The second study was done in 1952. During the twenty years since the work of Bartholomew and Marr, residential suburbanization and the expansion of commercial and industrial uses beyond city’s limits had begun to have detrimental effects on the viability of cities’ economic bases. Undertaken by the Urban Land Institute (ULI), the study’s focus was on whether cities were able to undertake, on a normal basis, the assignment of tax receipts and service costs to land-use types for the purpose of supporting fiscally responsible municipal land-use policies. By the mid-1950s, the discrepancy between the tax returns and cost of service outlays attributable to central city land uses had become a widely addressed problem, discussed in such mainstream magazines as American City, Business Week, and Time (Business Week, 1954; TIME Magazine, 1955; Jabine, 1956).
The ULI survey was sent to all 178 cities having over 50,000 residents in the 1950 United States census and had a 51 percent response rate. Among the 91 cities responding, 58 of them included amount of vacant land among self-reported land-use percentages. Vacant land was defined broadly and variously by each of the responding cities, and included non-developable land, institutional uses, or public uses as each city saw fit. Results showed that the percentage of vacant land in these cities had declined markedly in the twenty year interim. On average, 24.3 percent of a city’s total acreage was considered vacant in cities with populations larger than 50,000, 26.8 percent of land in cities larger than 230,000, and 25.5 percent in cities over 500,000 (Wehrly &
McKeever, 1952).
It is possible that the overall consistent amount of vacant land between cities of different sizes was the result of a few cities reporting a massive amount of vacant land within their city limits. Such a situation would inflate the average amount of vacant land in each size category. For instance, Des Moines, Iowa, population 177,000, reported 46 percent of the city’s land as vacant; Portland, Maine, population 77,000, reported that their city consisted of 48 percent vacant area, while New Orleans,
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Louisiana, with a population of almost 570,000, reported that over 79 percent of the city’s land was vacant.
It is also possible that these large percentages of vacant land resulted from the way in which vacant land was interpreted in individual cities. Davenport, Iowa, which reported 66.7 percent of the total city area as vacant “includes streets and other uses not comparable as vacant, unused land,” while Rochester, Minnesota with 41 percent of the city reported as vacant “includes streets and other public uses” (Wehrly &
McKeever, 1952, p. 18).
The authors noted the inability to draw direct conclusions from the amount of vacant land being reported by cities in the 1952 study, saying that
comparison among cities, even of the same population range, is meaningless.
Compilation of the figures varies widely… The figures on vacant land indicate only the extent of area within cities yet to be used for one purpose or another.
For comparative purposes, they indicate only that one city is more nearly built up than another (Wehrly & McKeever, 1952, pp. 19-20).
They were able to claim, however, based on comparing data used in the 1932 Bartholomew and Marr study with comparable data in their study, that the mean average of vacant land, per city, had declined from 39.8 percent to 24.6 percent during those twenty years.
While it is not possible to see a pattern of larger amounts of vacant land in smaller cities, as was visible in the 1932 study, an overall trend of vacant land declining as cities became more developed, unless they were able to annex land outside the city limits, spurred cities to do just that. Many cities in the United States, outside of the Northeast where cities were more likely to be landlocked by other municipalities, engaged in annexation in the 1950s (Austin, 1999). It is possible that the large percentages of vacant land in cities of all range of population resulted from early annexation activities by these cities.
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To these authors, the largest threat seen facing U.S. cities was fiscal. If vacant land inside a city was not reserved for commercial or industrial development, then these potential contributors to the tax base would continue to move outside of the city.
Further, residential development, a net drain on the city’s coffers, would move in instead. Vacant land was seen at this time as both an opportunity and a challenge, but fully embedded within the context of growth. It was assumed that growth would come to these cities; however, what had to be planned and managed was how land would develop. At risk was the subsequent impact of that choice upon the financial viability of each city.
The authors of the 1932 study had believed in the natural, organic development of a city and its ability to revitalize and renew deteriorated districts through systematic growth appears. By 1952, this belief seemed to have given way in the face of serious economic difficulties, as the authors referred to “the difference between municipal solvency and bankruptcy,” cities “forced into a continuously shrinking tax base,”
suburban growth that “puts a strain upon fiscal resources of local government,” and the need to consider with very proposed project “whether the revenue to be received from the real estate taxes on the improvements counterbalance the public outlays required”
(Wehrly & McKeever, 1952, pp. 3-4). A considered approach to planning cities appeared to now be required, with information and accounts necessary for informed action.
Actively planning for the development of vacant lots had now arisen as an activity appropriate for government action. However, at this point, the recommendations of the authors appeared to have supported planning at city-scale, indicating broad land uses which were or were not appropriate for a city’s vacant lands and then applying them as large overlaying districts. Vacant lots were not yet being treated as individual spaces with different inherent characteristics.
61 3.2.1.3 Bartholomew and Wood - 1955
Three years later, Bartholomew and Wood published another Harvard University sponsored study. It built upon the survey data and findings of the 1932 study and, again, intended to inform zoning practice. Recognizing that “so long as the city is dynamic, zoning must be studied and adjusted periodically if it is to function properly,”
the study was intended to examine the changes in U.S. land use patterns and challenges to zoning that had occurred in the period since 1932 (Bartholomew & Wood, 1955, p.
vi). During this period of time, U.S. cities faced unexpected and unforeseen change, as urban growth was impeded by the Great Depression, directed by the needs of World War Two, and modified by the expansion of personal automobile use. The purpose of the study was to update the findings of the 1932 study with contemporary land-use ratios after the “intervention of the federal government in the field of local planning [and efforts] made to deal with the total urban problem” (Bartholomew & Wood, 1955, pp. 3-4). These efforts, including the Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954 that paved the way for urban renewal and suburbanization, respectively, had led to decentralization and suburbanization of land uses, prompting the new survey.
For the purposes of the 1955 study, vacant land was again defined as any land
“not given over to any urban use even though it may be potentially available for development. Thus… agricultural land is considered vacant land” (Bartholomew &
Wood, 1955, pp. 13-14). The findings of this survey were largely in line with those of the 1952 ULI study, as they showed that vacant land had decreased in these cities since 1932. Of the cities with populations over 50,000, an average of 26.7 percent of total city acreage was vacant (this study combining vacant land with area of in-city water bodies). In cities of over 100,000 population, 23.4 percent of land was considered vacant and in cities over 250,000, 19.8 percent was, on average, vacant. While these numbers differ from Wehrly and Mckeever’s findings of just three years previous, the downward trend they show is similar.
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The authors of the study did not specifically address vacant land or its position within city planning policies, despite the suburbanization which had become more widespread during the 1950s. As residences, commercial businesses, and industries moved outside of the city limits, vacant lands opened up in previously dense areas.
Rather than addressing vacant land as result of suburbanization or possible tool for growth, they spoke about two other common urban ills, “depreciated land values and blight”. The authors noted that both had come about, but put the blame for these occurrences squarely on “zoning plans based on unsound assumptions concerning the direction and extent of civic growth” (Bartholomew & Wood, 1955, p. 7). Vacant land was simply addressed as extra space in a city, undeveloped acreage that had resulted from “the average central city… [containing] more land than is necessary for urban development” (Bartholomew & Wood, 1955, p. 73).