In the 1800s, no American city had zoning rules, the economist William Fischel writes in his aptly titled book Zoning Rules! In the early 1900s, Los Angeles adopted a small package of regulations that divided the city between zones for industrial buildings and residential construction. New York City followed, and soon enough, so did almost everywhere else. “Eight cities had zoning by the end of 1916,” Fischel writes. “By 1926, 68 more cities had adopted it, and between 1926 and 1936, zoning was adopted by 1,246 additional municipalities.”32 The concept of zoning, unheard-of in 1900, covered 70
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