Define inner-ring suburb? I know it when I see it.

Before 1920, as a central city grew up to the edges of a smaller town, the town would generally join the larger city to take advantage of lower cost city services. But this process came to a screrching halt in 1920. Why? In a word, zoning. New York City passed the first comprehensive zoning ordinance in the US. In short order, cities and towns realized the power of such control over land use and it no longer was advantageous to join the larger city and lose that power.

So the question is then, why zoning? Before the automobile and city bus came to exist, transportation technology was such that land use was largely fixed and determined by transportation costs. Before the streetcar, everyone pretty much needed to live near where they worked. According to William Fischel (2004) "An Economic History of Zoning and a Cure for its Exclusionary Effects" in the journal Urban Studies, pre-streetcars, there is no need to zone land use as everyone needs all uses (residential, industrial, office, retail, etc.) within walking distance. Then the streetcar and still expensive automobile were born at about the same time. These set a whole new set of incentives where people move away from industrial uses. However, streetcar lines are fixed over time. Lower income households choose to live within walking distance of the streetcar and higher income households with cars can live further away from the streetcar. For economi reasons, businesses choose to live near the streetcar lines as well. Still no need for zoning. These early streetcar suburban areas (both within central cities or independent suburbs) are closest to the mixed use, walkable cities that New Urbanists and smart growth advocates like best.

The era of the city bus and cheap auto changed everything. While high income households could previously look to the streetcar lines as an indication of where apartment buildings would be located, the bus and then car changed that. To quote Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland “[apartments are] a mere parasite, constructed in order to take advantage of the open spaces and attractive surroundings created by the residential character of the district (Euclid v. Ambler, 1926).” I am not sure this view has changed much in 85 years. As buses -- with easiliy modified routes -- allow apartments (with their mass-transit dependent residents), to be built anywhere, zoning was needed to make sure that did not happen.

The low cost car allowed a whole new type of development that is planned not by economics, but by zoning. The era of sprawling single use development began in the prosperity that followed WWII. These first, new, comprehensively zoned suburbs are what I primarily think of when I discuss the inner-ring Midopolis. But certainly, many pre-war suburbs can and should also be considered inner-ring and the issues certain are similar.