From the archives: Zoning processes of the past
Columbus originally passed its first zoning legislation in 1923, then made major updates in the 1950s. In this post, you’ll find a collection of selected articles from The Columbus Dispatch and The Ohio State Journal about zoning issues throughout the 20th century.
The above excerpt from a May 1923 article in The Dispatch shows how zoning laws were modeled on restrictive covenants, private agreements between property owners that regulated the use, form, and inhabitants of land. Restrictive covenants are notorious for their exclusion of non-white persons. In Central Ohio, that typically meant African Americans but also excluded groups like Jews, people of Asian descent, and even Italians. The interest groups pushing zoning ordinances believed that zoning would preserve property values in the same way that restrictive covenants did for middle- and upper-income whites.
By the mid-1940s, city leaders began discussing the need to update the 1923 zoning code and map. The 1946 article above is one of the earliest to mention modernizing the outdated approach to land use.
This excerpt (above) from a 1948 article in The Dispatch demonstrates how closely city officials worked with the Columbus Real Estate Board to craft the updates to the 1923 zoning code and map. Noting the strength of this relationship is important because it reminds contemporary citizens that the 1950s updates were not driven by residents, but by business interests seeking guaranteed returns on their property investments.
Eugene Van Cleef, a distinguished professor of geography at Ohio State, was a member of the City Planning Commission and authored a two-part series in The Dispatch in support of the zoning modernization in the early 1950s. Zoning was framed as a way to safeguard a property owner’s investment by controlling what kinds of uses could be permitted on nearby parcels. While the idea of an unannounced sauerkraut factory opening next door would be rather alarming, the practical effect of zoning was to establish single-family zones as the most-protected and revered land use at the expense of multi-family housing which would be more affordable and accessible for lower-income groups. The claimed intent of separation of inharmonious uses was a strategic way to segregate neighborhoods by income level.
This 1954 article notes that the “Columbus Real estate Board submitted an entire new zoning ordinance”, which the planning commission effectively used as model language when adjusting the proposed language. Public engagement, input, and outreach is not mentioned in articles that discuss the zoning update process of the 1950s.
In 1954, city council approved the revised zoning code at a hearing with about 150 residents.
