Regulation, Welfare, and the Rise of Environmental Law

This chapter discusses changes in American law in the twentieth century covering land use, environmental law, intellectual property, regulation of business, and business law. The twentieth century was a century of land-use controls. An important legal invention was zoning. The central idea of zoning is to divide a town or city into zones or segments and to regulate what kinds of land use are allowed in each of these segments. Some zones will be limited to one-family houses, others will be open to apartment buildings, stores and offices, and even to factories. New York City was a pioneer in the zoning movement. After the state passed an enabling act, New York City adopted the first comprehensive zoning ordinance (1916). Zoning soon spread to city after city. By 1930, it was pretty much the rule in both large and small cities and in the suburbs as well.