In this blog post, we will look at how London and New York responded to urban overcrowding through suburbanization during the industrialization of the 19th century.
London, the heart of England, the land of the sun never sets, the land of Shakespeare, and New York, the world’s financial center and an indispensable city in the development of early America, so much so that it is called the second capital of the United States. These cities have gone through numerous processes of development to become the metropolises they are today. While there are many characteristics that define these megacities, one interesting thing they have in common is the fact that their suburbs have developed. However, in the era of industrialization, when everything was concentrated in the city center, these cities would not have developed as they have without numerous efforts to develop the suburbs.
Europe faced a wave of industrialization. During the reign of Queen Victoria, the population skyrocketed and slums spread due to the harmful effects of industrialization, and many local reformers and legal and financial experts began to gradually solve these problems. The suburbanization policy, which was carried out in this historical context, focused on decentralizing cities. The basic concept of suburbanization was to build houses or factories in the suburbs of cities and connect them to the center. They also tried to accelerate suburbanization by developing new transportation technologies and lowering the cost of new housing with cheap labor and resources. Let’s take a look at London, where suburbanization was first achieved and was more effective than in other cities.
In London, suburban development was initiated by the London County Council. In the early 1900s, the rapidly growing population of the United Kingdom made London crowded, and everything was concentrated in the center. Booth, a British urban planner at the time, believed that the only way to solve this overcrowding problem was to improve transportation. The London County Council Progressive Party accepted this opinion and, after obtaining the right to develop the outskirts, began four housing estate projects. The project began with the construction of a subway in Totem Downfield, Noberry, Tottenham, and Old Oak, but the project was only successful in the Old Oak area. There are various opinions about the success of the Old Oak area, but overall, the prevailing opinion is that the policy was only effective for some wealthy people because the rent and subway fares in the suburbs are much higher than the rent in the urban slums. Nevertheless, large-scale urban planning in the UK has produced high-quality architecture. On the other hand, in other major cities in the UK, there was a perception that the problem would be solved only if private housing projects were actively promoted, unlike in London, and there was a lack of efforts at the city level. Eventually, laws were passed that allowed private developers to proceed with their projects autonomously, and local authorities were given clear authority over newly built housing.
The London County Council did not abandon the idea that the subway was effective in spreading outwards. After World War I, as public transportation emerged as the most important resource, there were more attempts to utilize it. Americans began to participate in these public transportation projects, and they realized the commercial value of the land located along the tram lines and began to lay the tram lines systematically to develop the suburbs around the lines. These activities were not legally regulated because legislation had been passed in several cities, including London, to allow private developers to carry out their projects autonomously. In this process, Frank Pick and Albert Stanley, the greatest London city transport managers in history, made their names. They continued to explore the possibilities of new rail services by developing bus routes that started at the last stop on the subway. As a result, a large-scale rail network was built across London, which was quite successful. Of course, the high fares were a limitation, but these processes led to London’s suburbanization.
In New York, suburbanization was achieved through the concept of zoning. Unlike London, which has a relatively long history, New York, which has a relatively short history, has achieved a better level of suburbanization than London. Zoning refers to the division of space into functional areas according to the intended use and legal regulations in urban planning and architectural design. New York was able to implement this policy because it had much more land than London. New York City promoted suburbanization by intensively zoning three areas: Lake Forest, Riverside, and Forest Hills Gardens. In New York, basic facilities were quickly moved to the outskirts, but there was a limitation in that there were not many residents living in the suburbs, so the number of beneficiaries was small.
Before zoning, New York City planners developed the world’s first subway, which was capable of speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. They did this to address the rapid growth of the city and its population, as well as the city’s complex topography. At the time, New York was the second largest megacity in the world and was made up of several islands due to the rough waterways in the early days. However, as in many other cities, the cost of moving to the suburbs was much higher than the rent in the inner city slums, so only high-income residents could afford to own a detached house in the suburbs, while poor laborers were still forced to stay in the overcrowded inner city. In addition, public transportation is often referred to as a “double-edged sword” in urban planning, as it is an effective means of moving people to the suburbs, but it also accelerates overcrowding in the city center. Therefore, New York needed a new solution, and the zoning system was introduced as the answer.
Benjamin C. Marsh, who was the executive director of the New York City Planning Commission, a lawyer, and a social reformer, was inspired by zoning in Frankfurt, Germany, and introduced it to New York City. Zoning was already being implemented in other cities at the time, but New York City was the first to introduce German-style zoning. Zoning first began with regulations on land use and building height. This introduction is considered to be the most significant development in American history. Manhattan was the commercial center of the United States and the world at the time, and thus had fundamentally different characteristics from other regions. Commerce was more important than housing, and the importance of the volume and size of buildings was greater than anywhere else.
Zoning practices began in Manhattan’s business district, and employees of high-end shopping districts began using zoning to protect the value of their properties. In short, zoning is the division of an area and designation of people, and it played an important role in the competition for merchants’ interests, so merchants supported zoning to protect their interests. With the introduction of zoning, zoning was legally introduced to regulate the private use of land for the health, safety, ethics, and welfare of the local community, not just for the benefit of merchants. The reason why Americans were more positive than the Germans, the home of zoning, was because of the selfishness that prevailed in the early development of the United States. They used zoning as a shield to preserve the value of their assets during a period of global migration, and where zoning was well-established, asset values stabilized and increased substantially.
In London, transportation technology and the efforts of the state parliament, and in New York, zoning as a means of protecting the interests of powerful merchants, led to the beginning of suburbanization. With this beginning, New York and London, the two major centers of suburbanization, succeeded in suburbanization based on cheap labor and resources. The development process of these cities is very interesting, and this development process has influenced many cities.
