Splitting the American Oikos: Predistributive Conflict and the Invention of Residential Zoning in Los Angeles

• In Event: 4255 - Section on Economic Sociology Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 7. Law, Regulation, Policy

Abstract

Social research on the separation of domestic and market life has focused primarily on household structure, its internal division of labor, and patriarchal ideology, leaving underexplored the role of municipal regulation in shaping household economic life. Leveraging diverse archival data, this paper explains the overlooked invention of land-use zoning in 1904, first separating residential and market life with legal force, before spreading to other cities. The largest outpost of western expansion, Los Angeles’ fateful regulatory innovation was a piecemeal solution to thirty years of racial panic and distributional tensions set off by industrial development. These became expressed as conflicts among property owners, driving municipal leaders to experiment at the boundaries of nuisance law and adjust to judicial review. I characterize the reoccurring property politics that regulate this household-market boundary as a form of “predistributive conflict” over the underling market rules shaping economic insecurity and privilege—in contrast to the more visible redistribution of market incomes.

Author

• Luis Flores, University of Michigan