The Regulated City: The Politics of Land Use Regulation in Los Angeles, 1909--200

This dissertation draws from archival data to examine the history of land use regulation and its political context in the city of Los Angeles from the early 20th century to the present day. This dissertation will advance the argument that the city of Los Angeles has not adequately experienced significant benefits from land use regulation because the principal mechanism of its exercise, zoning, along with other more recent tools, have been severely compromised by the inequalities existent in the marketplace and civil society. Land use regulation has principally served the parochial interests of the politically, educationally and economically powerful at the expense of the public welfare. Due to shifting politics in the city over the years, the specific shortcomings of land use regulations have changed radically: it is not necessarily the mechanisms themselves but the way that they are administered that creates the problem. Traditionally real estate interests held the upper hand in land use matters, but in recent decades there has been a shift away from a more growth-centric model towards homeowner dominance of the regulatory setting. Failures have consequently been diverse, with both periods of excess supply of developable area and over-speculation and periods of shortages of developable area and the hyper-inflation of values. The emphasis on local benefits for the few over citywide benefits for the many is however a constant. A better balance of interests remains elusive.