Spatial Orders in Municipal Institutional Development

• In Event: Urban Institutional Geographies: Spatial Structure & Politics

Abstract

This paper explores how space contributes to municipal institutional development. I assert that the language of both the built environment and the natural environment (rivers, hills, and the like) contribute to spatial formation. Building on the racial orders thesis and the literature on residential segregation, I demonstrate that concepts of space are constitutive of both the state and the polity. Too often, space is assumed without exploring its origins, boundaries, features, and meaning. Bearing space in mind exposes the role it plays in organizing politics, racial formation, state action, and the geography of city life.

This paper opens with a literature review of how space is currently treated in American Political Development and the urban politics literature before turning to a historical account of the formation of zoning regulation in Baltimore, MD. Drawing on archival research conducted in the Baltimore City Archives, the archives of the National Association of Realtors, and the Maryland State Archives, I trace how policy entrepreneurs, elected officials, and organized interests actively sought to transform the spatial order of the antebellum era by initiating new spatial ideas and technologies. This transformation in the urban spatial order remains significant and arose at the same time as the polity reorganized the racial order. While the literature on segregation and zoning is extensive, the formation of new spatial orders as expressed through zoning is underexplored. I also present a novel data set using zoning appeal decisions in Baltimore between the years of 1926 and 1950 to demonstrate how the new spatial order was initiated, revised, and ultimately crystalized.

Author

• Sally F Lawton, Drexel University