study uses historic Sanborn Fire Insurance maps and spatial analytic techniques to expose zoning’s tendency to spread disamenities and disperse incompatible land uses in early Phoenix. While on paper Euclidean zoning’s stratification of land uses in Phoenix promotes progressive ideals for reduction of blight and improvement of city health, analysis at a finer scale using Sanborn maps reveals that zoning decisions in Phoenix tended to promote the expansion of fragmented land uses, especially disamenity zones that targeted poor minority neighborhoods. Zoning encouraged the expansion of industry while attracting residents to newly developed suburbs with guaranteed protection from blight.

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Notes on contributors

Abigail York

Abigail M. York is an Associate Professor of Governance and Public Policy in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. She contributes to ongoing discussions of collective action and governance of urban and urbanizing areas. In addition, she examines institutional dynamics within social-ecological systems focusing on critical sustainability issues such as maintenance of biodiversity, forests and open space, and water security in the face of global change and disturbances. York received her PhD in public policy from Indiana University in 2005.

Joseph Tuccillo

Joseph Tuccillo is a Master of Arts student in Geography at University of Colorado-Boulder. Following completion of his Bachelor of Arts in Geography from Arizona State University in 2011, he worked as a GIS/Research Analyst for the Arizona State University School of Human Evolution & Social Change’s Late Lessons from Early History research initiative. His research interests include land-use change science, urban institutions and sustainable urban development, urban spatial structure and demography, GIScience and geovisualization.

Christopher Boone

Christopher G. Boone is Professor and Associate Dean in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. His research contributes to ongoing debates in sustainable urbanization, environmental justice, vulnerability, and global environmental change. He is a co-PI for the urban Long Term Ecological Research projects based in Baltimore and Phoenix, both supported by the National Science Foundation. For the past three years he has served on the scientific steering committee for the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change project, a core initiative of the International Human Dimensions program. He received his PhD in Geography from the University of Toronto in 1994.

Bob Bolin

Bob Bolin is a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and directs the Doctoral Program in Environmental Social Science. His primary research areas are environmental hazards, vulnerability, and environmental justice. His recent work has focused on the urban political ecology of the Phoenix metro area, covering topics ranging from water resources and climate change to the historical geography of the urban heat island in the central city. He has also published extensively on disasters and vulnerable populations, his most recent work being on the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Lauren Gentile

Lauren E. Gentile is a PhD student in Environmental Social Science at ASU. She has a Masters of Environmental Law and Policy from Vermont Law School and Bachelor of Arts from the University of Miami. Her research interests include environmental and marine policy, environmental justice, and institutional analysis. In particular, she seeks to understand the sociocultural dynamics of natural resource extraction in the context of sustainable management of environmental resources. Further interest lies in the sociocultural institutions and contexts in which behaviors and values are shaped, decisions are made, and risks are perceived and how a failure to understand such leads to resistance and injustices from one of more segments of society.

Briar Schoon

Briar Schoon is a Sustainability Analyst at Portland Community College. Her research interests are the intersection of sustainability and environmental justice. Currently she is analyzing the effectiveness of sustainability programs using sustainability indicators such as greenhouse gas emissions. She received her Masters in Sustainability from Arizona State University in 2012.

Kevin Kane

Kevin Kane is a PhD student at Arizona State University’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, specializing in Economic Geography. He is interested in empirical analysis of urban growth and development patterns, specifically the role of government and institutions in promoting and financing development. His research, which includes parcel-level projects in Phoenix and Chicago, attempts to bridge the gap between quantitative geographical tools and application to specific examples of urban growth and development.